Food: Eat me! I’m French!

I am very fond of the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair, because I once saw Mr and Mrs Bibi Netanyahu breakfasting there, and they had a moody teenage son who skulked, and Bibi was powerless over the skulking. It is not brown like the Savoy and, unlike the Dorchester, it has never mistaken me for a prostitute. This is one of the drawbacks of being a restaurant critic. You are constantly mistaken for a prostitute, although I suppose it is better than being a gossip columnist, where you are sometimes mistaken for a fan. Bill Clinton thought I was a fan, probably because I dropped my notebook and bent down to pick it up.

And so to Hélène Darroze at the Connaught, to celebrate my impending marriage, and to admire the Christmas tree. I may not care for the theology, but I adore the tree. It is Christmas, beloved readers, and you need a proper restaurant to drool on, not the Hamas Chicken Shack, which my friend Patrick wants me to review. It is Friday night and the lobby is full of the International Rich, who are very good-looking and wear a lot of cashmere. I sneak down to see Darroze before service; she is tiny and round, all in white like a bird. She says her favourite food is a boiled egg, turns back to haute cuisine.

First, it is grand. It is not as grand as Alain Ducasse in Monte Carlo, but they had 13 types of bread roll in a room designed by Charles Garnier. It is wood panelled and softly lit, to disguise the physical symptoms of wealth in older humans — big jowls on men, surgical scars on women.

The menu is complicated, expensive and long.