When did warm food become fashionable? I was listening to a radio programme recently where a woman has the job of visiting as many restaurants as possible, trough out and report her findings to people like me who can’t afford to eat in these places. Anyway, I was smiling to myself while she wittered on about the marriage between table linen and cutlery, the overall atmosphere of Neo Minimalism in this “busy” restaurant and the fact that the menus have no prices because “hey let’s face it, the sort of people who need the know the price are the sort of people who would feel uncomfortable eating here.”

Her starter arrived amid “oooh’s” and “ahhh’s” and she described it as; “a bowelette of warm oyster soup.” It seems the chef took some fish stock and dipped a truffle into it for a millisecond before chucking in the oysters. Now if, like me, you’re wondering what a bowelette is she explained it as a large porcelain spoon big enough to hold a mouthful of food. She ate. I waited. She professed to have just eaten the best oyster (please note oyster, not oysters) in her life. The chef said the secret was in the temperature of the soup. It MUST be served warm. I stopped listening.

The other day we went to one of my favourite places to eat and they’d changed the menu drastically. Gone was the WYSIWYG honest menu, replaced by various ingredients cohabiting on an unmade bed of warm salad, their modesty saved by being caught in a shower of dressing. My heart sank. I asked the waiter what exactly a “warm autumnal salad was”, and he replied “mixed lettuce.” It looks as if in future I’ll be eating in really old fashioned places where salad is cold and soup is either hot or chilled.