48 • The Sunday Times Magazine
a week on the Maui Wowie: the
ceiling is backlit palm trees, the
colour scheme egg yolk and
aubergine with touches of
modernist wood panelling and
almost art deco glass. Tiles glitter
with a golden shimmer. At the
back of the long narrow room
there’s a plant-decked nook that
looks like a tropical conservatory,
with ceiling fans languidly — and
pointlessly — stirring the air. It’s
absurd enough to make the moreconservative customer blanch,
deliriously unserious.
A trip to the loos, down a black,
graffitied staircase, especially after
a couple of small bottles of their
dangerously gluggable wine, is a
disorientating experience. It won’t
be to everyone’s taste, but I love it
unreservedly. There’s not a detail
left to chance: dishes and
uniforms and thick diner mugs
bristling with chic logos; walls
covered with showbizzy photos,
with Mazouz as a Zelig-like
recurring motif; the tube of
harissa at every table. I love the
fold-out diner menu too, serving
all day from breakfast to a planned
(post-curfew) midnight.
When food starts arriving it
becomes rapidly obvious where
the seriousness lies. The flavours
are all over the place: French/Mo Diner
Mayfair, London
A place to forget your troubles.
Let’s hope we can do it again
Mo Diner,
23 Heddon Street,
London W1B 4BH;
020 7434 4040,
modiner.london.
Marina visited before
the new national
restrictions were
announced last weekMarina O’Loughlin
I
t’s bleak out here on my way to
lunch, the kind of rain that seeps
into your very core, the promise of
darkness falling early, daylight eked
out like the last of the pre-Brexit
olive oil. A discarded mask sticks
to the sole of my boot, a reminder
that going out will soon be out of
bounds. And then a blast of almost
carnival colour: this is Mo Diner,
its apparent mission to deliver
rays of joyful sunshine, whether
you’re feeling it or not.
This unlikely joint is the latest
from a titan of the restaurant
scene: Mourad Mazouz, aka
Momo, the Algerian-born
restaurateur behind any number
of groundbreaking restaurants,
among them the sensory overload
that is London’s multi-Michelined
Sketch, the scene that is Paris’s
404 (named after his favourite
Peugeot) and Momo, right next
door. In charge of the long sliver of
a kitchen is Eric Chavot, classically
trained and much awarded;
finding him in charge of a diner’s
pancakes and sandwiches is a bit
like finding Picasso overseeing
a paint-your-own-pottery shop.
The duo’s relationship seems
like an interesting one, today
characterised by loud, performative
— and amusing — tetchiness.
This eccentricity matches the
place’s mood: pleasingly bonkers.
This time Mazouz’s restless
vision has delivered a homage
to the classic American diner,
raised stools fringing the galley
kitchen, luncheonette-style
pegboard menus on high. But
one reimagined by the designers
behind Elvis’s more excessive,
pigment-soaked movies afterTa b l e Ta l k
There’s no point
in looking for a
coherent narrative,
there isn’t one.
But it’s all so good