London’s top-end restaurants are so far weathering the supposed recession – and in particular cut-backs in the City – surprisingly well, reports Bloomberg.com

The financial news service’s reporter, Richard Vines – who, as we have noted before, is emerging as the (self-appointed) collective voice of London’s top chefs/restaurateurs – has taken business soundings from most of the major upmarket operators (Gordon Ramsay, for some reason, excluded*). He found few explicit admissions of hard times.

At Nobu, however, Mark Edwards has noticed the “corporate boys” drinking “less and cheaper quality”, and Tom Aikens admitted that, at his Chelsea HQ, “lunchtimes have been a little below average compared to last year”.

Overall, though, the feeling is quite positive, most restaurants claiming not to have noticed a slowdown – yet. Confidence, however, is far from unbounded, with Hakkasan’s Alan Yau suggesting “the real test will come in 2009 when the inevitable aftershock kicks in”.

*The Bloomberg story was later updated with a – predictably? – upbeat statement from Gordon Ramsay, to the effect that his group is “receiving a higher call volume than ever” and that “there has been no downturn in the average spend”.