By An Appalled Member
Last night’s gathering of the Fitzrovia Dining Society was held in what can only be described as a deliberate affront to reason: the disused vault of a former private bank off Charlotte Street. Our host, Maximilian Tempest, announced this choice with the words, “We dine where the money used to sleep.” The location was lit solely by flickering candles balanced on piles of obsolete ledgers, which lent the evening a faint air of Dickensian bookkeeping.
THE FOOD
The menu was themed around “edible finance,” which was as distressing as it sounds. We began with Credit Crunch, a brittle biscuit allegedly infused with saffron but tasting mostly of scorched toast. This was followed by Quantitative Easing, a soup so thin it appeared to be mostly steam. For the main course, we were served Asset Strip,a ribbon of raw courgette draped over a single cube of halloumi, presented on a plate engraved with gilt stock-market figures. Dessert was Hostile Takeover, a violently bitter chocolate mousse topped with candied chilli so aggressive it made Lady Cressida von Hotham remove herself to the vault corridor for “cooling.”
THE ARGUMENTS
No dinner of the Fitzrovia Dining Society is complete without a pitched battle over something abstract. Last night’s quarrel began innocuously enough when Sir Lionel Buxworth remarked that digital art “isn’t real art,” which prompted Ptolemy (our resident abstract painter) to accuse him of “nostalgic bigotry.” This spiralled rapidly: HEDGE FUND, still flushed from his last pop-art sale, declared that all art should be traded like cryptocurrency, to which Sir Lionel responded that he would “rather be waterboarded with tepid Chablis.”
A secondary argument broke out over the correct temperature for champagne service. Lady Cressida insisted it should be “colder than a Swiss banker’s soul,” while Hugo Lynch claimed that over-chilling “kills the nuance.” Maximilian resolved the matter by serving the next bottle at room temperature, thereby uniting both sides in universal condemnation.
THE INCIDENT
Halfway through the main course, an unplanned event enlivened proceedings: the vault door, which had been casually propped open with a crate of vintage port, swung shut with a resonant boom. We were briefly trapped inside, which prompted Lord Peregrine to mutter, “At last, an immersive work I can respect.” We were freed after ten minutes when the caterer, who had been smoking outside, returned and found us shouting about liquidity ratios.
CONCLUSION
The evening, though logistically questionable and nutritionally unsound, was deemed a success in the perverse way that only the Fitzrovia Dining Society can measure success: everyone left irritated, slightly hungry, and absolutely certain they would never return. And yet we do.
The next dinner is rumoured to take place inside a defunct telephone exchange, provided the host can persuade the council to overlook “the asbestos situation.”
