Review The Wolseley

BY LANA WOOLF

eighties now, recalls how it before it was a car show room, it used to be a branch of Barclay’s. This dispels some of the mystery surrounding the architecture of the place which has often reminded me of a chapel; in fact it was a kind of cathedral to our contemporary god, money.

I suspect the place is happier as a temple to food. We move to a side table, passing himself. Freud apparently always took the same table – not so far from the one where Rudd is sitting today. On the day of his death, Jeremy draped it in black crepe.

We order oysters, and soon twelve Colchester natives come to us on an icy platter. They slip down perfectly with lemon and tabasco sauce. I could live a long time and never get over the glory of a Wolseley plate of oysters; my companion, in his ninth decade, confirms that it is indeed a reason to keep going.

The Wolseley continues to produce food of high quality without slipping into pretentiousness. For the mains, my companion plumps with a kind of cunning for the Kedigree with Poached Eggs. When it arrives, he pronounces it delicious in a voice which intends to live forever if only to have more experiences like this. I, meanwhile, opt for Roast Corn-Fed Half Chicken morels and Madeira sauce. half of Who’s Who as we go, and look at the menus. As we’re doing so, Jeremy comes over looking immaculate and cheerful and tells us the good news that business is back. It’s only later I realise he must also have been dealing with considerable shareholder stress behind the scenes.

This was a triumph. At the time, it was wonderful to think how, after all the Wolseley team had been through, it had decisively come out the other side. Now that lunch feels disturbingly like an elegy to a time and place which like everything else, must pass into history one day.

Entombed in our homes no longer, we walked out, nodding cheerily at the Earl Spencer on our way. Caught up in his own happiness, he waved back. It only occurred to me later that the decisionmakers at the Minor hotel chain would do well to realise that but for Jeremy King none of those congregated there on that day would have been there at all. It’s worth adding that his staff feel the same.

We select the oysters and I recall the portrait by Lucian Freud of Jeremy