What makes a restaurant a classic?

During this grim, hopefully fairly brief time when it’s impossible to go out to eat, Jay ponders what it is that the really great places have in common

Throughout a childhood sugar-glazed with comfort, I ate in restaurants that had been there seemingly forever. There was a swish café called the Mad Hatter in Harrow, London, where they served a killer croque monsieur. There was a hamburger joint in South Kensington called the Great American Disaster, founded by Peter Morton as a trial run at the Hard Rock, and a trattoria called Giovanni’s, off St Martin’s Lane, where I celebrated my eighth birthday with plates of pasta that smeared my cheeks red with sauce.

I love restaurants. I always have. The best ones are a special kind of theatre