A perfect feast with Roger Allam

J Sheekey is one of Richard Caring’s older, and better, restaurants. Since he has dowsed the suburbs of London in multiple outposts of the Ivy (there is one in Wimbledon, another in Richmond and presumably one pending in Penge), J Sheekey increasingly feels like an island in a sea of pointlessly aspirational green. The rise of the Ivy — the original celebrity brasserie, which is code for an indifferent restaurant full of awful people eating shepherd’s pie — is an inevitable consequence of the rise of celebrity culture. This is anti–culture, and the Ivy is, therefore, an anti–restaurant. So many celebrities, and now so many Ivys to put them in. The age of narcissism has many tentacles.

J Sheekey lives in an alley between the Charing Cross Road and St Martin’s Lane; it is not Soho then, but the more depraved and interesting Charing Cross. It is long, latticed and red, like a painted nail on a finger of necrotic flesh. (A younger, more hopeful and less interesting sister called the J Sheekey Atlantic Bar is open next door. She is less expensive, and blue.)

The real J Sheekey was established in 1890 by Josef Sheekey, who was granted permission to serve oysters, shellfish and game by Lord Salisbury, in exchange for feeding him after the theatre. I like the sound of this Lord Salisbury.

Inside there is a warren of small, crowded rooms with dark panelling and white napery, with black and white photographs of actors making faces on the walls. A place to plot then, particularly if you seek a part in Double Indemnity: the Musical.

Last orders are at midnight, and this is thrilling: even Rules has surrendered to the housing crisis that has moved all restaurant staff to Zone 4 and beyond, and shuts the kitchen at 11.30