Mayfair: dress code, and it's worth it
Members' rooms, hotel bars with real bartenders, Shepherd Market hiding in plain sight.
The brief
Mayfair is not for every night, and that is the point. Once a season, put on something better than you had planned and let one square mile do what it has been doing since the 1920s.
Drinks first
Sketch for a martini in the Glade before dinner — a room designed to be photographed and, unusually, still pleasant to sit in. 5 Hertford Street if you know a member, which is half the fun of Mayfair. Bagatelle for the version where dinner becomes something else entirely around eleven.
Shepherd Market
The best-kept part of W1: a small square of pubs and tiny restaurants that the rest of Mayfair forgot to gentrify. Kitty Fisher''s for the brunch. Anything with four tables and a handwritten menu is worth the risk.
Late
Tramp and Maddox for the members'' rooms with long memories. Tape and LIO for the newer, louder end. Mahiki if the group is that group and the night has already gone that way.
Culture
Royal Academy of Arts on Piccadilly — the best exhibition programme in central London, and a courtyard worth the ticket alone.
One rule
Book the table, then the taxi. Mayfair on foot at two in the morning is a long way from anywhere useful.