The Batman restaurant that’s totally bats: Park Row reviewed

There is a Batman restaurant in London, or rather there was: Savini at the Criterion on Piccadilly Circus. Savini was a haunted grey Italian restaurant that closed in 2018 and was artistically dependent on salt. It appeared in The Dark Knight, in which Batman, who is Bruce Wayne to everyone but himself (I have a theory that everyone knows Bruce Wayne is Batman, but they pretend not to because he is an orphan), owned this restaurant, in which case he should have fixed the telephone lines. (Savini was plagued by a dispute with BT.)

But because you cannot ever have enough of a strange thing, there is a new Batman restaurant to the north on Brewer Street, Soho, under a calm Edwardian wedding cake which was once Marco Pierre White’s Titanic. It is called Park Row (Gotham City) and it is the silliest restaurant to open in London since the all-cereal restaurant in Brick Lane. This does not mean I do not like it.

Park Row is a vast Art Deco basement: a land without sunlight. Restaurant after restaurant squats here, rests a while, and leaves: this one will too. Perhaps it should be a gym?

The entrance is thrilling: a fake English library — Donald Trump’s idea of an English library with a copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress and a lamp. A bookcase moves aside to let you in; then there is a dark and curling staircase which should be surrounded by dry ice but isn’t.

Inside are a series of rooms devoted to Batman and the villains on whom he is entirely psychologically dependent. If this restaurant had a hashtag it would be #WeAreAllBatman. It is a museum of childhood grief, then, and also a brasserie.