Pitch-perfect food -but relax the rhythm, please

January is a time we stage-manage our lives. We script instincts, recast foibles, project-manage gluttony.

- DAVID ELLIS

In these first bleary moments, the resolve is to rewrite: this year, instead of worrying about dying alone from an ice-cream-induced heart attack, I'll be champion of the world, top the charts, swim in the pool my side hustle built. Optimism abound. Things are on the up.

There was a sense of this stage management at Bethnal Green's Tempo, which felt disconcertingly like dining in a play. Everyone else seemed to know the owners, few seemed to eat, and one group appeared to kill two hours with a glass of wine and five waters, a table of extras. It felt, in fact, like dining in an immersive imagining of Hopper's Nighthawks, refashioned for the East End. Still, I've eaten in weirder surroundings, like the time a couple of grown adults spent the evening building Lego in the Angus Steakhouse. Is this their love life? Are there Lego handcuffs at home?