After a very successful first few weeks, which no doubt persuaded the management that the added anguish of running an overburdened reservations system was unnecessary, Polpo, a small Italian restaurant (or Venetian bacaro, if you please) in Central London, decided to stop taking bookings altogether.

“We decided that we’ve done our bit, opening a restaurant that people like,” said the chap on the phone, after telling me that, no, it wouldn’t be possible for me to book a table. “And we just want to say to people, ‘We’re here, come if you like, and we’ll get you seated as soon as we can.’”

In principle, it’s a great response from a new and jam-packed restaurant, simply to throw open its doors to the passing world, instead of booking itself to the hilt for three months to come. It’s democratic and folksy and honest, and Polpo does not in any way set itself up to be a Michelin-type destination joint. It’s just a Soho squat-and-gobble and it would be ludicrous, they are well aware, for people to book two months ahead and get dressed up all fancy-like and head “up west” to throw down a couple of beers and a saucer of meatballs in a small, noisy room. (If you book months ahead, it’s because you want to be certain of a huge, silent room full of sanctimonious waiters ripping the shirt from your back for a piece of foie gras that has been poked and prodded until it tastes of warm thumbs by some half-educated sociopath who dreams of getting his own television show.)

But the trouble with the “no-booking” thing is that it asks you – or, more importantly, it asks me – to muffle up on a wet winter’s night and skulk into town on public transport on the off chance of getting something to eat.

“Nobody has yet had to wait more than 20 minutes for a table,” said the man on the phone – really nice, helpful and well-spoken. “What time were you thinking of coming?”

Oho, I thought. Here we go.

“About 8pm,” I said. “Certainly between eight and nine.”

“Ah, that’s usually not the best time,” he said.

Best time for what, one wonders? It’s certainly the best time for supper. Indeed, there are those of us who, literally, call that time “supper time”.

“If you come a bit earlier then you’ll wait less,” he said. “Before 7.30 is even better.”

Before 7.30? Who in the world eats before 7.30? Children, soldiers, people under house arrest… Who else? If I eat before 7.30 I’m going to have to eat again later. Honestly, by 11.30pm I’ll be down the Bengal Lancer with a pint of Stella, ordering up a fat korma and a stack of naan breads.

So I rather sheepishly told my impatient friend Max (who, whenever we meet up, texts me 30 seconds after I’m supposed to have arrived to ask, “Was it today we were meeting?”) that we would be aiming for 7.30pm at Polpo, and hoping not to wait too long. But he didn’t seem to mind at all. He’d read about it online and was of the opinion that “it sounds off the clock, on fire, sailing at eight bells…” and other epithets of the kind that masters of industry sometimes accidentally bring out of the boardroom and into the real world, where they baffle and stagger us with their butchness and opacity.

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