High steaks

Smith & Wollensky is a restaurant from The Shining: a terrifying American steak joint by the Thames, four months old, with a £10 million refurbishment and no passing trade; it sits opposite the Georgian houses in John Adam Street, like a cow biting into a wedding cake, wondering what went wrong. It seats possibly 400 people; when I went on Sunday evening four tables were taken — one by a pointy-beard convention — and a whole floor was closed but still lit. I love this: the spectral restaurant; the restaurant from your nightmares; the restaurant at the edge of an apocalypse, boasting of butchering — and ageing — its ‘patriotic’ meat on site. I toy with the fantasy that it is empty because the regulars are at the Labour conference, planning to establish a socialist paradise in Berkshire: but I let it go. Maybe the marketing department has died.

Green is the dominant colour here; the green of the Wicked Witch of the West’s nose; and the brown of cow; and much dark gold from expensive lighting; dim globes hover like moons over the surf ’n’ turf abyss.