The first double-header in the history of restaurant reviewing (his version appeared in last week's Sunday Times) is drawing to a close, and the doyen sitting opposite me is trying to settle our bill.
"Oh God, I don't know my fucking pin number," he bellows at a rebuke from the hand-held terminal, reaching for his tape recorder. "I don't know my pin," he confides to the machine. "I'm such a fucking idiot." Some, in truth, would agree with that trenchant self-analysis, but I am very fond of the old boy, and will brook no insolence towards Michael Winner.
It wasn't always so. Once, relations were strained over whether Michael spent the last years of his mother's life suing "Mumsy" for gambling losses in Monte Carlo ("£7m, dear - and that was when £7m meant something"), or whether Mumsy was suing Michael. Tensions mounted until he quoted a remark of mine (I had described the very low sperm count with which he credited his childlessness as "God's idea of damage limitation") with such good humour that the towel had to come in. I had thrown everything in the arsenal at Michael Winner, and hadn't wobbled him in the slightest. There was nothing for it but to make up.
Ten years and many meals later, it is a Winner much diminished in size, but not at all in volume and hilarity, who faces me in Hereford Road, a new restaurant close to his bijou Holland Park residence, recounting the details of the virulent infection he picked up from an oyster last Christmas on Barbados that so very nearly sent him to join Mumsy. Nineteen operations under general anaesthetic over three months saved his leg and his life, and now here he is, giving a masterclass in restaurant criticism.
"It's light and bright and airy," says Michael, accurately, about a simple, elegant room - white walls, red banquettes, dark wood floorboards, large skylight - that needs time to acquire a little soul. He picks up his Dictaphone (and no, I'm not going to do the usual gag; it's not seemly in a Winnerial context). "It's light and bright," he tells the machine, "and airy.
"There are only eight people here," he records, "and one of those is Jeremy Paxman. Ah, that's intelligent. The girl [that's the waitress, for all you PC Gone Mad Brigadiers] is bringing more ice for my Diet Coke. She's very intelligent ... You're extremely intelligent, dear. A very good waitress indeed."
A very professional one, too, seeing how calmly she coped with the ultimate test of nerve that the hospitality industry can provide.
"Now, what's this?" Michael said into his machine as the waitress brought his first course to the table. "Ah, the potted shrimps have arrived in a little pot. Very nice - good and buttery."
My starter of braised cuttlefish and fennel was better still, a genuinely brilliant dish with a potent Mediterranean twang. "Excellent, dear," Michael agrees, accepting a forkful. "Very piquant."
Although Michael's diet book is selling briskly, over the main courses he offers a far more effective weight-loss method. "Well, dear, they opened up the ..." he explains over mouthfuls of braised beef cheek with pickled walnuts. "This is very good, by the way - delicious. So they cut open all the skin grafts, and opened up the wound, and all the blood came out, and all the pus came out ..."
If a hologram of Michael in this mode could be activated in every McDonald's, sweet shop, supermarket and chippy in the country - it struck me as I suddenly lost interest in my delectable serving of crispy, juicy wood pigeon with sprout tops and lentils - malnutrition would soon be a far greater public health threat than obesity.
Treacle tart seemed the right pudding for the author of the Fat Pig Diet, however svelte he is these days, and Michael found this "very good, although you never get enough treacle". My rhubarb sorbet, meanwhile, was spectacularly sharp and intense, and, to borrow the ultimate Michael Winner compliment, historic.
This, I suggested over coffee and mint tea ("Very strange way to serve it," he muttered into his Dictaphone. "The leaf is floating about in the pot!"), is a cracking neighbourhood joint in which the highly talented owner-chef Tom Pemberton, formerly of St John Bread & Wine, serves proper, gutsy, richly flavourful food in big portions, but does so at prices that hint more at a labour of love than any desire to get rich quick.
"A nice little place, yes," Michael replied, "though I'm not sure that I would come back."
How grave a threat that constitutes to Pemberton and his staff is not for me to judge. But after a closing photo shoot during which Michael instructed the waitress to snap us for tomorrow's column, abruptly fired her when the flashlight failed ("You're absolutely hopeless. You over there," he yelled at a woman diner, "yes, you, dear. Come here and take over") and then reinstated her for a second crack before realising the battery was dead, you suspect that Hereford Road will cope stoically with the challenge of getting along without him.
The bill
Potted shrimp: £7
Braised cuttlefish: £6.80
Braised beef cheek: £12.80
Wood pigeon with lentils: £12.80
Treacle tart: £5.50
Rhubarb sorbet: £4.50
Total (exc drinks and service): £49.40
The verdict: 8/10
Telephone: 020-7727 1144
Address: 3 Hereford Road, London W2
Open: All week, lunch noon-3pm, dinner 6-10.30pm (10pm Sun)
