Cold foam and spindly legs

Bibendum is a hushed restaurant on the first floor of the Michelin House on the Fulham Road. (Bibendum is the name of the Michelin Man; as such, he is the only restaurant mascot I can think of who is a morbidly obese drunk, and here of all places. It is a noble gesture in a district full of Prada and control). The building is extraordinary — an art-deco whim standing on a corner like Cinema Paradiso without the dreams. It was once the headquarters of the Michelin tyre company; as such, I admire the ambition of placing a tyre company in what is essentially a Venetian palace, but perhaps tyres were considered special then. In the Congo, for instance, rubber took a lot of people with it.

Inside, on the ground floor, there is a Conran shop selling ludicrous gifts as a joke on the credulous rich, who shop here to be trolled by their own wealth and idiocy: a wooden tool box is on sale for £5,995 (including tools), for some future dystopia in which all the handymen have died, or for Patrick Bateman.