I hadn’t realised a word less sexy than dogwood existed, but it turns out there’s its Latin equivalent Cornus, which to me sounds like a cream for fungal infections. However inconceivably, Cornus also happens to be the name chosen for a new, outlandishly high-end restaurant from David O’Connor and Joe Mercer Nairne, the pair behind Chelsea’s rightly celebrated Medlar (Latin, too; must be their thing). Baffling decision, that.
It’s not the only one. I wish the urban myth about Greece’s half-built buildings were true — that the Greeks purposefully leave them unfinished as a tax ruse — because then I could jauntily explain away the interiors. I’d pin it on benevolent Greek brickies thinking they were doing the landlord a right old favour by leaving the industrial air-con unit on full display above a sedate, white-tableclothed room of marble counters and mustard-coloured cushions.
I’d understand why the wood on the walls doesn’t match the chairs, or why some sections get art and the rest nothing. The feeling is incompleteness. Fine, fine, I’m not a designer.
But I do know that certain restaurants — especially ones in Belgravia, with £40 starters and £500 wines — are meant to be pristine. They are meant to revel in their own opulence, not have menus dashed off on printer paper with Instagram’s web logo pasted on. I thought I remembered ours from a GCSE production of Dealer’s Choice.
“Is this its soft launch?” asked Twiggy. “No,” I said. �.