London - I was scrolling through Instagram and trying to shake off my jet lag.
I stopped when I came across the bright white of a menu. I paused for two reasons: I liked the typeface and I didn't know the restaurant existed. And then I saw something else - and the picture gripped me like a pair of delivery forceps. The prices.
To say they were astronomical would be to do a disservice to Sir Patrick Moore. A dish of calamari came in at more than £20 (about R400). And a plate of steamed shrimp - what do you think that cost? Not much south of £40. Now unless the prawns come in a wheelbarrow or the steam is radiated by a unicorn they keep in the kitchen for the purpose, it seems a little pricey.
I have not eaten in this restaurant and these dishes might be peerless. They may be the finest prawns and calamari known to man, for all I know; a matter for the highest superlatives - but for all that, they are just single-ingredient dishes prepared simply. One requires a pan and some oil; the other a pan and some water.
I don't seek to ignore the fact that opening a restaurant is a costly business. Doubly so if it is in London. Rents alone are obscene. A quick look at Adam Hyman's restaurant-industry newsletter, Code, reveals that a recently refurbished bar in Soho cost £67 500 a year to rent, with an £850 000 premium on top. And obviously a restaurateur needs staff, who need to be paid, and stock must be bought, too. All this goes without saying; that is why we accept a mark-up on dishes when we eat out. It's the game.
Equally, if you go to the most bleeding-edge restaurants - places such as L'Enclume in Cumbria - where dishes of superb imagination stream from the kitchen, well, you've got to get your wallet out. You are paying to eat chef Simon Rogan's brain, or his genius at least.
But you can't make the same argument if the extent of the cooking technique involved is the use of a pan and a timer. In this instance, you are paying a premium for location and someone to source good ingredients - which, most of us, connected to that marvellous World Wide Web, could do for ourselves.
The phenomenon of charging scorched-earth prices for food is not just confined to the place in question - and I do not mean to traduce it unfairly. Sometimes it is hard to comprehend the prices restaurateurs attempt to charge for dinner in the middle of cities. Some clearly think that if they add a 1 000 percent mark-up on a green salad it will nudge their establishment into the top tier. It is an unwise form of posing.
People ought to be able to spend what they want on their dinner - go forth and sprinkle fivers! - but there is a difference between spending a lot on a dinner that is clever and inventive, and just spending a lot of money. You don't have to be Oscar Wilde to mull over the difference between “price” and “value”.
The Independent