Private dining rooms within restaurants have always been popular but they are something of a contradiction: restaurants are ostensibly public places to which people go in order to see and be seen. Few restaurateurs today, however, would open without dedicating space to at least one private dining room. In a new building, the architect or designer will be instructed to ensure that the space is as flexible as possible. The most striking example of flexibility is the Lan Club in Beijing, where the Philippe Starck design ensures that every table, whether it seats two people or 16, can be curtained off.

These private spaces answer different customer needs: to celebrate; to impress; to inform; to entertain; and, crucially, in an inconspicuous arena. And they can be highly profitable for the restaurateur, as Silvano Giraldin, former maître d’ of Le Gavroche, in London’s Mayfair, explains. “The customer has invariably chosen a set menu, which helps with the food costs. You know precisely how many staff you are going to need and that is covered by the service charge. These customers tend to drink good wine and, of course, payment is not a problem as the restaurant will have already taken some form of deposit to secure the room.” The private rooms above Le Gavroche were so profitable, Giraldin says, that when the restaurant lost the right to manage them they had to open on Saturday evenings to make up for the lost revenue.