Fun places to eat in London

Fancy a nice quiet meal out? Pah! It's no longer enough just to go out for dinner and a movie. Now Londoners need constant stimulation, preferably of all the senses, all at once.

"We always have to eat somewhere and whatever environment we’re in, that environment has an effect," says Charles Spence, Professor of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University. He knows all about good and bad sensory combinations, for example, the sound of flutes goes with white wines and classical music will make you order more expensive dishes.

For pure novelty value, and a complete stimulation vacuum, try restaurant Dans le Noir, which is totally pitch black and diners are led to their tables by blind waiters. Spence is dubious about the theory that depriving all other senses will heighten your sense of taste. “You can go really minimalist and turn the lights off or have a blank canvas, but many of those restaurants tend to close down,” says Spence. “Darkness will make the food taste bad. It’s an experience and you’re glad you did it once but you wouldn’t go back.”

For a really fun and quirky dining experience, it's all about adding sensory layers to the basic dinner format: the more music, dancing, plate-spinning and vertigo-inducing gimmicks the better. For thrill-seeking gastronomes, aerial company Dinner in the Sky will rig up a dinner table that floats above the city. “Dining at great height will get you aroused,” says Spence. In other words, your senses will be heightened and you’re likely to have a jolly good time.

Restaurants are also using the environment to enhance the authenticity of food, explains Spence, so Italian food will taste better if Pavarotti is playing in the background. Many pop-ups now take this idea and run with it, with actors and scenery and a whole story woven around the nationality of the food. Travelling pop-up Gingerline plays on this idea. Its current event, called The Hideout, is secret, but previous events have married food to a theme, including HMS Gingerline, where seafood platters were served in an aquatic setting with sea-shanty sounds, porthole film installations and fake sailor-style tattoos.

So, bring on the cabaret/circus/brass band/dining extravaganza, my friends, as long as you don’t forget about making good food too.