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. And it is lovely, a fairyland for all the monetised fairies and their fairy credit cards and fairy needs. There are meandering trees, lit with swaying lanterns, angry statues (warriors and lions and a giant cow, protecting you from over-regulation, maternity pay and tax increases) and a car park that is simply a posh-car trade show. You need a minimum of a Bentley not to look hopeless, and ideally a small spaceship with leather interiors and a bowl for condoms, and Roger Moore, to impress.
It has an interesting back story, which should star Tony Curtis as Sugar and Elizabeth Taylor as Sheesh. Lord Sugar rode to Sheesh in his Rolls Royce Phantom when it was a mere restaurant in Buckhurst Hill. He loved it so much that he bought Ye Olde King’s Head, formerly a hostelry, and stuck his beloved Sheesh in it; if there is such a word, he castle-i-fied his local.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in