‘Grand and isolated’: The Wolseley City, reviewed

I am fretting about this restaurant column’s election coverage and then I alight on something superficially grand and lovely, which has been hollowed out and is now useless and barely able to function: a shell. It is the Wolseley 2 – the Wolseley City – and this is perfect.

Few restaurants are important, though I treasure Martha Gellhorn’s description of an operating theatre for the wounded of the Spanish Civil War which was once a restaurant in a grand hotel. But was it any good? Tales of society folk eating are self-serving: real history happens nowhere near them, says the Marxist in me – and PR is, well, PR. But the Wolseley, which opened in a former car showroom by the Ritz in 2003, expressed London’s confidence, though in retrospect this confidence was mostly based on stolen Russian money, paid for with our pride.