Dinner date companionship
Of the ten arrangements, dinner is the one the house is proudest of. Four hours at £1,800, built around a single reservation, with time for a glass beforehand and a slow walk afterwards. The figure sits well below four single hours by design, because a good dinner should never be hurried by arithmetic.
It suits a visitor with one free night who would rather not dine alone, and equally a resident who holds a table at a room he loves and wants conversation worthy of it. Both are welcome, and both are arranged in the same short exchange.
Chosen by Octavia for this kind of occasion. Any other companion can be asked for too.
Most dinners open in a hotel bar at around half past seven: Dukes, if you enjoy the ceremony of a martini mixed at a trolley beside your chair, or the Rivoli at The Ritz, if you prefer gilt and mirrors. The table follows at eight or a little after. Two hours is a fair allowance for three courses and a bottle chosen without haste. What remains belongs to coffee, a digestif somewhere quieter, or the walk home along Piccadilly beneath the lamps.
Within a few minutes of St James's there is a dining room for every temperament. Wiltons on Jermyn Street, for oysters, game in season and a room that keeps its manners. The Wolseley on Piccadilly, grand and cheerful, for a guest who likes a little movement around him. Scott's on Mount Street for fish, and its terrace in warm months. Sketch on Conduit Street for something frankly theatrical. The notebook takes the luxury dinner, composed course by course, and gives the old money tables of Wiltons a piece of their own.
Closer to the park, the restaurant at The Ritz still asks gentlemen for a jacket and tie, and repays the effort with painted ceilings, tall windows over the trees and a room so beautiful that voices lower of their own accord. It is the room for an anniversary or a first dinner you intend to remember.
The table is reserved by you, in your name, and settled by you as host, as it would be for any friend you invited to Mayfair. If you would like Octavia to suggest the room, she will, and she will say why that one.
Tell Octavia where you are dining, and she tells your companion. A room that still expects a jacket, a dinner at a private members' club as somebody's guest, a black tie evening at a livery hall: each has its own register, and she arrives in the one that fits. Left to choose, she errs a little on the formal side, which in this quarter is rarely a mistake.
At the table she is good company in the plain sense. She asks, listens, disagrees when she disagrees, and leaves the waiter in no doubt that the two of you are enjoying yourselves.
Bianka keeps tasting notebooks and remembers every glass, and she will happily find a restaurant near your hotel with the wine list in mind. Karolina plans ahead and likes an opera staging or a recital before supper. Margo, in her early thirties, knows the King Street salerooms well and talks about them without a trace of display. Roxi is quick, funny and at her best across a steak. Karolina and Roxi are both among the raven haired companions, with evening wardrobes made for low light.
Not every dinner begins at eight. A long Saturday lunch that runs past four uses the same four hours, and so does a table at half past five before a curtain at seven thirty. Give Octavia the reservation time and she works backwards from it. Each line of the ladder, with its price, waits on the rates page, and booking explains the one message that sets everything in motion.
Dinner ends where you decide. Some guests see their companion into a car at the restaurant door; others walk back to the hotel together for a last glass by the fire. She follows your lead, and the goodbye is never awkward. If four hours begin to feel short somewhere around the cheese, extra time is confirmed in writing while you are still at the table, or the evening can become the overnight engagement, provided her diary allows.
Brief answers, kept on file. Octavia answers anything further in writing.
Ask OctaviaNo. The £1,800 covers four hours in her company, no more. Dinner, wine and any car are yours to arrange, as with any guest at your table.
Gladly. Tell Octavia your hotel, the evening and the kind of food you enjoy, and your companion suggests two or three rooms she knows, with a line on each. You make the reservation once you have decided.
Yes, as your guest, wherever the club's rules admit guests. Mention the club when you write, so that she arrives dressed for its customs.
Often, yes. The choice is simply wider with a day in hand, and wider still for a Friday or Saturday.
A dinner, a journey, a table of clients: one sentence is enough. Octavia proposes the companion best suited and sets out the details in writing.
