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Mentioning to a friend that we are off to dinner at San Lorenzo in London's swanky Beauchamp Place is meant to merit a feather in my gastronomic hat. Quite the reverse. She greets the news with a frown not unlike the one worn by my teenage daughter when she thinks her father is being "lame''. But why? San Lorenzo is still riding high in the glamour stakes, mentioned from time to time in the same breath as Jemima Khan, Rod Stewart and Victoria Beckham, and I've never heard any particular complaints about the food.
Actually, I've never heard much about the food at all, indicating, perhaps, that what you eat is of little importance, just as long as you look the part and don't cut up rough if a member of the paparazzi shows no interest in taking a photograph when you leave. Which really is a bit lame.
San Lorenzo has been around since 1963, a fact that commands respect in itself. During that time, its owners, Mara and Lorenzo Berni, have befriended many of the great and the good from stage and screen (and catwalk and football pitch) and still today they wander around the restaurant making sure that their band of merry, male waiters do their job without asking for autographs along the way. In fact, almost the first person we come across in the bar is Mara, who is tiny and, when not smiling, just a little bit scary.
We are a group of four: Joanna and...