Three ways to sit, three different evenings
Across the table is the formal arrangement. It suits a business lunch or an interview, and it asks two people who have only just met to hold each other's gaze for two hours, which is a great deal to ask of anyone. Side by side on a banquette is the opposite: companionable and relaxed, with the whole room in front of you both as something to share and remark upon. The corner, two chairs meeting at right angles on either side of a table's edge, lies between the two, close enough to lower your voices and open enough to glance away.
For a first dinner the corner or the banquette almost always wins. The seat does half the work of making conversation easy, and no tasting menu can compensate for a table that works against it.
The banquette, and who takes it
Old London manners give the banquette to the guest. She sits with her back to the wall and a view of the dining room, and the host takes the chair facing her, seeing only her. It is a courtesy that has survived most of its contemporaries because it still makes sense: the guest receives the better seat, and the host the better view.
On a long banquette shared by several tables the arrangement shifts slightly. Sit side by side if the spacing allows, so that neither of you faces the shoulder of a stranger. In a booth, like the red leather ones in the Colony Grill Room at The Beaumont, sit a little way round the curve from each other rather than at opposite ends, and the booth becomes a small room of its own.
Reading a dining room before you arrive
Every restaurant has good tables and poor ones, and the poor ones are remarkably predictable. Steer clear of these:
Where the good tables hide
The good tables are just as predictable: the corners, the far wall, a raised section if the room has one, a table set slightly apart by a pillar or a screen. Most restaurants publish photographs of their dining rooms, and a minute spent studying them before you book tells you which kind of room you are dealing with and where its quiet corners are likely to be.
Placement matters most in the grand rooms. At The Wolseley on Piccadilly, the tables in the middle of the great café are a stage, and those around its edges are where people actually talk. In the dining room of The Ritz, a table beside the windows overlooking Green Park changes the whole feeling of dinner. On Mount Street, a seat at Scott's is judged as much by its position as by anything that arrives from the crustacea bar.
In the smaller rooms around Berkeley Square the geography is simpler but no less decisive, since there may be only two good tables and the regulars know exactly which. Let Cressida know the restaurant, and quite often your companion will already know its geography.
Asking, without turning it into a demand
London's maîtres d' respond to courtesy far better than to pressure, and a folded note has no place in the exchange. When you book, say that the dinner is for two, that it is a special evening, and that you would be grateful for a corner or a banquette if one is free. Booking at a slightly unfashionable hour, seven rather than eight, widens the choice considerably.
Arrive a few minutes early. If the table you are shown is not right, ask quietly whether another might be free. More often than not the answer is yes, and when it is no, a gracious thank you tends to secure a better table on the next visit. Restaurants remember the guests who ask well.
When the table is wrong regardless
Sometimes nothing can be done. The room is full, the only table left is by the door, and the evening has already begun. The graceful response is to change the shape of the night rather than fight the room: order well, keep the dinner to two courses, and take dessert and a last glass somewhere else entirely. The note on the second venue suggests where. A poor table for an hour followed by a perfect corner in a hotel bar makes a far better evening than a long dinner endured.
Who notices the room
Danielle always prefers her back to the wall with the dining room in view, and heads for the table furthest from the door as though by instinct; she suits the guest who wants dinner to feel private in a public room. Samanta notices light before anything else and will ask, charmingly, for a table out of the glare of the overhead lamps. Tiffany, who photographs on film and spots every lamp and cornice worth a second look, is one of the petite companions and enjoys a room with character.
A dinner of this kind fits comfortably inside the dinner date, and Cressida passes the name of the restaurant on in advance so that your companion arrives already knowing its best corner. The booking page shows the rest.
Asked at the table
Beside, or at a corner, as a rule. Sitting at right angles lets you speak quietly and look away naturally, which makes a first conversation far easier than a face to face stare across the linen.
Not in London, as a rule. Ask courteously when you book and again when you arrive; the service charge on the bill looks after the staff, and good manners do the rest.
Offer her the choice when you reach the table. It is the simplest courtesy of the evening, and she will appreciate being asked.
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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