Curvaceous: ten names, arranged by the kitchen each one chooses
TEN ON THIS CARD. Filed from build and worn with some confidence: tailoring that follows the figure, good coats, colour where the room can take it. The tape runs from 160 cm to 175 cm, and between them they cover every kind of table the parish has to offer.
What the ten really share is appetite and a host's instinct. Several cook or bake seriously, nearly all of them notice you are hungry or tired before you mention it, and each has a kitchen she would rather take you to than debate the matter. So the card is arranged by the kitchen.
Curvaceous, tonight
Everyone listed under curvaceous, taken from her file rather than a guess. Open a card for rates and a message with her name.
Bianka
Danielle
Luna
Michelle
Milena
Molly
Nancy
Rosa
Roxi
Thea
Small plates, facing the pass
Bianka, 165 cm and hazel eyed, cooks Italian at home with genuine patience, and at the marble counter on Archer Street she orders regional plates in a long procession, moving upstairs the moment the room gets loud. Roxi, 168 cm, takes two stools at the zinc counter on Rupert Street and joins in audibly when the chefs put their own music on. Two hours at £500 suits either, or four at £900 if the plates keep coming.
Records, bread and an afternoon that slides into dinner
Rosa, 160 cm with chestnut curls, bakes sourdough and will rank the bread basket before the starters arrive, quietly and accurately. Her afternoons run from the Berwick Street racks through a small gallery and into an early table, Sunday to Thursday. A four hour dinner date at £900 holds the whole drift of that.
A grill, a counter and the last of the light
Nancy, 170 cm and golden blonde, wants two seats at the robata counter on Charlotte Street with the room just short of noisy, and she is on first name terms with the kitchen by the time the second course lands. Thea, 165 cm, heads for the loudest ramen bar in the parish and orders like somebody who has opinions about broth. Neither needs an occasion to make an evening feel like one.
Velvet, gold and a button on the wall
Milena, 175 cm, presses the champagne button in the peacock booth on Upper James Street before she has finished sitting down. Michelle, 173 cm, prefers the art deco room under Sherwood Street and can tell you which of its classics is made properly. Luna, 171 cm with dark auburn hair, takes the wine led dining room on Greek Street, where the first bottle was settled long before you arrived.
After the kitchens close
Molly, 164 cm, starts at ten in the courtyard bar got up as a wartime station and keeps going into the small hours, which in Soho is an ordinary ambition rather than a wild one. Danielle, 170 cm, is the calm half of the late pair: a repertory screening, supper that outlasts the credits, then the walk back with nothing much that needs saying.
Also listed as
Two of the ten sit on the blondes card, three on raven haired, one on auburn and red and the remaining four on brunettes, which is a fair illustration of how little colour and figure have to do with one another. One also appears on petite and two on statuesque. Across the age bands, four fall in the early twenties, five in the late twenties and one above.
Holding a table and a name
Three things get confirmed on WhatsApp before anything is held: who the booking is under, the address, and the room. A quarter of the fee by bank transfer then secures her evening, and the balance is handed over quietly at the start or transferred beforehand under a discreet reference. Overnights and travel take half instead. Plans move, and moving one with three hours in hand costs nothing at all; inside two hours half the fee stands, and an empty room is charged in full.
Cannot choose between ten? Describe the evening in two lines and say roughly when you would like to be sitting down. The host comes back with two names that fit it, and nothing is ever swapped without your say so.
Curvaceous on the list
Choose a name above or ask the host who is free tonight.