I cannot review the Gay Hussar every time the Labour party behaves like a self-harming teenager (‘I don’t want to be elected, anyway!’) so I went to Portland instead.
Portland is a spectral restaurant on Great Portland Street; it is a good place to feel numb. The name is neutral, bespeaking nothing beyond a vague acknowledgement of its surroundings, which is Fitzrovia and its traffic pollution; Portland, on the whole, is so understated the critic struggles to get a grip on its mysteries, as if sliding down a glacier towards ducks. Even its Twitter presence is ambiguous: when I attempted to follow it, I mistakenly followed the loveless bastard whose job is to tweet the weather in Portland, Oregon (‘Cloudy’) — but that is my punishment for seeking fact without opinion on Twitter, and I will bear it.
So a restaurant in Fitzrovia, palely loitering; for some reason I think of John Keats playing busboy.
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