Half restaurant, half autobiography, Tom Aikens’ theatrical new joint is like delicious talking therapy
When people said Tom Aikens’ new restaurant was pretentious, or even “the most pretentious restaurant in Britain”, I didn’t view this as necessarily a bad thing. Pretentious takes many shapes in the eye of the annoyed. It can mean stiff, formal and “reet up itself” to the point of joylessness. That, I’m not a fan of. Life is far too short.
Pretentious, can, however, also mean eccentric, incomprehensible, wilfully weird and wholly unique. I like this type of purposeful bewilderment much more; it makes life feel much longer and fuller. I could watch people ranting about why Tracey Emin’s bed is not art all day long; or why Bang Bang It’s Reeves And Mortimer isn’t funny. When my glorious reign begins, the national anthem will be Kate Bush’s 26-minute conceptual piece The Ninth Wave, in which she screams her way through a sea rescue featuring helicopters and an Irish jig.
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