GRACE AND FLAVOUR

Grace Dent winds up decidedly not in the mood at the loveless

When I come to power, Valentine’s Day — and all its padded, truffled, helium balloonaccompanied hoopla — will be verboten. Anyone caught mooching by the Love Hearts and miniature Piper Heidsieck display in Tesco Express will be dispatched to my correctional love-gulag in Hounslow. All restaurateurs caught dividing their entire restaurant into tables for two, or attaching salmon-pink antimacassars to the seating, will feel my wrath. That person in your office whose boyfriend booked Dabbous, Gymkhana or Berners Tavern last October — while you frantically try to fashion a romantic experience out of a window seat in Neasden Nando’s with unlimited macho peas — will be given a doubly Draconian stint.

OK, I am being harsh and unhelpful to the lovers out there who will no doubt be looking for ideas. If you were wooing me in London, I’d want to be taken to Trullo, Brasserie Chavot, Garnier, The Ledbury, Casse-Croûte, Honey & Co or Café Murano. If you wanted to not woo me, yet see how far away I can throw a shoe at you and still hit your forehead, take me somewhere ‘no reservations’ and ask me to stand in the doorway. I was sent to Scarfes Bar at the recently re-enlivened Rosewood hotel in Holborn to check out its capacity for romantic ambience, which seemed to have great potential due to its enormous, twinkly prettiness as one passes from the road, plus the beautifully restored Grade IIlisted Edwardian courtyard through the arch, which has the ‘wow’ factor quite vital to wooing. The bar itself, I am told, had been ‘lovingly evolved into a living canvas by political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe’ and ‘meticulously designed’ by the renowned Martin Brudnizki. It’s a highend hotel bar in Holborn with a roaring fire, velvet armchairs, over 200 single malts, oodles of champagne, rare specialisations in sloe gin, dozens of cocktails and bookcases filled with antique books hand-picked by a Portobello antiques dealer.

But let’s be frank, it’s a bit like Alexander Meerkat’s living room: