Restaurant spy: Zuma

Zuma, a sushi restaurant in Knightsbridge, is currently enjoying its 15 minutes of fame. This is largely thanks to Oscar winner Russell Crowe, who popped in last week to audition for a role in Predator 3: The John Leslie Story. On the night I was there, the focus of attention was Lady Victoria Hervey, though regrettably she didn't try to force her tongue down anyone's throat. Given that the staple diet at Zuma is raw flesh, with a bit of luck someone might have bitten it off.

Hot restaurants give off an unmistakable whiff of arrogance and Zuma is no exception. When I called to make a reservation, the woman who answered the phone was almost shocked: 'A table for this evening?'

Yeah, right. And I suppose you want me to part the Red Sea and turn water into wine. 'Not only are we fully booked, sir, we've had to close the waiting list, too.' I debated whether to pretend to be Russell Crowe, but even in a gladiator costume I think I'd have trouble passing as the A-list hunk. I ended up calling the publicist and begging her to squeeze me in.

Tucked away down a little alleyway, Zuma is the brainchild of Divia Lalvani, a 26-year-old Pakistani/Hawaiian socialite whose father, Gulu Lalvani, was one of Princess Diana's 'special friends'. On the night I went there it was full of precisely the sort of people you'd expect to see in Knightsbridge in the run-up to Christmas. By that I don't mean members of the landed gentry. On the contrary, at least 75 per cent of the customers were young, westernised Arabs. They were dressed from head to toe in immaculate designer gear and dripping in jewellery - and that was just the men. The bar area looked less like a fashionable London restaurant than the first-class departure lounge in Dubai International Airport.

Hopefully that doesn't make me sound racist. The owner of Cecconi's, a rich Saudi gentleman, was so incensed by my description of his restaurant as 'the kind of place I imagine Osama bin Laden hung out in during his decadent, Edgware Road phase' that a friend of a friend reported he'd issued a fatwa against me. When I checked this, it turned out he hadn't actually called for my head to be brought to him, he was merely 'very, very angry'. Well, I'm sorry if I gave offence. All I can say is it's difficult to think of people who are so much richer than me as members of a persecuted ethnic minority.

The remaining 25 per cent of Zuma's customers were bridge-and-tunnel folk who'd come to gawp at the celebrities. I overheard one young man at the bar say, 'So where exactly is Fulham, then?' You can always tell when someone has come to check out the scene at a restaurant because they start rubber-necking as soon as they come in. Later, I overheard the same young man, this time in a breathless whisper: 'Is that... It can't be. Oh my God. It is! Look. Over there. Quick.' The cause of this excitement was Dale Winton, presenter of Supermarket Sweep. If one of the Big Brother contestants had walked in, we might have had a full-scale riot on our hands.

The food, I'm happy to report, is pretty good. It's the same Nobu-style fare that's served up all over town now in various pan-Asian restaurants: sea urchin sushi, soft-shell crab maki, baked black cod. Personally, I can't get enough of this stuff, but I was slightly taken aback by the prices. At £55 a head, it cost about the same as Nobu as well. No wonder it was full of rich Arabs.