‘As good as you will find in London’: Noble Rot Mayfair, reviewed

Noble Rot, which is named for a sickness that afflicts grapes, a self-aware name for a restaurant in London, is becoming a chain. Don’t get me wrong. The Rots in Lamb’s Conduit Street and Greek Street (which replaced the Gay Hussar that died in sympathy with the intelligent left) are two of the best restaurants we have. My only complaint is that, like the Plastics in Mean Girls, they know how lovely they are and have their own promotional magazine.

Now they have expanded into Mayfair – but the least horrifying part, which is Shepherd’s Market. This has been ebbing too: the Curzon Mayfair, its local cinema, a listed post-war jewel, is always in danger of closure because its neighbours think they live in suburban Twickenham and want comparable noise levels. You won’t find a shepherd either. I’m now mature enough not to want to pull my top up every time I walk past the Saudi embassy on Curzon Street, but it is still a plutocrat bubble. So Noble Rot is a good idea.

This restaurant is beautiful, which for me means Georgian. I know that almost everyone who had sex in London in the 18th century had syphilis, and many lost their noses, but the Georgian townhouse is the British gift to architecture, no matter what happened in it. Noble Rot has a corner spot, and it is painted blackish with latticed windows. Kitty Fisher’s, the restaurant named for a courtesan who ate a £1,000 note on a piece of bread, is nearby (accountants – look away). I think Kitty would be pleased that people can pay to enter her still.

There are two rooms, one black, one white – like a floor, or a cat.