Foulkes turns Twentyfour

This review was first published in October 2000

I am not sure whether to be honoured or upset, so I will just settle for being amused. For the first time since about 1984, when I was banned from Brown's in Oxford - I was told I was turning over tables and snatching food from other people's plates - I have been barred from a restaurant.

This week's column was supposed to be about a Spanish restaurant called El Rincon. I had booked in the correct manner and was just assuming a suitably Iberian outfit - moccasins from Pepe of Marbella, shirt and Teba jacket from Bel of Barcelona when the lifestyle editor of ES magazine rang to say that I would be refused entry and slung into the street. It sounded frightfully dramatic, so I rang up El Rincon and asked what all the fuss was about.

Apparently, I had upset the owner, Claudio Pulze, with a review I had written about another of his restaurants, Al Duca. He had also been offended by something I'd said about yet another of his places, Zaika. According to him, I had described it as 'a poncified curry house'. I know I like a good neologistic colloquialism, but the word 'poncified' has the sort of home-made quality that I prefer to eschew.

I would not argue that I found Al Duca pointless. Zaika, however, I like. It is a good Indian restaurant. But I think Claudio was a bit miffed that I did not regard it as the curry world's riposte to the Sistine Chapel. He presumably thought I would not say that El Rincon was the finest thing to come out of Spain since El Greco. If so, he was one ahead of me as, not having visited it, I had no idea what I would write.

The pi?ce de r?sistance was his allegation that I was part of a wider fiendish plot to destabilise his business. I assured him that I respected his business acumen and his eye for talent. And I added that if I were convinced someone were out to destroy me, I would not allow them to eat in my latest Spanish restaurant. I hope I left him mollified; he showed good grace by revoking the ban.

But, by then, I had already booked a table at Twentyfour, a restaurant on the 24th floor of what used to be the Nat West Tower, and enlisted the help of that hardman of the canap? circuit, and black belt of small talk, Simon Mills. If I encountered any trouble, muscle-man Mills would simply hurl off his cashmere overcoat and set about the recalcitrant restaurant manager. Providing, of course, that we could find the restaurant.

The Nat West Tower is, you would think, hard to miss. Wrong. Scuttling around a one-way system that would disorient even the cleverest Minotaur, our eyes turned skywards as if looking for the Batman signal in Gotham City. It took us an hour to get to the restaurant.

It was, however, well worth it. The vast glass lobby, stuffed with pieces of furniture by the likes of Mies van der Rohe and Arne Jacobsen, is enough to bring on an attack of Stendhalism in your average Wallpaper* reader. The view from the 24th floor is stunning. The view from the 42nd floor, where there is a groovy champagne bar, is even better. It is the sort of vista that I imagine Hollywood movie-makers spend many hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to recreate and you can enjoy it, all dinner long, for a shade over a hundred quid for two. If anything, it is better than the view from the top of the Hilton.

The restaurant operation at the building formerly known as the Nat West Tower is run on a highly selective basis. Moreover, the complex system of lifts, security guards, electronic gates and escalators require one to have full control of one's wits. Thus instead of good-timers out on the razzle, I can only imagine that we were surrounded by a representative cross section of Europe's financial elite.

The food is of the sort that modern continent-hopping financiers eat all over the world. It does not try to outdo the view; instead, it acts as a perfectly competent backdrop. I had grilled smoked salmon with spiced puy lentils - a good combination, of which I could have eaten more. And, getting into the Square Mile spirit, Simon Mills told of his one-week flirtation with a City career while consuming a gastronomically correct-looking soup of haricots blancs with borlotti-bean salsa. By the time his steak arrived - a take on tournedos Rossini, with foie gras, black-truffle butter and Madeira jus - he was on to describing his career in pop videos.

My sea bass arrived piled on top of saut?ed potatoes and surrounded by a sauce of cr?me fra?che and caviar, reminding me a little of a funeral bier or catafalque. Although unconventional, I became rather fond of it.