Alan Sugar’s Turkish restaurant, Sheesh, is in Chigwell, a land of soft lawns, hard money and fairies who count it. They come out when footballers beep their horns, so to speak. If it sounds disgusting, it isn’t really — Essex is simply Surrey with a makeover and thinner legs. Sheesh is a huge, white, half–timbered Tudor ex-pub, sitting, or rather screaming, in a photogenic lane begging for folk tales starring shouty TV lords. It is one of the most beautiful restaurants I have ever seen, because I have no taste. It is fantastically fake, Camelot crashing into Monaco; I suddenly imagine Sugar on a horse jousting with a broken Amstrad computer. Yander lies the kebab house of my fadda. Etc.
You buzz to enter the car park — whether you can enter on legs I seriously doubt — and if you look rich enough to the white cats manning Sugar’s gold-plated monitors (I am guessing) they let you in.
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