A small victory in a bad year: José Pizarro at the RA reviewed

Piccadilly is losing its patina of dirt, its cadaverous character. It is overpriced and over-renovated,a meeting place for luxury goods. Perhaps I cannot forgive it for not actually containing Dracula’s ‘malodorous’ house; but who has a resentment against a street except this column and Hillary Clinton, who set a terrorist attack here in her new novel State of Terror (written with Louise Penny), which describes her resentment towards Donald Trump through the prism of genre fiction? Piccadilly does, though, now have three excellent restaurants: HIDE; the Wolseley; and José Pizarro at the Royal Academy of Arts, which opened this summer.

I am used to good art and bad food: one can’t have everything. The National Gallery café has so little imagination (it is called the National Café) that you must stare at Rembrandt’s face to cleanse yourself of sandwiches that are, quite literally, cynical, and imagine he shares your disdain.