“See? Knife and fork that’s starter or main course; spoon and fork that’s dessert; spoon on its own that’s ice-cream or soup; spoon and fork, that’s silver service.” This also removes all the stupid snobbery and anxiety that surrounds which fork to use when. Phew.It is the mention of Eric Garnier’s name that raises the prickly issue of lack of good staff. “I watched Eric at Quaglino’s for a long time,” says Allan, “the way he ran it, how smart he looked all the time and how good he was with the customers He never lost one member of his staff while he was there. The cutlery is called a menu set: the fork, spoon and knife are the same size and with these three pieces I run the whole restaurant,” he explains taking various pens off his desk to show me what he means.

The plates are round with no lip, the glasses are a round balloon shape. Then he’s been working on the menu and recruiting his 35 staff.Meanwhile, Eric Garnier was grappling with what we would eat off and with “Everything for Bank is round. Delteil, formerly of the Michelin-starred L’Arlequin in London, has been with the Bank project since the beginning, visiting big New York restaurants to see how they worked and Singapore to cadge some recipes. It was to Christian’s specification that the 12-metre Bonnet range was built – one of the largest ever – a choice that saw the Aldwych being closed while this state-of- the-art cooking monster was being hoisted in. Like people have at home and making the chefs part of the theatre.” The kitchen will be separated by a door-height glass screen “to stop soup spilling on fur coats,” chortles Wickham. “Chefs can’t pick their nose, they have to be more careful.” This will come as good news to Christian Delteil. I started with the kitchen and came up with the idea of something I’ve always wanted to do, which is to put the kitchen in the dining-room.

“They didn’t give me a hard-boiled brief,” says Wickham, “they left it to me. There was a long search for the site, which was formerly a Nat West branch “We’d looked at tons of sites. Our bank told us that a bank at the Aldwych was going to close,” explains Truss, “and when we went to see it, it was still a working bank, but we knew it would be perfect.”The first thing they did was show the site to supa dupa architect Julyan Wickham (responsible for Kensington Place and Harvey Nichols Fifth Floor) who also liked what he saw and set about creating. Architect then goes away and comes back with plans that are approved / changed as necessary. Restaurant is then built – Bank has been worked on for the past 18 months.