Mix with the movers and shakers

The news that Martha Greene, a former Saatchi executive, helped the Blairs buy their new house won't do any harm to the food emporium she co-owns in Great Portland Street.

Villandry, a restaurant-cum-delicatessen, has long been one of London's most popular destinations for trendy, left-of-centre movers and shakers.

Female Labour MPs, for instance, can stop off at the delicatessen and pick up some organic ready meals on their way back from Westminster, while senior BBC journalists can pop in for lunch without having to walk more than five minutes from Broadcasting House.

It's hard to imagine a place that captures the zeitgeist of Blair's Britain more completely, though when Greene was asked to organise the Prime Minister's 49th birthday dinner, she chose Gordon Ramsay's restaurant at Claridge's rather than her own. Cherie Blair rewarded her for such an exemplary display of modesty by seating her next to her husband.

Villandry first opened in 1988 in a space on Marylebone High Street that wasn't much bigger than a corner shop. Back in those days it was owned by Jean-Charles Carrarini and his wife, but they ran into financial difficulties when they moved to larger premises in 1997 and a year later Martha Greene and Jeremy Sinclair, also a Saatchi employee, stepped in to bail them out.

The original idea was to combine a restaurant serving simple, well-cooked food with a shop that sold the kind of fare that's readily available on any French high street but almost impossible to find in London.

It was an instant hit and it's a concept that has been widely duplicated since, most notably by Terence Conran with his Bluebird complex on the King's Road. According to Nigel Slater, Villandry's bakery still makes the best croissants in London.

The décor in the restaurant is upmarket without being pretentious, reminiscent of other New Labour stalwarts such as The River Café. Wooden tables covered with white tablecloths sit on a stone floor, while the walls are refreshingly bare.

The high ceiling and huge glass frontage combine to give an impression of spaciousness and 60 people can be accommodated at any one time without having to sit on each other's laps.

The atmosphere is businesslike rather than friendly. It's ideal for small groups of powerful people who want the world to think they have nothing to hide while at the same time secretly conspiring to destroy their enemies. I can easily imagine Cherie Blair and Carole Caplin coming here for lunch after getting their hair done at John Frieda, literally 30 seconds away.