A band in Cabot Place, then a whisky where you can hear yourself

What Boisdale is, and where it sits

Boisdale of Canary Wharf is a Scottish restaurant and bar in Cabot Place, at the western end of the estate, a minute from the DLR platforms and a few from the Jubilee line. It belongs to a small group that began in Belgravia, and it keeps the same three habits as the original: Scottish beef and seafood on the menu, a long list of whisky behind the bar, and live music on most nights of the week.

The music is the reason to come after dark. Jazz is the backbone of the programme, with soul, blues and swing on other evenings, and the acts run from a trio who play underneath the conversation to bands who expect the room to stop and listen. It is a working music room inside a restaurant, which makes it unusual on an estate where most bars empty soon after the offices do.

It also has a terrace, and that is where the second half of an evening there tends to go. More on that below.

When the first set starts

The honest answer is that it depends on the night. Set times move with the act and the day of the week, and they are published with each evening's listing rather than fixed for the year. Any guide that prints a single start time for every night is guessing, and a guess is worth nothing when you have booked a table around it.

What does not move is the pattern. The kitchen seats dinner first, the band comes on once the room has settled into its main courses, and the music then runs in sets with a break between them. That pattern is enough to plan with. Book the table for about an hour before the first set, so the ordering and the first course happen in a room where you can still talk. The main arrives with the music. The break between sets is the moment for the conversation you came for, and the second set is optional.

Maude reads the listing for the night before she confirms any booking that starts there, and puts the first set time in the message. It is a small thing and it saves the evening's one avoidable mistake.

Which tables hear the band without shouting

A music room has three kinds of table, and only two of them suit an evening built around talk. The tables at the foot of the stage are for listening. They are the right choice for somebody who came for the band and the wrong one for everybody else, because for forty minutes at a stretch the conversation turns into a series of nods.

The better tables sit to one side of the stage, or two or three rows back, where the music arrives as atmosphere rather than volume. You hear every note and can still finish a sentence without leaning across the bread. Further back, towards the bar, the room is looser and louder in another way, with people standing and moving about, and it suits a drink better than a dinner.

Ask for it plainly when you book: a table where two people can talk during the set. It is an ordinary request and a restaurant that runs music every night knows exactly which tables it means. Avoid asking for 'somewhere quiet', which in a music room tends to produce the table nearest the kitchen door.

Dinner around the music

Order early and order everything. A room full of listeners is served more slowly, because the staff are threading between tables in low light and nobody wants a plate set down hard in the middle of a solo. If the first course is on the table before the band starts, the rest of the evening runs itself.

Dress is whatever you wore to the office, since most people have come straight from one, and a jacket fits the room without being demanded by it. If you have a coat, hand it in when you arrive. You will want it again later, on the terrace, and it is better collected once than fetched twice.

The terrace, once the set ends

When the last set finishes the room changes. The band packs away, the lights come up a notch, and the conversation that has been waiting all evening finally has space. That is the moment to go outside. The terrace is where the cigar smokers go and where the whisky seems to taste better, partly because of the air and partly because nobody has to raise their voice any more.

A long whisky list is easier to use than it looks. Name a direction rather than a bottle. Speyside for something soft and honeyed, the islands for salt and smoke, the Highlands for the middle of the road done well. Ask for two small measures instead of one large one and compare them, which turns a single drink into a conversation with a subject.

Take the coat. The terrace is outdoors on a dock estate, and even in June the wind off the water finds it after ten.

Taking the night further

Boisdale is rarely the whole evening. It is usually the middle of one: a table at eight, the band until late, and then a decision about the rest. The estate's other bars close earlier than its lit windows suggest, so the late options are a hotel bar, a car west or simply the end of the night. The night out after eleven is built for exactly this: three hours at £700 from about nine, or four at £900 when the plan involves moving on.

Three on the auburn column suit it. Luna keeps a running list of what is playing where and is quietly furious about rooms that close, so she will know the act before you do. Patricia drinks single malts and chooses them well, which makes her the right person beside you on the terrace when the list arrives. Lea will go to anything live, gives a set her full attention and always has a better second question than her first.

Cabot Place sits in the middle of the estate's covered route, so on a wet night you can arrive without a coat and leave the same way, as the note on crossing under cover explains. The rest of the estate is on the Canary Wharf page. Send Maude the date and she will check what is on before suggesting a start time.