The lobsters that ate Piers Morgan

Burger & Lobster is a -restaurant for capitalism in crisis, an existential moan for something simpler and less awful. Either that, or it is restaurant for small boys with jobs, who cannot make up their minds what they want and miss that -restaurant where you could get custard and a beating from a woman who looked like your mum but might conceivably shag you. Because it is simple — you arrive, and you order a burger or a -lobster, or both of them, or none of them. There is nothing to confuse, baffle or upset the small boy with a job living in a crisis of late capitalism, who may also have an Oepidus complex. Burger or Lobster, Oedipus? What’s it to be?

As a gimmick, removing choice from your customers obviously works, because the first branch of Burger & Lobster, in Clarges Street, Mayfair, a haunted street stinking of Graham Greene’s despair and possibly undergarments, had queues outside for three hours sometimes, and so I never went. All these people not in therapy! I tried to call, but they didn’t pick up — well, you know. Now it is a franchise, with a branch coming in Farringdon and one settled in Soho, where the Bistro du Vin used to be. Poor old Bistro du Vin. It didn’t survive having Piers Morgan as its spokesmodel. I can’t say I’m -surprised.

So here we are, the Junior Minister and I — no boasting, T! — in a huge, slightly battered diner in the skeleton of the Bistro du Vin. All the bones of the Bistro du Vin remain, which makes me wonder if this was a rush job, although my favourite bit — the fake books — have gone with Piers Morgan, possibly to the same place.