The 'chef's table' is off the ick list

If you read my reviews in Country Life, you’ll know that my list of restaurant ‘icks’ — turn-offs guaranteed to set me against a place — is fairly extensive. (Yes, my diamond shoes are pinching.) Any attempt at humour in the lavatories is one, being asked how the food is when I’ve only just taken a bite of something is another.

Until recently, I counted chefs’ tables, where you sit either at or near the pass where the plates come out and are given a running commentary on the proceedings, among them. They’re an introvert’s nightmare that interfere with the real business of dining out, viz demolishing the bread basket.

On one memorably mortifying occasion, the chef of a very serious east London restaurant brought out a belching vat of kimchi, which he then plonked down in front of us to illustrate a lecture on fermentation. At that point, we were still waiting for the wine list.

The whole rigmarole has always reminded me of watching a burlesque show, in that nobody in the room is actually having as much fun as they’re pretending to. However, recently the (chefs’) tables have been turned: denizens of the new breed feel more like a lock-in than a fayn dayning beauty pageant.

The Goring, SW1, home to one of the capital’s most reassuringly traditional dining rooms, has opened up its subterranean kitchen to guests with a counter that seats up to six. Over plentiful glasses of Champagne, we unobtrusively watched Graham Squire and his brigade working their magic before going back upstairs to eat: a genuinely exciting peek behind the curtain that made us even more appreciative of the meal that followed.

Another favourite, Ravinder Bhogal’s jewel-box-like Jikoni in Marylebone, W1, has an eight-seater table by the pass that feels as if you’re dining in the kitchen of a very stylish, generous and relaxed friend: you happily tuck into prawn toast Scotch eggs with banana ketchup and chalkstream trout and bulgar wheat tartare surrounded by labelled tupperware boxes of spices.

In the cellar of what was a Soho boozer in the 18th century, meanwhile, low-lit 12-seater Evelyn’s Table, W1, is going from strength to strength: you’re inches away from the kitchen and the cooking is mightily impressive, but the whole experience somehow remains unfussy, let-your-hair-down fun.

Now, where did that bread basket go?