It was suggested to me that I write this week’s blog about the awful exchange of correspondence with a customer who is threatening to sue us because he says a receptionist called him a racist when requesting he refrain from referring to a cab driver’s ethnic origins whilst complaining  about the price he was quoted.  He’s since been sending me e-mails calling me some lovely things but I have something much more pleasant to share with you today.

When a few of us decided to visit a restaurant just opened by someone we knew for a casual Saturday lunch, it was suggested we call the owner to secure a table. I said we should just take our chances and we shouldn’t bother him on what may well be his day off and in any case there’s only a handful of places in London that are rammed for Saturday lunch. A new place just off Wigmore Street wasn’t likely to be one of them.

So I turn up at 12.30 to Meatliquor and yes, there’s already a queue and carnage. Their website states their location, opening times and their queuing policy, which is basically a re-interpretation of the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest – if you see a table become free, go for it. Once you get inside you can’t help get into this den of iniquity; the windows are blacked out and interior design is largely by way of graffiti. At Novikov in Mayfair, where I was invited for a preview lunch earlier in the week, no expense has been spared. Here, no expense has been made. There are no napkins but each table has a roll of kitchen paper.

Yanni the owner was busy running around and even had time to berate a neighbouring group for hogging a bigger table while waiting for their friends to arrive because “it was against our stated democratic principles and unfair to the other people waiting”. These genteel Mayfair folk were clearly taken aback by the rebuke, but good on you Yanni for sticking to your guns.

Wine and water are served in jam jars and in the spirit of sustainability the lids are numbered and used as tab tickets. The food is wings, burgers and chilli cheese fries – very New York and as they say there, what’s not to like.

By the time we left there must have been close onto 100 people queuing outside. There’s the old political adage “give the people bread and circuses and they won’t turn against you”. Meatliquor shows that if you give people chilli cheese fries with urban sub-culture panache, the people will find you.