‘Even a hedge fund manager in an advanced state of refreshment would spot this as a massive, cynical waste of money’
In a hangar-sized yet semi-deserted Batman-themed restaurant, a letter is placed on my table while I await a £15 serving of citrus-cured salmon with a fingernail-sized portion of caviar. “Dear Guest of Park Row,” it reads, “I do fear the worst has come to pass.” It was a tiny touch of drama in a supposedly Gotham-styled dining experience, but its message was not wrong: the worst had indeed come to pass.
It was Saturday lunchtime at Park Row, just off Piccadilly, and despite Warner Bros’ Batman franchise being one of the best-known brands in modern civilisation, Charles and I were one of only four other tables who’d opted to eat there. Why was that, I wondered. OK, I’ll cut to the chase: I know full well, and in such vivid detail that I called my editor during my £26 main course of champagne and black truffle risotto – which smelled of silage and polythene – and demanded 3,000 or 4,000 more words to document my dismay at this bewildering, slapdash nonsense. Warner Bros seems to have sanctioned a Batman restaurant without any actual mention or sighting of Batman, and that instead offers a menu that’s costlier than The Foyer at Claridge’s and serves drab renditions of dover sole à la grenobloise for £44 that even a hedge-fund manager in an advanced state of refreshment would spot as a massive, cynical waste of money.
