How to Borrow from the Bank

One of the more bizarre episodes of my restaurant career was trying to raise a small loan from a new bank in Bond Street whose assistant manager had been recommended as a good bet by my mortgage broker (‘I’m the slickest bastard in the business’). I rang this chap who suggested, rather to my surprise, that we meet at Crockfords, the casino in Curzon Street. I arrived before time and was offered a drink and some canapés. The drink was champagne from the bottle kept for him and the canapés were smoked salmon and more caviar than I had eaten in the last ten years. Lunch was taken in the Crockfords dining room – a vast barrel-vaulted chamber which somehow gave the impression, thanks to its furnishings, of a gigantic bedouin tent rather than an exercise in neoclassical overkill. The enormous buffet that was being eyed by the only other customers, a couple of Arabs in flowing robes, did little to dispel this feeling.