The held table: dinner in E14, counted from the first drink

On the estate the choice is wider than outsiders expect: the park side of Canada Square, the counters under Crossrail Place, the newer rooms out at Wood Wharf. Twelve minutes north west, Limehouse puts you on Narrow Street with the river at the window and the basin behind you, which is the better address when you want the evening to stop feeling like a business district.

Six DLR minutes south, Greenwich has the market rooms and the terraces facing the water. All three sit inside Zone 2, so getting her there adds nothing to the figure.

Take the early sitting. A quarter to seven on the estate is a different restaurant from half past eight: the room is calm, the service is unhurried, and the crowd coming back from late meetings is still two drinks behind you. Several of the women below ask for it by name. If your evening cannot begin before nine, say so, and the table moves to Limehouse or Greenwich, where the kitchens run later and nobody is trying to turn the room a second time.

A held table at £900 gives you a drink before you sit, three courses with nobody hurrying the middle one, and a walk afterwards long enough to matter. Three hours at £700 covers the same food and loses the walk. Two at £500 is a supper rather than a dinner date, and Maude will say so rather than sell you the shorter rung. Length runs from her arrival, whether that is at the restaurant door or your lobby, and the whole ladder is on rates.

Say the table is at a quarter to seven on the park side of Canada Square. She arrives at half past six, so the first drink happens standing at the bar and not across a table with menus in the way. By seven you are seated. The first two courses take most of the next ninety minutes, and nobody minds, because an unhurried middle course is the reason for booking four hours at all.

Around half past eight comes the question of pudding and the long glass that follows it. By a quarter past nine the two of you are out along the north dock or over the footbridge to South Quay, and the walk ends at your lobby at about half past ten, which is exactly where the four hours run out. Nothing in that evening was rushed and nothing was left over.

Bianka orders for everybody, waits for the church bells and then finishes her sentence; dinner is where she is at her best. Samanta takes the chair against the wall, orders rare and misses nothing at the far end of the room. Margo is thirty one and entirely unbothered, which is the right temperament for four hours. Michelle sits facing the room and everyone else relaxes. Thea will argue about produce until the plates arrive. Their pages, and the rest, are on the desk.

Send the date, the hour you want to sit, the restaurant if you have one and the hotel if you do not. Maude confirms the companion first, because that is the part that can be short, and the table second. If you would rather she made the reservation, she will, in your name. Nothing about the evening reaches the restaurant beyond a name and a number of covers. The steps are on booking, and the figure is handed to her in person at the start of the evening, exactly as confirmed.