So-called ‘high energy dining’ is proliferating in the face of wider economic doom and gloom
Miro, a new opening in London’s Mayfair, is not a restaurant for the faint-hearted, nor the poor. You descend in a lift to an opulent but dimly lit subterranean space. The music is loud, and frequently played by a live DJ. The menu is designed to provoke laughter, outrage, and outrageous bills. It grabbed headlines for a caviar chest, served with sparklers and priced at £3,000, but other items are similarly luxurious. A waiter will serve you a caviar ‘bump’, spooned on to the indentation between your thumb and forefinger and designed to be slurped down in one.
In short, Miro has more in common with a nightclub than it does with your neighbourhood Italian. It is not somewhere to take your mother-in-law for her birthday, perhaps unless your mother-in-law is Rihanna. Miro is an extreme example, but it is far from the only restaurant prioritising luxury and fun over the food. The spiralling cost of living is putting many venues in peril. Many are closing; others are offering value options to help diners who are feeling the pinch. But a clutch of others, mostly at the top end, are going in the opposite direction. Why be an expensive restaurant when you can be a cheap club? A ‘clubstaurant’, as Miro has it.
At the top end of Berkeley Square, in what used to be an enormous Porsche dealership, Richard Caring’s latest edifice, Bacchanalia, is taking shape. It, too, will have DJs, as well as 2,000-year-old antiques, possibly to provide company for its owner.
The website promises that ‘this is more than a mere restaurant. It is a place to feel immersed. From the moment you step through the door, every sense is called upon, every detail is artfully curated.’ And there you were, thinking it was somewhere to have your tea. As a publicity stunt, the restaurant even claimed to be hiring a ‘grape feeder’ who would need to have ‘gorgeous hands’. It is testament to Caring’s reputation that this seemed credible enough for several newspapers to run it as fact. After all, if a man is capable of naming a restaurant Sexy Fish with a straight face, what else might he do?