I might have reviewed Copper and Ink before, but they are so lovely, persistent through lockdown, constantly encouraging us via twitter, and enduring Uber disasters that they were due a re-run.

And I’m very glad I revisited… They are COVID-Measure-Mega, screens, signs on the door about masks away from the tables – and simultaneously polite and welcoming, dispelling the eating out in a pandemic nerves.

`We had tasting-menu crisis. Basically the tasting menu looked perfect, but so did the whiskey baba, orange and bitters ice cream, with sherbet. (SOME restaurants DO know how to maximise their menu word allowance when coming up with a dish). I mean, opening with whiskey was always going to go well for this dessert. Then we noticed we actually couldn’t eat one of the dessert menu items and asked if we could swap. They really did it. We love them. We got exactly what we wanted. (This was the beginning of a one-sided relationship).

This was now a no brainer, there were no items on the entire two pages that we couldn’t squeeze into the evening, which opened with porcini with herb gnocchi, aged Parmesan foam and cep powder.

These sort of dishes are like mini adventures. Let me try mushroom with the foam, followed by gnocchi with foam… now all three at once… ah, my dish has disappeared some how.

The next course was glazed langoustine tails, razor clams, fennel relish and cucumber ketchup. That’s four iterations to play with.. er… I mean sample in a dignified fashion. It was at this point, that I started to release that my plan of not eating all of each dish, to facilitate completion of the tasting meal, was actually, not a plan.

Here’s the pistachio biscuit, raspberry jelly and pistachio cremeux… Looks aside, I’ve been to many restaurants that ‘look’ as elegantly designed, but few taste as good as they do at Copper and Ink in terms of flavour combinations and quality of execution . (I’m not just saying this because I justify my chaotic homemade cakes with the fact they taste good)

After filling up on a host of complementary flavours and works of art on a dish, I sat back musing on how a germ could possibly reach me from anyone in the restaurant, visualising the little spikey cell floating about and smashing face first into a screen. Nope. There was no way it could reach me unless it developed opposeable thumbs and ambi-turning in this restaurant that’s succeeded in being safe and cosy at the same time.

Have you pre-ordered my novel “Helen and the Grandbees” yet? https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Alex+morall&ref=nb_sb_noss

Out on October 28th!