The unabridged dinner
The busier London restaurants are built to turn their tables, and a dinner there is often over before it has properly begun. The three hour dinner declines that arithmetic. It is the society format, the long table of the country house and the club dining room carried into a restaurant: every course given room of its own, and conversation treated as the main dish rather than a garnish.
Three hours only sounds long until you begin. The tasting menus of the great rooms on Park Lane and around Carlos Place commonly fill that much time by themselves, and a classic à la carte dinner reaches it quite naturally once an aperitif, cheese and coffee are allowed their proper place.
Telling the kitchen you are in no hurry
The most useful sentence of the evening is said to the waiter before anything is ordered: we are in no hurry tonight. A good restaurant slows the kitchen accordingly, leaves longer pauses between courses and never lifts a plate while someone is mid sentence. If the pace still feels brisk after the starters, say so again, lightly. Kitchens would far rather know.
Book a table rather than a sitting. Some restaurants reclaim their early tables at a fixed hour, so ask when you reserve if the table can be held for you all night, and choose an hour that allows it.
The first half hour: a glass and the menu
Nothing should be ordered in the first ten minutes except a drink. A glass of champagne, a fino sherry or a dry vermouth gives both of you time to settle, to take in the room and to read the menu together. Reading it together is itself a conversation: what appeals, what neither of you has ever tried, what the kitchen appears proudest of. By the time you order, the evening is already well under way, and nobody has had to reach for a subject.
Wine deserves a plan over three hours, too. A glass each with the starters, a bottle chosen for the main course, and something small and sweet or fortified with the cheese keeps the evening clear headed and the choices interesting. Ask the sommelier to pour slowly and to leave the bottle off the table; a glass refilled every five minutes is the fastest way to shorten a long dinner. Water, still and sparkling, should arrive without being asked for, and at a good table it does.
A course for each kind of talk
Different courses suit different conversations, and an evening moves more easily when it follows them. None of this is a script, only an observation from a great many tables.
Silence, and what to do with it
Any three hour dinner contains silences, and the mistake is to treat them as failures. A pause while a new course is set down, or while a wine is poured and tasted, is part of the rhythm of a good table. Remark on the food, look around the room, let the moment breathe. The companions the Society introduces are entirely at ease with a quiet minute, and a guest who is too will find the evening far more restful than one spent filling every gap.
Old British menus kept a savoury course for exactly this reason, something small and salty such as a Welsh rarebit or anchovies on toast, served between the pudding and the port to reset the palate and the talk together. A few London kitchens still offer one, and it is always worth asking.
Three hours or four
Three hours of your companion's time is £1,500, and it fits a dinner exactly: meet at the restaurant, dine without hurry, then part at the door or walk to your hotel together. Add an hour and the evening becomes a dinner date, £1,800 for four hours with a drink beforehand and a nightcap afterwards, and many guests consider that extra hour the best value on the rates page. Should the dinner threaten to stretch beyond midnight, mention it in your first message; Cressida will then propose the length that truly fits rather than the one that nearly does.
For the seasonal version of the long dinner, game at the grand tables sets out what the kitchens serve between August and February.
Conversationalists for the long table
Liana reads French novels in translation, argues gently about which translators deserve trust, and comes into her own after a noisy day, when the dinner is a quiet one. Sonya asks better questions than almost anyone and listens properly to the answers, which is the rarest talent at any table; she is one of the companions in her thirties. Both carry a calm that makes three hours pass like one.
Danielle completes the trio: classic cinema and poetry are her subjects, and she is perfectly content to let a silence sit until the next course arrives. Name the restaurant through booking, and Cressida arranges the rest.
Asked at the table
Not if the pace is right. With an aperitif, two or three courses, cheese and coffee, three hours passes easily, and the time removes any pressure to hurry.
À la carte keeps the pace in your hands; a tasting menu hands it to the kitchen in exchange for theatre. For a first long dinner, à la carte with a word about taking your time is usually the wiser choice.
Raise it when you book and ask whether the table is held for the night. If it is not, move to the bar or another room for cheese and coffee, and the evening simply changes scene.
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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