by Dinner in Fitzrovia, three coffees of recovery, and the admin nobody glamorises
Three coffees deep and still fairly convinced today is going to defeat me, largely on account of a dinner last night that ran considerably longer than the restaurant’s own booking system technically permitted, and a conversation about absolutely nothing important that somehow lasted until the staff started very pointedly stacking chairs around us.
The dinner in question
Six of us, a restaurant in Fitzrovia that has been fully booked since it opened and is, genuinely, worth every bit of the fuss, and a conversation that moved from a proper argument about whether a particular gallery show is actually good or simply well marketed, through someone’s genuinely disastrous recent situationship, to, somehow, a full debate about the correct way to make a negroni that nearly ended a decade long friendship at the table.
This is, I think, the actual product London is selling to anyone willing to pay attention properly, not the skyline, not the museums, though those are lovely too, but precisely this, a dinner table full of people who will argue passionately about a cocktail recipe at midnight on a Tuesday because they genuinely care that much about getting it right.
This morning’s damage assessment
Considerably less damage than the length of the evening might suggest, mostly because I switched to water somewhere around course three, a genuinely rare display of self control that I am choosing to be quietly proud of rather than question too closely.
Caught up properly on the feed while nursing coffee number three, and there was a piece on the city’s current restaurant opening cycle that confirmed something I have suspected for a while, that this particular corner of Fitzrovia is quietly becoming the most interesting few streets in the whole of central London right now, whatever the more established postcodes might claim.
What today actually requires
A genuinely boring afternoon of admin, invoices chased, emails answered, the unglamorous scaffolding that makes the more interesting evenings possible in the first place, and one I am, if I am honest, considerably less enthusiastic about narrating than last night’s dinner, however necessary it genuinely is.
There is a version of this diary that only covers the glamorous parts, and I have deliberately avoided writing that version, since the actual texture of this life is considerably more admin heavy than the highlight reel version would suggest, and I think that honesty is worth more to anyone reading regularly than another string of party recaps alone.
Tonight
Quiet, deliberately, recovering properly ahead of what I am reliably informed is a genuinely significant weekend coming up. Will need the energy, and possibly another early night, which feels like a genuinely radical concept at this point in the week.
More London social diary at Vivienne Pratfall’s page, The London Prat.
The friendship in question, a bit more
Worth saying properly, the friend whose situationship dominated a good third of last night’s conversation is, underneath all the drama, one of the genuinely sharpest people I know, and it remains a small mystery to the entire table how someone with that much good judgement in every other area of her life consistently loses it so completely the moment a certain specific type of charming, unreliable man enters the picture.
We have, collectively, stopped offering direct advice on this particular pattern, having learned the hard way that it tends to be received considerably less warmly than intended, and have settled instead into the role of simply being available for exactly this kind of long, wine fuelled debrief whenever the situation, predictably, requires one.
The restaurant itself, properly credited
Should say plainly that the food itself, amid all this conversational chaos, was genuinely excellent, a small, considered menu that clearly reflects someone in that kitchen who cares considerably more about getting a handful of dishes exactly right than padding out a menu with mediocre options simply to appear more ambitious than the space and staff can actually support properly.
Already planning to go back, partly for the food and partly, if I am honest, because the negroni debate remains genuinely unresolved and at least two people at that table are not going to let it rest until a proper rematch has been arranged.
Texted the friend properly this morning, once the fog of last night had cleared enough to type a coherent message, and got back a genuinely funny, self aware reply acknowledging exactly how the situationship debate had gone, which is, honestly, most of what any of us really want from these evenings, the chance to be gently teased about our own patterns by people who genuinely love us anyway.
A small addition to tomorrow’s plan
Decided, somewhere around the third coffee, that tomorrow’s boring admin afternoon should be immediately followed by something considerably more enjoyable as a reward, possibly the smaller gallery show a few streets from the restaurant that everyone at dinner kept mentioning without anyone quite committing to actually going, a gap in the group’s collective follow through that I intend to close personally.
Small crisis, manageable, and honestly the kind of last minute scramble that has become such a familiar part of this life that it barely registers as stressful anymore, just another item on the evening’s checklist.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
