Grace Dent reviews Tilia

This week,’ my editor said, ‘why don’t you review a luxury grocery supplier? You could have a dinner party!’ I’m unsure whether this was a genuine commission or a bribe from certain restaurateurs to keep me indoors.

I’ve had a run of bad-review dinners recently, coupled with a bout of diminishing patience. What could cheer me up more than organising a dinner party?

I love dinner parties. For those unacquainted with the phenomenon, a ‘dinner party’ is something that enters one’s social scene circa one’s late twenties, when friends get engaged or fat, or puzzled by the ‘going out’ garments in Topshop or want a chance to display in a passive-aggressive manner that they earn enough to rent a flat that has room for a dining table. If you’re in your twenties reading this, mazel tov! In your thirties and forties, dinner parties are a chance for couples to spend time with other couples and decipher via terrible atmospheres and ‘things left unsaid’ who is going to get divorced first. They’re terribly good fun. Half a Diazepam and agreeing on a ‘safe word’ in the Addison Lee minicab on the way there helps.

I chose Tilia ‘The Artisan Grocer’ to bring me enough to cater an elegant Thursday night supper with three friends. It connects Londoners with the city’s best food and drink suppliers, from established places such as Allens of Mayfair, and newer foodie hotspots: The Rib Man, Porteña and Rubies in the Rubble. I chose lamb, veg, a selection of cheese, pretty cupcakes, some booze and various charming things such as artisan Swedish crackers and chilli and red onion chutney bearing labels that suggested the independent homespun manufacturer not only admired me as a customer but genuinely loved me and lay awake in bed at night worrying how to keep the magic alive.

Obviously, as a food critic, the artisan part was crucial for me. I rarely eat anything that isn’t artisan, windblown, ‘honest’ and ethically harvested by one of those pinch-faced, holey-jumpered local producers that poor Nigel Slater is always forced to drop in for a chat with. Anyone who claims to have spotted me in Westfield Stratford City’s Wagamama shoving yaki udon and Goats Do Roam rosé down my neck is a bloody liar.

If you have money to burn, Tilia is all rather jolly. It’s Ocado for the jelly-elbowed wives of ex-Bullingdon Club members and the cash-rich, time-rich, bone-idle children of Kuwaiti oil barons. Orders are delivered bang on time by — no lie — a genteel man in a butcher’s cap, tugging his forelock. (I was unable to clarify whether he was from this century or the last.)

As it transpired, feeding four people for under £150 in a generous, devil-may-care manner wasn’t as simple as one might think. No one wants to look stingy when they’re entertaining, but if you’re on a budget, you won’t come to Tilia for a splurge. Four very excellent lamb shanks from Allens of Mayfair were £24, a box of cupcakes was £12, the excellent range of cheeses from Mortimer & Bennett such as Barkham Blue cost £6.30 for 250g, two bottles of Malbec were £18.

But with dinner parties the devil is in the details, so I ended up topping up the order at Ocado where figs, butter and herbs seemed much more reasonable. At Tilia a bulb of artisan fennel comes at the bargain price of £7.35. I checked the small print and this fennel did not come encrusted with diamonds, so to my mind it was overpriced. And the website threw me out twice, meaning I had to begin the order from scratch. If Mr or Mrs Tilia had been in my living room at this point, they might have heard some quite bad language.

My Tilia dinner was a success. We ate, drank and left no gossip stone unturned. But when I woke up in the morning all the remnants of the night before were still waiting in the sink for me. This is why sensible, civilised people go out to restaurants for dinner.