Pollen Street Social, the Emperor's New Clothes - April

Where: Pollen Street Social, Mayfair
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.

The Riding House Cafe - a touch of the Caprice Holdings? Apr 2011

Where: The Riding House Cafe
With who: The International Man of Mystery and others
How much: small plates are £3-£5, mains hover over the £10-£13 mark.
Come here if: you're looking for a new creative digital agency, or you've got a meeting in the area

Lunchtime in another 'restaurant of death'... Not that anyone has actually died here, it's more a term that implies that it's never really settled as a venue. The previous incumbents, Curry and Lager (someone needed to give their brand consultant a good shoeing for that one), talked a good game, and sold a pretty decent all you can eat buffet, but never really looked like they were for the long term, laying their hot trays down on jerrybuilt stands over the remains of London secretary haunt Bar Ha Ha beneath. Such is the pageant of London's restaurants. Some you know will, and should, close within months, others fight on against all hope and others just feel like they've always been there.

Even within the first couple of weeks you get the impression that the team behind The Riding House Cafe will be there for a while. Searching around for the feel, I was initially gunning towards it being someone in the Russell Norman mould. There’s definitely the organised attention to detail you’d expect with an ex alumni of the Caprice Holdings group. Casual it may seem, but there’s an eagle eye for their brand of casual, clued up perfection and design at the top of the operation and that attention permeated through the staff on our visit. On checking, it’s actually from the team behind Bermondsey stalwarts The Garrison and Village East. Similar wrong side of the tracks chic for a creative relatively monied local market makes it obvious if you’ve been to the other two.