‘If your idea of sex appeal is a hard-faced, Versace-clad rinse, then this is the place for you’
I used to work in Knightsbridge. Harrods was my corner shop, simply because, if you wanted a pint of milk or a packet of Nurofen, it was the only place round there you could buy them. I tried to eat my way round its restaurants, but got into a mindset where four-grand handbags started to seem normal and ran screaming for the no 9 bus.
From my advertising agency’s windows, I watched the construction of horrible One Hyde Park (old ad joke: why don’t creatives stare out of the window in the morning? Because then they’d have nothing to do in the afternoon). A one-bed flat in this eyesore: £9m. One of the area’s fine, sane restaurants, the excellent Racine, has just closed, with chef Henry Harris citing “a shifting demographic in the area”, which sounds like tact for “I don’t sell gold-plated sushi, so that’s that.”
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