Bellamy's, Bruton Place

Chastened by experiences farther afield, Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar have been unable for some weeks to leave the comfort zone of Mayfair. This indigenous complacency finds perfect expression at Bellamy’s in Bruton Place...

MrO: I love Bellamy’s.
MrV: For once I agree with you. It has always had a good atmosphere.
MrO: It’s all down to Gavin Rankin.
MrV: Fatty. Remember when he used to be rake thin and never gave anything away? Now he’s porked up, as they say in Peckham, and you can barely get through the door without him thrusting a glass of something complimentary into your hand. I’ve often noticed that fat people are far more generous than thin people. I am a good example of that phenomenon.
MrO: You are indeed fat but hardly generous in your assessment of others.
MrV: If I’m chucking money around for the enjoyment of others I’m entitled to offer the odd trenchant view. Anyway, we were talking about Gavin Rankin.
MrO: Yes, he’s a proper restaurateur...
MrV: ..unlike all these new chef-patrons who think they know restaurants but in fact are rubbish outside the kitchen. Gavin’s purely front of house. Funny how he ended up back in these premises after all those years running Mark Birley’s empire.
MrV: He must have had happy times here, though, when it was Caviar Kaspia. Do you know it was more than 20 years ago we started going there. That really was one of my favourite restaurants of all time. Caviar in baked potatoes and pints and pints of vodka – marvellous.
MrO: You don’t seem to have a bad word to say.
MrV: Well it wasn’t always like that. Do you remember the time I brought that girl in to seduce her over caviar and vodka and Rankin came up and said: “Another bird? What’s that, the third different one this week?” I was extremely cross about that.
MrO: It was true.
MrV: Hardly the point. I had to fork out for an extra carafe of vodka to mollify her sufficiently for my intentions.
MrO: He was very good about that time you fell off the chair.
MrV: I didn’t fall off it. The chair fell over backwards and took me with it.
MrO: Whereupon you found yourself lying on your back, looking up the skirts of the ladies on the table behind us, and started waving your credit card around and shouting “I’ll pay, I’ll pay for everything.”
MrV: It was a very long time ago, a time best forgotten in my view. And anyway, that was when it was Caviar Kaspia but for the last five years it has been Bellamy’s, an entirely different proposition.
MrO: He seemed to catch the zeitgeist just about right with this place, didn’t he?
MrV: What, attracting all those hedge fund managers? Don’t see too many of them around now. Silly boys, paying too much for everything.
MrO: Yes but his business didn’t seem to tail off after they all went bust. I was looking around and the place is full of well-dressed, respectable, attractive, interesting looking people.
MrV: Unlike so many restaurants in this area, which allow in all sorts of spivs and crooks and pimps.
MrO: The service here is very good and attentive.
MrV: But not intrusive. I can’t bear it when waiting staff crawl all over one, oozing unction and panting for a fat tip.
MrO: And the food is pretty simple, which is a blessed relief after some of the places we go to. And the wine list is very good indeed.
MrV: Exclusively, or almost exclusively, French. Very few places have the confidence to do that anymore, but it’s what I like best.
MrO: It is a very under-rated combination – simple food and fine wine. Wealthy business people, in particular, seem always to have loved that concept. In some ways Bellamy’s is the natural successor to the old Savoy Grill.
MrV: Except that it’s about a tenth of the size. Spare us your silly theories, although I agree that simple food and fine wine go well, and attract a better sort of customer. I hate restaurants where everyone’s eating poncey experimental food and drinking bottled water or New World wine. That claret, by the way, went well with my steak and chips.
MrO: I love the ’98 Conseillante.
MrV: So you should at £285 per bottle. Mind you, that’s a mark up of only about 130 per cent – not too bad, really.
MrO: Perhaps we should have tried that Montrose 2001 that Gavin said was drinking beautifully and considerably cheaper.
MrV: He might have mentioned that before we started on the more expensive one.

Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar ate three starters and one main course and one pudding, accompanied by two glasses of Chablis, one bottle of fine claret, two glasses of a lesser claret, one bottle of water and two cups of coffee (plus complimentary glasses of, respectively, champagne and Chablis, courtesy of Mr Rankin) at a total cost of approximately £460.

Bellamy’s
18/18a Bruton Place
(off Berkeley Square)
Mayfair
London W1J 6LY
Tel: +44 (0) 207 491 2727

info@bellamysrestaurant.co.uk

www.bellamysrestaurant.co.uk