Why leave before pudding
The second venue is an old trick of the London evening. Dinner reaches its natural summit with the main course; after that, a room designed for eating starts to feel like one. Leaving deliberately, before the pudding menu arrives, turns the last hour into a fresh scene. The walk between rooms clears the head, the chairs at the next place are deeper, and a conversation that might have drifted over coffee finds its second wind.
It suits especially the guest whose dinner was in a lively room. The noise that made the first two hours fun is less welcome at eleven, and a hotel lounge or a small bar gives the evening the soft landing it deserves.
The walk in between
Mayfair is made for this manoeuvre. From the restaurants around Berkeley Square to Carlos Place is five minutes on foot; from Mount Street to Park Lane, five more. Walk if the night is dry; the distances are made for it. In the rain, the doorman of almost any hotel will find a taxi for a two minute ride, and nobody minds how short the fare is.
The walk itself is part of the pleasure. Mayfair after ten is quiet in a way that surprises visitors, the shop windows lit and empty, the squares dark beneath their trees, and ten minutes on foot between two rooms often produces the most candid conversation of the evening.
Leaving the first table gracefully
The exit is where a second venue succeeds or fails. Tell the waiter early, ideally when you order, that you will skip dessert tonight; the kitchen can plan, and nobody arrives at your elbow with a pudding menu at the wrong moment. Have the bill brought as the main course is cleared, or better still arranged in advance so that nothing needs signing at the table at all.
Coats should be ready when you stand. A word to the cloakroom as the plates go, and the whole departure takes a minute rather than ten. Thank the staff warmly on the way out; restaurants in Mayfair remember the guests who leave well as clearly as those who arrive well, and a good exit makes the next reservation easier.
Rooms made for the last hour
Hotel bars and lounges are the natural second venue: they serve late, seat comfortably and welcome guests who are not staying. A handful in W1 stand out.
A short vocabulary of the digestif
A digestif is meant to be sipped across half an hour rather than finished in five minutes. Order one each and let the conversation set the pace.
Pudding, carried somewhere else
The sweet course travels better than you might expect. A soufflé usually has to be ordered at the start of a meal, which is one more argument for taking pudding elsewhere; a hotel lounge will offer something simpler but no less pleasant, and sharing a single plate with two spoons is a small ceremony of its own. Chocolate with a glass of tawny, a lemon tart with Sauternes, cheese with port: these are pairings the last hour of an evening was invented for.
Most hotel lounges will send out petits fours, a plate of cheese or a simple pudding until late, though menus and hours vary and are best checked on the night. None of the rooms named here has any arrangement with the Society; they appear as addresses only.
Last-glass company
Jasmin treats a cocktail bar as a laboratory, happy to talk you through the bitters before simply enjoying the drink, and the Connaught Bar is her obvious room in Mayfair. Tina loves a bartender who experiments and would choose a second venue with good music. Jasmin and Tina are both petite, and each has a gift for making the final hour the best of the night.
Nora prefers champagne to anything distilled and turns a final glass into a small celebration. For a longer night that ends in a club rather than a lounge, see nights out in clubland; for one that ends upstairs with friends, the suite gathering. Cressida arranges the second venue as easily as the first through booking.
Asked at the table
Not at all, provided it is planned. Mention it when you order, and on a busy night many restaurants are glad to have the table back early.
Most of them do, subject to space and a smart dress code. A busy night may mean a short wait, which a second venue absorbs far better than a first.
About an hour is the natural length: one digestif each, perhaps a shared pudding, and then a walk or a car back to your hotel.
Written by Cressida, Membership secretary at Berkeley Square Society. To turn any of this into an evening, write to the desk.
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