With Who: J School
How much: Up there with the best... £150 for a selection of 8 small plates and a bottle of house wine, no desserts, champagnes (despite the thrice repeated offer of it at the start, a rather boring restaurant trick to play these days) or liquors
Come here if: you need to be seen in all the right places or you've just done a big deal and want to impress your partner with the depth of your wallet
I was testing a hypothesis for a new PHD for HR professionals most of the evening. Not because I am one, more because I was suffering from excessive clients and needed to whinge to J School. Do some companies recruit badly, only employing those who arrive as fully formed tits? Or do you get toxic companies, where all of the staff no matter how competent and lovely on arrival are slowly, gradually turned into arseholes through the lack of joy and the unbelievably stressful pressure of perfection placed upon them? A sort of nature vs nurture for idiots... If any HR professionals reading this fancy the challenge I don't expect any royalties, can point you in the direction of some wonderful examples, and would love to read the thesis.
Obviously I'm not talking about Pollen Street here, that would be rude, unnecessary and incorrect. The staff at Pollen Street were uniformly lovely. There were thousands of them too, in serried ranks in black. We had at least two main ones (one for speaking to and one to clear and serve), a sommelier and a couple of randoms checking in on us anxiously. You wouldn't be surprised if they were over-stressed and striving for perfection though, the pressure cooker of expectation here is palpable after one of the most hotly anticipated launches of the year. Following over 18 months of planning, Jason Atherton opens his solo venture, a move out from under the protective, if sweary, wing of mentor Ramsay.