The dinner hours: one table, four hours, and the part after the plates go
Four hours at £900, arranged backwards from a reservation. Not four hours of restaurant: an hour before it while the room fills, the table itself, and then the hour or two afterwards, which is the part of the evening people most often wish they had paid for and most often did not.
The middle of London is unusually good at this and unusually unforgiving about time. Kitchens here run to the minute, the good tables go early, and a booking made on the day is a different animal from one made the evening before. The desk works to those facts rather than around them.
What four hours actually buys
A drink first, somewhere with chairs worth sitting in, and twenty minutes of nothing urgent. Then the table, at an hour that suits the room rather than your diary. Then the walk, or the bar that has thinned out, or straight back, because by then you will know which of those the evening wants. Four hours sounds generous on paper and disappears quickly in practice.
Shorter is entirely possible. Two hours at £500 covers a table and a courteous goodbye, and three at £700 gives dinner its own speed with room standing free on either side. The dinner figure exists because four hours is where an evening stops being an appointment. Every line is printed on rates.
Who to ask for, and why
Michelle is a natural host and reads a dining room the way good front of house does, invisibly; she is the name to book when somebody else at the table must be impressed. Milena is honest that she is better across four hours than across one, and she is right. Karolina builds the whole evening backwards from a curtain time and has never made a guest miss one.
Sonya is the best conversation on this list by some margin and dinner is where that shows. Nancy is warm from the first minute rather than the twentieth, which matters a great deal when the table is booked for half past six and you met her at six.
Where these evenings tend to happen
Covent Garden runs on two clocks, the half past seven curtain and the quarter past ten spill, and a kitchen there either understands that or does not. Karolina and Nancy both live inside it and know which tables will still be serving at half past ten. The Strand hotels sit six minutes from most of those rooms and the Kingsway ones about eight.
Fitzrovia eats an hour earlier than everywhere else, which is its great advantage. Charlotte Street is three minutes from Oxford Street and six from the Portland Place hotels, and the counter seats there do the entertaining so that neither of you has to. Sonya and Milena both send guests that way.
Who books the table
You do, as host, and the desk will tell you plainly whether the hour you have chosen is realistic in that particular room. If you would rather she suggested somewhere, say so and she will, with a reason attached rather than a list. Several of the women here keep a short mental register of which kitchens in their own postcode still seat two people after nine and which give up at half past eight.
Tables, tickets and whatever else is bought along the way are yours. The figure in your confirmation covers her hours and her company through them, nothing more is on sale at any price, and nobody is waiting for a tip at the end of it.
Notice, and how much of it helps
A hotel booking wants two hours. A dinner booking wants the day before, because the good tables in this zone go early and because she will want to know what she is dressing for. An evening with a curtain in it wants the curtain time first, and everything else is then arranged backwards from it.
Write to booking with the restaurant, the hour it is held for, and either a name from On The Books or a sentence about the evening. The reply carries a woman, a figure and the minute she will be at the door, and you answer yes in the same thread.
It is the four hour line, yes. A shorter dinner is booked on the two or three hour figures instead, and a dinner that turns into a night runs on to the ten hour one. All seven lines are on rates and none of them is a package.
The name, the hour, and whether anybody else is at the table. That is enough for her to dress correctly and to arrive at the right door rather than the right street.
If you ask her to, several of them will and are very good at it. Say so when you write and the desk will put you with somebody who enjoys that rather than somebody who tolerates it.
Whatever the two of you decide, inside the hours you booked. A walk, a last drink somewhere quieter, or straight back. She will tell you honestly when the time is nearly up rather than letting the clock announce it.
Tell us where.
We write the rest.
The desk is being read right now, by a person rather than a form. One line with the district and the hour is all it takes, and nothing is set until you say so.
- WhereYour hotel or flat
- WhenThe hour you name
- CompanionFrom the board
- Arrival20 to 35 minutes
- FigureQuoted in writing