Not sure if London’s on the Prick’s agenda any time soon, but if it is, we certainly won’t be going to Novikov:

But you really don’t have to hate Novikov on principle. There’s more than enough about the place to let you hate it on its own terms. There is the usual stupidity of booking a table for 9pm only to be told that your booking is for just two hours. There is the unusual stupidity of an ape in a bomber jacket shoving his body between you and the door and barking: “Are you eating here tonight?” To which I could but reply: “Only if you’ll let me”…

It reminds me of the mega restaurants of Las Vegas, with one crucial difference. In Vegas the restaurants are generally very good. There’s too much competition for it to be otherwise. This is generally very, very bad: prices that knock the wind out of you and moments of cooking so cack-handed, so foul, so astoundingly grim you want to congratulate the kitchen on its incompetence.

Amazingly, according to the review, the place is always chock-a-block full.