‘This could be the most raucous ride in the City’

Enter into the vortex of the City of London’s Bob Bob Ricard and even before you hit the famous ‘Press for Champagne’ button or throw back the first offerings on the menu – vodka shots at minus 18C – you might find yourself asking: what time is it and where is everyone? Everywhere there are mirrors and lights and isotropic vistas. There may be windows, but they’re surely tinted and if there are views somewhere they are of the undersides of the steel bracings that help to prop up the building we’re in – the 737ft-tall Leadenhall Building, which opened in 2014 and is known as The Cheesegrater. The time of day vanishes, as does the season. With no weather, no setting or rising sun, only common sense might compel us to leave.

The Champagne button pressed, a few sips in and my booth (you needn’t be envious, everyone gets a booth here) almost envelops and swallows me up. We’re on a sort of time-warping train ride in here.

I’m told it’s actually a boat, a superyacht – the design inspiration, that is – but I wouldn’t know. It’s a vessel for sure, it could be a spaceship. And along we hurtle, through lunch, and please do the same but for God’s sake stick to the menu. Do not do magic mushrooms in this place because you’ll be in all sorts of trouble. Unless you want to wake up in a kaleidoscope tube with a tummy full of chicken Kyiv.

The latter having been recently renamed. After all, one of the owners, the charming Leonid Shutov, nicknamed Bob (as he put up two-thirds of the money he gets two-thirds of the name on the door, and his partner, Richard Howarth, the rest), is Russian-born.

Shutov has condemned the Russian war on Ukraine as a ‘terrible wrong’ and has been raising funds for Unicef. And I rather feel for him. He launched BBR Soho during the 2008 financial crisis, then this one just before Covid hit. Now he’s fully open and his Russian heritageand cuisine-inspired restaurant has, er, reputational issues.

So let me reassure you. The Kyiv is historically good, honestly the finest version that has passed my lips. Crisp breadcrumbs, soft flesh of chicken, a fresh and rich garlic filling and in a little pool of garlic and butter. I had it with exemplary spinach and fries. It followed a dainty and impeccable starter of salmon tartare – light and delicate fish, with a just-salty smattering of salmon roe and the crunch of thin crouton. My sister Henrietta had an equally well-crafted steak tartare to begin, then an unusual but good thing called lobster pelmeni; which were like nipples of Venus bobbing about in a sea of langoustine bisque. All rather weird and wonderful and apt for our journey across the weatherless space-time continuum.

Pudding was a slice of tarte tatin; perfect in shape and form but without the hinterland of a little bespoke tart that one might get… more shop-bought and sliced than an oven-blasted, romantic and rustic mix of apple, sugar and pastry.

It was an impeccable lunch but what could be joyful discombobulation was weirder as there were very few other passengers on the ship that day. And on lots of other days I hear. Filled to the brim and this could be the most raucous ride in the City. Which, with a mind-boggling cellar of very special wines, private rooms and those booths, is clearly Bob and Ricard’s passionate, heavily invested, eye-wateringly expensive ambition.

They were like nipples of Venus bobbing about in a sea of langoustine bisque