The real reason restaurants are failing? They treat us like cattle

ARE you looking forward to going out for Easter Sunday lunch? Have you skipped breakfast so as not to spoil it? Have you sent a text reconfirming the table you booked two months ago?

Did you give your credit card details when you booked, just in case you die, so your beneficiaries can still be charged? Will you arrive bang on time, as they ‘need the table back’ at 2.30pm? (What do they ‘need’ the table for, exactly? If it’s for another customer, then what on earth are you?)

On arrival at the gastropub you’ve drip-fed your salary into for 20 years, are you still asked to surrender your debit card to be slotted in a little plastic pouch in case you make a run for it before the apple crumble, assembled (cooked is too strong a word) a week before at a factory in Solihull and bunged for too long into a microwave, meaning its filling is molten?

It’s no wonder we have now reached peak casual dining. Several big- name restaurant chains, including Jamie’ s Italian, Prezzo, Byron and Carluccio’s, are tightening their waistbands, having found it almost impossible to make a return on sites that might cost £1.5 million to open (yet they still can’t afford proper tablecloths; strange).

These chains cite rising bills for wages, rates and raw ingredients as reasons for their demise, but we all know better, don’t we?

Going out to eat was once a treat for a special occasion. As a child I only ever ate in a restaurant with my parents once: fish and chips, in Frintonon-Sea. I wasn’t allowed pudding, instead I was told to ‘get a cornet’ on the way back to our beach towel.

So prolific are restaurants now, it’s the home-cooked meal that’s the novelty. Abigail’s Party would never be written today: they would have all met at a Giraffe.

I’ve just had another 1970s flashback. My very first job was on a glossy called Entertaining At Home, but who on earth does that now, when we can all crowd into Pizza Express a nd be handed menus a s large as billboards, bills as big as Brexit?

When I first arrived in London in 1997 you could get a bowl of stir-fried vegetables in Covent Garden for £2. Once a year I’d go to Joe Allen for a raw-spinach salad to gaze at stars such as Judi Dench and Ian McKellen at neighbouring tables.

My flatmate’s father took us both to Rules in Covent Garden to celebrate graduation. It was all starched linen, candles and hushed silence. Eating out was either dirt cheap, or the nectar of the privileged.

NOW, of course, it’s for the masticating middle-class masses. And, oh, how t he scene has changed. Take last week, when I went for dinner at an old haunt, Mildreds in Soho, which has a ‘no bookings policy’. (I’m thinking of bringing in my own ‘ no smashed avocado policy’.)

Despite it being a veggie diner and a wet Tuesday evening, I wasn’t shown to a table or even a stool at the bar, merely given a number, 43, which didn’t bode well. I was forced to ‘stand in ze queue outside’, jostled by pedestrians and circling Ubers, before finally making it under cover, where I had to stand for a further 40 minutes in difficult shoes. When the waiter finally bellowed my number, he looked me up and down. ‘Where’s ze other person?’ ‘He has a lower leg problem, so I texted him to stay in the car. I’m the advance guard.’

‘ Well, we can’t seat you if you’re just one person, you ’ave to go back to ze bar and take anozer number!’

Eventually, we were squished on a table with another couple, before being handed a bill just 30 minutes later: £57 for four drinks and two squash (appropriate!) curries.

And it’s not just the casual troughs that now treat customers like the cattle on the plate. It seems even upmarket fine-dining places, their chefpatrons seduced by MasterChef into believing they are stars, have now lost the atmosphere of quiet subservience.

At a Michelin-starred country pub after an indifferent meal, me and my friend were actually chased by the waiter out into the street.

‘Your girlfriend, she ’as been ignoring me all evening!’ he shouted. ‘ I’m deaf! You’re a wait er, not my husband !’ We wrestled our 20 quid tip back sharpish.

Is it any wonder that we’re losing our appetite for such nonsense?

I think this Sunday lunchtime I’m heading to Marks & Spencer. Oh my God, it’s closed!