Valentine's Evening by Chauffeur: Sittings and Timing

Why the fourteenth runs differently

Valentine's Day is one of the few evenings when restaurants abandon their usual rhythm. Most run two fixed sittings, often an early one around six and a later one around half past eight, with a set menu and a firm expectation that the first table is cleared before the second arrives. Arriving twenty minutes late does not shorten your dinner slightly; it can shorten it a great deal.

That makes the arrival time genuinely important, in a way it is not on an ordinary Thursday. The whole evening is planned backwards from a sitting time that the restaurant will not move. Kitchens on that evening are running at their limit, and the second sitting is generally already waiting at the door.

Getting across town on the busiest dinner night

Central London traffic on the evening of the fourteenth behaves like a Friday in December. Everybody is going out, everybody is going out at the same hour, and the streets around Mayfair, Covent Garden and Chelsea move slowly between six and eight. A journey that ordinarily takes twenty minutes can take twice that.

There is no clever route around it, only realistic timing. We build the departure around the sitting rather than the distance, and we would rather you arrive ten minutes early and have a drink at the bar than spend the last mile watching a clock.

Arriving well without arriving awkwardly

Restaurant frontages in central London are mostly on streets where stopping is restricted, and the doorway of a busy restaurant at seven on Valentine's evening has a queue outside it. A set-down a few doors away, on the side of the street where the pavement is wider, is usually more graceful than pulling up into a crowd.

Small things make the arrival better: the door opened on the pavement side, an umbrella ready in February, and a chauffeur who steps back rather than lingering. The point of the evening is the two of you, and the car should be the least interesting part of it.

• Departure timed to the sitting rather than to the distance
• A set-down clear of the queue at the restaurant door
• Umbrellas ready, since mid-February rarely cooperates
• An open return so dessert is not eaten at speed

Dinner and a theatre, in the right order

Pairing dinner with a West End performance on the same evening is popular and frequently mistimed. A curtain at half past seven with a two-hour dinner beforehand does not work; an early sitting followed by the theatre does, as does a performance followed by a late table, which many restaurants offer specifically for that reason.

Where both are planned, the fixed point is the curtain. Theatres admit latecomers only at a suitable break, if at all, and the interval is not a reliable second chance. Plan to be seated with time to spare and let the meal flex around it.

The journey home is part of the evening

The last hour of a good evening should not involve queuing for a cab in the cold or negotiating a surge fare. An open return, with a message when you ask for the bill, means the car is at the door as you reach the pavement.

Arrangements run over WhatsApp on +44 (0) 7775 554 848. The fourteenth is one of the busiest nights of the year for private hire, so it is worth confirming the date well ahead rather than in the same week. Availability across the first half of February tightens very quickly once the restaurant reservations open.

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