Civilisation in a sausage: River Restaurant at the Savoy reviewed

When the Tory party set itself on fire last week a restaurateur told me: ‘Don’t worry, Tanya, we’ll still be here when it’s over.’ She was wrapping a scotch egg as she said it, and it’s very true. There is a soothing continuity to restaurants: no matter what fresh hell, people need to eat. I will know civilisation has ended when I can’t get a sausage at the Savoy hotel.

People always say that the Savoy has the only slip-road in Britain on which people drive on the right. That is the least interesting thing about it.

It is, for instance, the only London hotel built as a dosshouse for people who like light opera (now musical theatre). The Savoy Theatre is still showing Pretty Woman, a musical that lies about the emotional state of sex workers in song. It is also the only London hotel built on the site of a medieval palace that was burnt during the Peasants’ Revolt – London’s policing problems aren’t new – and therefore the only London hotel whose predecessor appears in the historical romance novel Katherine by Anya Seton, which lies about how medieval aristocrats don’t smell. For all these reasons I love the Savoy. The interior is by Collinson & Locke, who designed the sets for D’Oyly Carte productions, so among other things it looks like a theatre that forgot, or couldn’t afford, to dismantle its sets. If you come here, you are essentially entering The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance and Utopia, Limited.

I am here for breakfast at the River Restaurant. The Savoy operates a rolling caravan of restaurants, many of which involve Gordon Ramsay, who was last spotted jumping out of a helicopter and into the sea for some reason.