Redecorate the restaurant, but you can’t redecorate the clientele

Forty-five Jermyn St lives in the left-hand buttock of Fortnum & Mason (F&M), a shop whose acronym is slightly too close to FGM (female genital mutilation) for this column to be able to relax there for long periods, even though its Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon is excellent. Its name is part of a vogue for naming restaurants after postal addresses, and even street numbers (Richard Caring’s 34 in Mayfair). This is one of the more idiotic, if less gritty, consequences of the London housing crisis: an address — or even a house number — is a brand. The restaurant named after a postcode — and I suggest TW11 0BA in Teddington because there is nothing there — is surely pending. Go for brunch, lick the bricks, adopt a refugee.

45 Jermyn St — ‘old-school glamour meets contemporary London’ — used to be called The Fountain. This restaurant seemed to be composed entirely of flounces and it suited F&M, a peculiarly British palace of dreams that sells heritage relish across the globe.