Reviewing the Delaunay is like reviewing Nelson Mandela. You cannot be rude. This restaurant, a new sister for the Wolseley, is as Teflon-coated as David Cameron’s head. And it is very similar to the Wolseley, which was also slobberingly reviewed because people think of it as foreign, but good foreign, which means pastries, not immigrants, and the German army, not the French. ‘Alert diners might well catch a glimpse of, among others, the authors Harold Pinter and Lady Antonia Fraser,’ wrote the New York Times chillingly, as if that were a good thing. Its ceilings are lower, its draft broader but the lamps and the tablecloths, the cakes and the cutlery are all the same as the Wolseley. It manages the amazing feat of impersonating continental café chic in a country where people do not speak to each other.
It lives on the Edwardian crescent of the Aldwych, near enough to smell the river. Like all clever restaurants it feels established, as if it had witnessed the Anschluss and spent the day spraying cream at things. It is not snotty, despite the doormen in silly hats performing signs at taxis; there will be no repeat of my visit to Wiltons, where I crawled on my hands and knees to retrieve some jewellery through sheer class anxiety. The menu is too large and foreign, the people too normal looking. But normal people used to go to the Wolseley, and now it is all actors cackling about weight loss and Beckett. I see no stars from my banquette, although the waiter says the Beckhams came last week, presumably to binge on ice cubes. I do see lots of people who look like famous people — a Joanna Lumley, a Theresa May, an Una Stubbs.
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