The Phoenix, Denmark Hill

£11.80 for a pint of 'artisan' lager and a double vodka and Diet Coke...

£28 for two steak dinners - ultra-chewy steaks with very basic, almost flavour-free oven chips and three stalks of watercress...

The steak was one of the worst I and my friend have ever had, too full of overly chewy fat, really quite a dental risk for anyone out of their 20s. For fourteen quid are a mushroom, a tomato and a small pile of peas or salad too much too ask? I wouldn't want to endorse Wetherspoons but they don't seem to think so, and neither does my local friendly and unpretentious cafe, for half the money.

This place is for people with more money than sense - an extensive and growing category as we know - your basic Londoner yuppies and those who would be yuppies if they were still young. If you go to places like this, people, Blade Runner will come true before your kids are your age. You've been warned.

I would add in fairness that if the waitresses seem a bit sniffy it's more that the 21st century sociopath-magnet vibe of the place confers this air on them. I bet if someone walked by and saw me in the place they'd have developed a hatred of me on the spot, and I couldn't blame them. We were in the place to recover from/ celebrate an emotional visit to King's revolving around a leukemia checkup, so we weren't, I hope, the usual clientele.

On the way back home, at the station, a man overheard me surmise that I'd just drunk a six quid pint, looked up and said, "You been in the Pheonix? Yeah it's just been painted that's why it was six quid, gotta make it back 'aven't they. They take the p*ss." We took some comfort and amusement from this blip of absurdist camaraderie, but only when the place has gone bust will we feel properly satisfied. Fingers crossed.

Would have loved to have been able to steal glasses, cutlery or furniture to get a partial rebate but the staff seem prepared for this entirely rational and fair endeavour, and even my attempts to cadge a few CDs' worth of music using their wifi failed. I can only hope my review loses the pub sufficient money that the day will then feel ironed out into neatness in our minds. I daresay I'll be over the shock of this visit soon enough although I'm still haunted by a £17 bill for two subs and two Cokes in Subway five years ago in Charing Cross Road that mystifyingly didn't end in my brother and I abandoning our food at the counter for due to tiredness and embarrassment in a long queue, an over-tolerance which I hope I've now outgrown. That London eh...

I could say lastly that the food 'filled a hole'. Alas, it did, just about, but its having underscored another far greater one cancels out the brief respite in mere hunger. If you tolerate this... your children will be next...

25 Mar 2016 08:14