BILL OF THE WEEK

IF anyone out there believed elaborate dinners were going out of fashion in these straitened times, think again.

Friday night, and four guests rocked up at the Lanesborough hotel’s Apsleys restaurant for Dom Perignon champagne, exquisite Scavino Barolo Annunziata Reserva wine, lobster spaghetti, veal and Dover sole.

But it was after dinner, when they retired to the hotel’s luxury Garden Room smoking area, that the action really got going – with Montecristo, Cuaba and Henry Clay cigars, Macallan Scotch whisky and a rare Fransac 1940 cognac.

That little lot might have set them back a costly £2,137.49, but The Capitalist imagines it was well worth it to lie back and think of Cuba…