As your coats are taken and reservations checked, a pianist tinkles away on a baby grand by the entrance of Richard Corrigan’s Mayfair restaurant. If stopping for a drink, you’re led to a long marble bar topped with individual railway-style lamps; those eating continue to the dusky, romantically lit dining room, which has any solemnity removed by humorous feathered lampshades and metal bird sculptures.
Pure luxury seeps from the copper-panelled walls in Corrigan’s where, for a price, a near-perfect experience awaits. All menus – the daily ‘market lunch’, bar, à la carte, tasting – are heavy on meat and fish (though there’s a separate vegetarian menu), and cooking is absolutely top class. A starter of battered and fried oysters on the half shell came with slices of smooth suckling pig sausage and ribbons of lightly pickled vegetables: impeccable mouthfuls each.
The tasting menu at £75 shows off the adroitness of the chefs, but there’s still room for a down-to-earth side dish of chips. After such a sumptuous display of hospitality, the £2 ‘cover charge’ seems mean-spirited when the bill is more or less guaranteed to hit £50 a head – although most here won’t notice it. There’s plenty of scope for indulgence on the wine list too.