There's no place like Motcombs

This review was first published in November 2000

The concept of the Third Place has always appealed to me. The idea of having somewhere to go that is neither one's office nor one's home is perhaps the best contribution to modern life that America has made in recent years. The Third Place has entered the cultural lexicon in such guises as the bar in Cheers and has been replicated on most high streets as Starbucks.

I have now found what they have in Belgravia instead of Starbucks - Motcombs. Motcombs is divided into two parts: a basement restaurant that has recently been refitted and a ground-floor bar.

The bar is a bit of a blast from the past; it is also a blast - or at least so the regulars seem to think. Imagine the Queen Vic but for rich people. It is the sort of place where Hooray dealers in slightly dodgy equestrian 'art' wear slightly too bold chalk-striped suits, slightly too big signet rings and slightly too polished Gucci shoes. They tend to be accompanied by well-preserved, attractive women in slightly too short suede skirts and a fair amount of gold jewellery.

But to write off Motcombs as a throwback to early-Eighties turbo-Sloanedom would be to miss the point. It is spoken of as Terry Venables' de facto office, and if you regard El Tel as a national hero who deserves to be in the Cabinet, as I do, this is doubtless a good thing. It is, moreover, a favoured haunt of Chris Evans - an association that perhaps adds a little less lustre. It is also the favoured Third Place of Nick Lancaster, owner of HR Owen and Jack Barclay.

It is no coincidence that when Motcombs closed for its refit in July, Lancaster gave up drinking out of sympathy. And it was in his capacity as an initiate of the Motcombs experience that I wanted him to accompany me as my cicerone; I felt that the place would need an awful lot of explaining.

Thank God he did. Had he not been there I would have caught sight of my first chalk-striped Hooray and run screaming into the night, probably ram-raiding Lady Victoria Hervey's boutique opposite in my desire to effect a rapid exit. However, Lancaster immediately conveyed me to the basement, a more agreeable environment. It is home to rather good pictures, proper ones, including a Bugatti portrait of his lover, three pencil studies of the head of Dylan Thomas, some heavily impastoed post-Impressionist landscapes and other rather good bits and pieces.

I started to feel comfortable. Then I noticed that most of the male customers were wearing gold Rolexes. As a car dealer, Lancaster is required by law to sport one of these, but from my furtive glances at other men's wrists, I gathered that it helps to have at least one gold Oyster on your wrist before ordering any native or rock oysters from the menu. I had just that very day taken mine to have the bracelet steam-cleaned. Isn't it always the way? Even the man on the next table - wearing a Franck Muller Conquistador King set with diamonds - had taken the precaution of wearing a gold ID bracelet with his name picked out, also in diamonds. In order to hide my horological shame, I buried myself in the menu and fired innumerable questions at the ma?tre d' in the hope that he would not look at my wrist.

The Motcombs menu reads a bit like the biography of an old friend: beef carpaccio, gravadlax, moules marini?res, veal Milanese, steak tartare, smoked haddock with poached egg and steak. Then there are daily specials; among these was lobster (which was brought, live, to our table and moved me nearly to tears) as well as Dover sole, seabass and so on.

Neither of our starters had been ordered with the intention of testing the kitchen to its limits. My salad of crab and mango, arranged on a sure foundation of rocket leaves, was refreshing. Nick enjoyed his gravadlax; it was accompanied by a 'homemade brioche', albeit a brioche that was doing a passable impression of a brown roll. I said that if he did not eat it, he could always pass it on to the Hoorays upstairs who would doubtless enjoy throwing it at each other.

Nick's steak looked impressive: naked, prime flesh, not so much cooked as merely waved in the general direction of the grill - he devoured it with a voracity suggesting that he enjoyed it. Out of curiosity I ordered stir-fry scampi, tiger prawns and scallops with chilli and coriander on a bed of rice: it came with a few other bits of shellfish and was a little like eating the constituent parts of a risotto before they had been mixed together. It was a pleasant dish.

Both Nick and I eschewed the Irish coffee - although I was pleased to see that this postprandial comforter is still around - and instead we strolled into the sweet-smelling air of Belgravia.