Going for broke at Bibendum

This review was first published in December 2000

There are times when I really relish the thought of a full-on, turbocharged, blow-out dinner.

I don't just mean eating to Mr Creosote-style excess. No, I am talking about the gastronomic equivalent of a ride in a Bentley: awesomely powerful, yet immorally comfortable; sybaritic, yet ridiculously civilised.

Many London restaurants offer a perfectly adequate level of food, delivered in perfectly adequate surroundings, but all too few offer a grown-up sense of occasion. The Square, although not my cup of Darjeeling, is one place that does 'occasion eating' well; and Bibendum on Brompton Cross is another; this is much more my beaker of Lapsang Souchong. The tables are far apart and covered in hectares of linen, staff are formal but friendly and the napkins are by Frette.

Way back in the good old days of mobile phones the size of car batteries, when real men wore red braces and the best man to lead the country was a grocer's daughter, Bibendum was London's destination restaurant. It was where foodies flocked and gastronomes gathered.

Created by Terence Conran, with Simon Hopkinson in the kitchen, and careful, beautiful design evident in the graceful double-height room, it was a world-class restaurant. The good news is that the Nineties have come and gone, as has Hopkinson, but Bibendum is still a world-class restaurant. Moreover, prices which once seemed outright ruinous are now merely dangerously crippling.

I had decided to take the next editor of the FT and two of her high-powered friends as company. One was a man called Jamie Rubin who worked for Madeleine Albright. The other was his wife, who, as well as functioning as Mrs Rubin, the mother of his child and his helpmeet, enjoyed a parallel existence as CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

Not having cable television at my fabulous West London home - I read the novels of Dostoevsky to my children and shuffle to Blockbuster to rent such arthouse cinema as Three Kings for myself - I felt at a loss when she talked of dodging fire on the Left Bank with someone called Mr Arafat. I asked her if the character of the TV reporter in Three Kings was based on her, and she admitted that it was.

Mr Rubin regaled me with tales of limousines and trips on Air Force Two-and-a-half; Mrs Rubin chattered on about how the best meal she had ever eaten anywhere was in a little restaurant in downtown Kabul. I began to feel rather relieved that we were at table one of Bibendum rather than table 17 of the Cricklewood Tandoori.

I was more relieved still when the starters arrived, as the conversation had just taken a worrying turn for the geopolitical, with the next editor of the FT deep in debate with Mr Rubin about the Haitian elections.

All talk of the hardworking and conscientious Duvalier family vanished as we embarked on universally wonderful first courses. I had Baltic herrings ? la cr?me, which, admittedly, it would be hard to wreck. But Mrs Rubin's langoustines - delivered pot-au-feu-style in some sort of heavy-duty rustic kitchenware - were a genuinely triumphant marriage of excellent ingredients and judicious preparation.

The Rubins next embarked upon a rack of lamb that delighted. I had a dish of scallops with borlotti bean pur?e that was light and delicious but not fussy. At a shade under £25 a plate, one has a right to expect a fairly miraculous way with scallops and I was not disappointed. The next editor of the FT enjoyed her John Dory with langoustine ravioli.