Here then is Gatsby’s house, after an invasion by the Daily Mail. It is called the Chiltern Firehouse. It is a restaurant in a newly opened hotel in a Victorian Gothic former fire station in Marylebone, a proud and grimy district in total denial about its shocking levels of air pollution. The building has a fairytale intensity, with red brick turrets; it is a Roald Dahl prison repointed to its extremities by the man who made the Chateau Marmont in LA. The chef is Nuno Mendes, formerly of Viajante.
But what else? Ah — now we are sucked into a wind tunnel of paps and buzz; like so much nonsense, this is media-led, the media having so little to do that they must write about the Chiltern Firehouse. In this, I am complicit. What is the critique, limp or spirited, but another revolution in the cycle of churnalism, nepotism and ennui?
Outside there is a gate — an actual, non-metaphorical and enormous gate — and a huddle of freelance photographers, with staring bystanders and dazzled diners getting in and out of people carriers. The street looks washed, as if God spat on it and licked the tarmac clean. Photographers are soul-stealers by trade, and their faces show it: they look lonely and grizzled, with expressions of vague, dilapidated spite. They are here because the Prime Minister visited recently (he has moved on from Oslo Court and will shortly, hopefully, be appearing at STK, the steakhouse for rapists). But why wouldn’t he be here? He is a shire Tory. He has no taste of his own and must be told where is fashionable. If only that were the worst of his crimes.
Thousands of words have been written on the Chiltern Firehouse door interaction.
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