Eat-and-runner gets just deserts

Photo / Thomas Northcut

In London last Tuesday a Latvian, Janis Nords, was caught trying to skip out on a £1000 ($2050) bill at the St James's St restaurant L'Oranger.

His arrest ended his spree of eat-and-runs: with an unnamed companion in tow he had spent weeks touring London's best restaurants, hoovering up food and booze and then scarpering before pudding.

"He was trying to impress a girl," a lawyer later explained.

Janis, we've all been there. I'm just not convinced this was the right way. Consider, for instance, how impressed she might have felt while sprinting up Mayfair after a luxury feed at Helene Darroze.

The pre-cheque flip from L'Autre Pied in Marylebone, just last week, came after you'd both sunk £500 worth of foie gras and '97 Bollinger. That'll slosh.

Nords, a 27-year-old film-maker, deployed some crafty touches.

At The Glasshouse in Kew last month a decoy parcel was left behind when the pair decamped. At Pearl in Holborn, a fortnight ago, Nords covered the early retrieval of his jacket from cloakroom staff by promising not to run away (before he did).

There were surely less sweaty alternatives. He could have tried a journalist-based ruse, for instance - talking on the mobile to an imagined editor and making elaborate notes about things, hopeful the owner might waive the bill.

Or he could have gone for the multi-tiered mega-complaint ("My foie gras isn't rich enough ... I have never been so appalled by the state of staff bow ties ...") in a bid to shame the maitre d' into hacking off costs.

The best solution, really, would've been to hammer the complimentary bread basket and get creative with side dishes.

That or choose a cheaper joint - which couldn't be much more degrading than insisting that your date wears a good pair of trainers to dinner?

- OBSERVER