A bygone era

Bad service ranges from intolerable to forgivable, with a feeling that maybe if you were less uptight, the service might not seem so bad. To a sensitive soul like me, waiterly impatience and superciliousness are frustrating, galling and hurtful. Nothing, not even being told midmouthful that you're dumped, spoils the taste of food like a snotty waiter. It takes balls, but - after some debate with my table - if staff are really obnoxious, I complain. Life is way too short to pay for sneers and bitchy winces (and men who finish with you between courses).

There is also the bad service that owes itself to the fact that, for most staff in London, English is the Lingua Franca. Sitting in a posh restaurant recently, I was boggled by a charming waiter's description of the complicated cheeseboard - his mumbled Frenglish was incomprehensible.

I see that Mayor Ken's London Development Agency has set aside £3.5 million to improve levels of service in the capital. I say, do more. Open a training school, imbue the position of waiter or barman with some kudos and reward the good so that the bad take notice.

If I can get friendly, efficient service in Mike's Cafe for a five-quid fry-up, then I should be able to get good service anywhere.

The service at The Grenadier, the dining room above a pub called The Gun in Spitalfields, was a good example of why older people, in this case two middle-aged ladies, should be tempted back to the service industries. All the Grenadier's diners were greeted with deferential warmth. 'Ah, Mr Jones, we didn't expect to see you this lunchtime, what a pleasant surprise,' one of the waitresses said, as a corpulent pinstripe bowled in.

. To my guest, the mysterious Mr Smoke & Mirrors, it felt like a stop on the freemasons' circuit (which it is). For me, it was dinners with my paternal grandparents in creaky hotels on the Isle Of Wight, all brown Windsor soup and velvet-buttoned back chairs.

Downstairs, The Gun's bar is full of the sort of blokes who are neither specifically white collar nor blue collar, drinking lots of cask ales (Broadside, Bombardier, Courage Best, Young's Bitter) and stood on a bold cannon-motif blue carpet. It is near Gun Street and Artillery Lane, a part of London that is so evocative of the city's past - from the time of Henry VIII. These days, it's more of a focal point for fashion's young gunslingers, close to Hoxton, Spitalfields and all that East London malarkey.

The food is traditional - steaks, calves' liver, big lumps of fish - with the odd thai green curry thrown in. To start, S&M ordered scallops in bacon, and I a piece of haddock with a Welsh rarebit crust. A fabulously amusing amuse bouche of a sliver of beef, Yorkshire, gravy and horseradish arrived.

S&M's starter had watery, curmudgeonly bacon and the scallops were a little dry underneath, but it worked well enough. Haddock with rarebit crust was a nice idea, but the rarebit had too many breadcrumbs and was stodgy.

For the mystery man, the main course was a reasonable fillet steak with a proper old-style creamy mushroom sauce over it, for me skate, which I chose grilled, and it came a bit overcooked - better to have it pan-fried, I think. The chips with it were not great, like thin-skinned roast potatoes. It's haute school food, really.