Dinner, at a table you booked in your own name
One commissionThe four hour dinner at £900 is the commission made most often here, and the reason is arithmetic as much as appetite: four separate hours would come to considerably more, and a dinner that has to finish is not a dinner. Two hours at £500 covers a proper supper with nothing after it. Four covers a drink first, every course, and the hour that follows without anyone reaching for a coat.
She meets you at the restaurant, or comes to your hotel and walks down with you. Say which when you write, because the two evenings start quite differently. Mayfair and Kensington hold more of these tables than anywhere else on the list, and every woman on The Hang names the room she would choose on her own page.
Suited to dinner dates
Who reserves the table
You do, in your own name, exactly as you would for anybody else. This house does not telephone restaurants on a guest's behalf and claims no arrangement with any of them, partly because a reservation in your name is simply cleaner and partly because no London dining room wants a third party on the line. What you will get, if you ask, is an opinion: say what sort of evening you have in mind and Tamsin will name two or three rooms and tell you which is the easiest to get into that week.
How the four hours usually fall
A drink somewhere small at seven, a table at eight, and the last hour somewhere lower and quieter. The other common shape inverts it: meet at ten, eat late, and let the kitchen do its best work in an emptying room. Nothing about the figure moves between those two versions.
If the evening runs past its fourth hour, ask her at the table and she will say honestly whether the night allows it. Extra hours go on at the ladder rate and are agreed before they start, never afterwards.
Dressing for the room you have chosen
Tell Tamsin where the table is and she dresses to it. A panelled dining room off St James's and a loud basement behind Berkeley Square ask for different things, and she would much rather be told than guess. In practice this house dresses down rather than up: dark, well cut, one good thing, and nothing that makes a room look round. If you are going on somewhere afterwards with a door worth worrying about, mention that as well.
What the fee does and does not cover
Her four hours, her company through all of them, and her journey anywhere inside the two central zones. It does not cover the evening's own costs. The table, the wine and the car home fall to you as host, in the ordinary way of having invited somebody out, and are nothing to do with the figure agreed with Tamsin. The fee itself goes to her as she arrives and is not mentioned again for the rest of the night.
Five who are worth a long dinner
Luna has never wanted a quick dinner in her life and says so. Danielle is at her best over three hours or more and orders fish almost every time. Thea asks for an early table and is in no danger of being finished by ten. Samanta prefers a loud room on the grounds that nobody in one can hear anybody else. Karolina eats lightly, talks little and leaves a great deal of space in an evening, which suits some guests exactly. Several of them appear again under late twenties.
Which districts suit a long table
Mayfair has the small, dark rooms in the mews off Berkeley Square, which are at their best in the fourth hour rather than the first. Kensington has Church Street, where the dealers shut at six and the restaurants take over, and it suits a guest who would rather talk than be looked at. Belgravia is for an upstairs room with eight tables in it and no music worth mentioning. Marylebone is the answer when dinner follows a recital on Wigmore Street and has to start at nine. From a hotel on Park Lane, the walk to the first two is short enough to count as part of the evening.
Arranging it
Give the date, the hour the table is held for, the length you want and where you are staying. An afternoon of notice is usually enough for the woman; the restaurant is your own affair and often wants longer. Confirmation comes back with her name, her arrival time and the figure, and the booking page has the rest of the sequence.
Two pages of the long view on this commission
Questions on this commission
At the hotel if the table is a short walk away, because the first twenty minutes go more easily with nobody holding menus. At the restaurant if you are coming straight from somewhere else. Tell Tamsin which, and give the name the reservation is under so that she can ask for the table without saying anything further.
Tell Tamsin as soon as the restaurant tells you. Three hours or more of notice moves the evening with nothing owed, and if you find another table the same night she simply goes there instead of the first.
For a supper, yes: one course each, a glass and the walk back. If there are starters, a pudding and a conversation worth finishing, four hours at £900 is the honest answer.