The dinner date: four hours, one table in W1, and conversation worth the reservation

The quiet table first. Bellamy's on Bruton Place, a few steps from the square, keeps white linen, long-serving waiters and a room in which nobody raises a voice. Umu, a few doors along behind its sliding door, serves a Kyoto menu in small, exact courses. Both suit a first dinner, when the conversation matters more than the room.

Then the celebrated table. Hélène Darroze at The Connaught, for an anniversary or a promotion; Hide on Piccadilly, across from Green Park, with its oak staircase and a wine list heavy enough to need a chair of its own. These are rooms to dress for, and your companion will.

Last, the lively table. Novikov on Berkeley Street, Hakkasan on Bruton Street and Amazónico on Berkeley Square itself are loud in the best sense, full until late and forgiving of a dinner that turns into a party.

The streets around the square keep their own rhythm after dark. Members drift towards Annabel's at number 46 from about nine, the mews behind Bruton Street fill with drivers reading their phones, and the restaurants turn their second sittings. A dinner date here has the advantage of a short walk in every direction, so a table at eight can end with a drink somewhere else by half past ten without anyone calling a car.

The After Dark Notes map dining in Annabel's district street by street, and set out the dinner date done at VIP level for guests planning something more ambitious.

The table is yours: reserved in your name, hosted by you and settled by you, as it would be for any guest. Her fee pays for four hours of her time and conversation; nothing else is implied, ever. If you have not yet booked anywhere, say so. Your companion will often propose a room near your hotel, and Cressida passes the idea on with a line explaining why.

Tell Cressida what the evening needs: the restaurant and the hour, the dress the room expects, whether a colleague may stop by the table, a subject that should not come up. She briefs your companion before the car leaves, so nothing has to be explained over the first glass.

Name the room and she dresses to it. A three star dining room gets something long and dark with very little jewellery; Novikov on a Saturday gets rather more shine; a steak at The Guinea Grill gets a good coat and flat shoes for the walk back through the mews. If a room still expects gentlemen in a jacket, she will mention it, gently, before you leave the hotel.

Bianka cooks seriously and reads a menu for what the kitchen chose to leave out; give her a few hours' notice and she will have studied it. Liana would begin in Mount Street Gardens with a book and end at Hélène Darroze. Samanta prefers a dinner fixed by four in the afternoon and has views on the lighting of every dining room in W1. Milena will ask for the centre table at Novikov, and Nancy will coax you onto a counter stool at Roka and hand the ordering to the chef. Bianka, Milena and Nancy are among the curvaceous companions.

Ask before the time runs out. If she is free, Cressida adds the time in the thread, and if the dinner looks likely to become a night, she quotes the overnight instead, so that nothing is counted twice. Every length, with its figure, is printed on the rates page.