The host of the NYT podcast, Michael Barbaro, dines in at Scott’s secret Mayfair lairAlong with Jin Kichi in Hampstead,
Scott’s on Mount Street has long
been in my top three London res-
taurants. (The third, since we’re
here, is any branch of Pizza
Express.) I’ve had more than several remark-
able meals at Scott’s, both for the company
and for the exquisite, if extortionate, seafood.
I dined here with Ser Brienne Of Tarth
herself, the actress Gwendoline Christie,
who, over griddled prawns, chilli jam and
a honking laugh that could stun a handsy
Charles Saatchi on the terrace, revealed to
me the impact that seminal role had on her
personally, spiritually, follically...
I broke bread with war photographer Don
McCullin here also, one (or other) of the
Gallagher brothers and more members of
the chatterati than Michael Gove has likely
ponced a rolled-up five-pound note from. If I
am to die from overindulgence – and, let’s face
it, this is very possible – then I choose to die
here on the golden cobblestones of Mayfair,
my pulse fading as my crimson face slams into
a plate swimming in Scott’s rich razor clams.
Today, however, a treat. My lunching
partner, Michael Barbaro, host of mind-
bogglingly popular New York Times podcast
The Daily, and I will be the very first to try
out the restaurant’s secret(ish) new back
room, a space humbly called The Platinum
Arowana Room.
Sunk round the back of Scott’s ever-fizzy
yet demure main space, first impressions are
of an oligarch’s panic room, his wife’s over-
size jewellery box or his gigolo’s cod piece: an
oval table room enough for eight, with more
Mirós and Chagalls on the wall than one’s
senses can quite take in. It’s a mini Louvre in
Mayfair all to oneself.
The floor glows green like Roald Dahl’s
“magic crocodile tongues” – a parquet of
luminous, semiprecious kryptonite whose
effect is part Stanley Kubrick sci-fi set,
part Tardis. Overall, the room is a touch too
intimate for eight, one suspects. It is also win-
dowless and, yes, fabulously ostentatious.
It is also without doubt the most beautiful
private dining space in London.
This doesn’t stop Barbaro having a pop,
though not so much at the room as my choicefit into their commute,” explains Barbaro, who
was a campaign reporter for the main print
paper before being lured to audio, firstly on
an NYT show called The Run-Up, a biweekly
podcast that covered Donald Trump’s 2016
presidential campaign. “We then imagined a
different way of telling the news. We wanted
to tell stories in narrative form and to speak to
real journalists as they pursue real stories. We
needed plot, suspense and addictive engage-
ment. We didn’t want dry facts – we wanted
objectivity that unfolded, almost dramatically.”
It’s perhaps surprising to hear a staffer from
the New York Times, an institution the incum-
bent president has labelled “the enemy of
the people”, credit said president for their
own success. “Could we have had The Daily
without Donald Trump as our president?”
asks Barbaro, himself a bookish-looking 39-
year-old man with a superbly kept grey beard.
“No. Trump is a news machine. You needed
that election and you needed that winner for
a daily news show.” Quite brilliantly, Barbaro
and his team fought Trump’s “fake news”
accusations with something arguably more
powerful – an engaging truth.
As The Daily’s audience blooms so too does
the breadth of news it covers. In June The
Daily had a week’s worth of casts dedicated
to the state of the European Union and the
host insists they want to widen their scope
away from Washington. Barbaro himself is also
catching heat. Vanity Fair recently named him
“the Ira Glass of the New York Times”, a ref-
erence to the US public radio personality and
producer of influential show This American
Life, which in the States is something akin to
the New Yorker of audio nonfiction.
It’s Barbaro’s verbal tics, however – the
inquisitive “Hmm?” or brusque “Mmm!” that
pepper his interviews – that some listeners
seem to have become infatuated with. Does
the host catch himself trying to stop doing
them quite so much? “It’s my least intru-
sive way of saying to the interviewee, ‘I
hear you.’ I also understand that if you come
to the show cold, my ‘hmms’ might sound like
the air conditioner in the background: ‘Will
someone shut that up!’” GThis month with The Dailyof it to record our lunch for this column’s
accompanying podcast. “It couldn’t be less
suitable for a podcast,” he chuckles. “Are they
real Renoirs?” he whispers, squinting at the
walls. (They are, Michael, yes.)
What’s wrong with the room? “Lots of hard,
flat surfaces, so sound is just going to rico-
chet. There’s nothing to catch the echo. I have
to improvise all the time, turning hotel rooms
into studios when interviewing on the road. I’ve
learnt to build a wall of pillows or put a sheet
over an offending surface. In some cases, I’ve
simply put a blanket over my head and the
microphone.” We both look down at the table-
cloth but ultimately choose to take our chances.
If you’re not listening to The Daily then
you’re not one of more than two million lis-
teners who tune in to the 20- to 30-minute
single-topic news podcast every weekday.
Although the podcast was only launched in
February 2017, it has seen success and uptake
the likes of which most media companies can
only beg for, the show now a bright, shiny
player in the New York Times’ arsenal of mod-
ern-day media products. Rather than go niche,
as many podcasters have done, The Daily’s
secret isn’t so much what news it covers, as
the way it covers it.
“We wanted a short show that people couldJonathan Heaf Is...‘Could we have had
The Daily without Trump
as president? No’VERDICT Chat ★★★★★ Beard ★★★★✩ Number of ‘hmms’ ★★★★✩ Oysters eaten: four (JH), two (MB) ★★★★✩ Overall ★★★★✩SCOTT’S, 20 MOUNT STREET, LONDON W1.
020 7495 7309. SCOTTS-RESTAURANT.COM#OTLIllustrationsAnton Emdin; Zohar Lazar09-19OutToLunch.indd 220 24/06/2019 08:17