1. How to have a row in a restaurant
The problem with rows in restaurants is that there are just not enough of them. I'd like to order more fights, please, with a side order of bubble and squabbles, and keep the heat coming. Nothing sharpens the appetite more than a relationship meltdown on table nine, or someone sobbing into their risotto in front of an empty chair after a two-bottle tiff. Those concerned may be having a torrid encounter, of course, but admit it; everyone else just adores the free floor show. Perhaps with the exception of a couple I know, who had an argument about what the couple at the next table were arguing about.
Restaurants are supposed to be cocooning temples of gastronomy, where cares are soothed away by good food, fine wines and saucing that dissolves the outside world into a pool of herb-flecked butter. Maybe that was true in Taillevent in Paris for a moment back in 1954, but for the rest of us, it's a battlefield out there. The modern restaurant is a crucible of dashed hopes and overcooked souls, a breeding ground of social anxiety presided over by staff whose entire focus can sometimes seem to be to humiliate you in front of your date. No wonder emotions are running high. Every evening, on the floors of bistros and trattorias up and down the land, the pestle of happy anticipation smashes into the mortar of reality, and expectations of a nice fight-free night are ground to nothing. It's like the restaurant scene in Sea of Love, where Ellen Barkin is on Al Pacino's case even before their food order has been taken. 'Maybe you should slow down a little on the drink,' she tells him. 'Yeah? Well maybe the menu should come here some time this century,' he replies, knocking back another Scotch. You just know their evening is already doomed.
Meanwhile, what is incredible to row-watchers like me is why the walls of all the country house hotels in England aren't spattered with blood. Traditionally, this is where warring couples come to patch things up, which is a bit like lobbing a ticking bomb onto the barbecue coals. There is something about those whispery, pastel dining rooms, clotted with unease and Tottering-By-Gently prints, which bring nascent feelings of bitterness and partner dissatisfaction bubbling to the surface. Over breakfast Babybel cheeses and thickets of miniature vegetables at dinner, hate takes hold. Even congenial couples find themselves embarking on the five-step restaurant row, which includes The Glare, The Sighing Silence, The Look of Pure Loathing and The Ordering of Inappropriate Items ('Waiter, can I have a straitjacket for my wife, please?') closely followed by The Storming Off.
Even professionals do it. I once threw a jacket over my partner's head in a Lebanese restaurant - incredibly satisfying. In a brasserie, I hit him with my handbag; a bit Dick Emery, but it still felt good. 'Maybe this is the wine talking,' he said one night, as I bickered on about his persistent failure to fold his socks in pairs, 'but I think I want to order more wine.' Another restaurant critic recently fell out with his girlfriend while ordering mixed skewers in a Japanese grill. 'We had a pathetically intense silent row,' he wrote, 'made up of looks of withering blame and inhalations of hissing fury.' That captures a certain kind of stiff-upper-lip British restaurant row; typically comprising of a whale-sized undertow of silent resentment, accompanied by snorts of rage and the occasional spray of expelled liquid.
Thankfully, there are other types of rows - such as the Fork Jabber, the Chair Scrape and the Glass Smash - all of which are far more spectator-friendly. Isabella Blow once took a male friend to dinner at Baltic, a fashionable Eastern European restaurant in London, where they were joined by her husband Detmar. 'You fucking c*nts,' he screamed upon arrival. 'Who ordered the caviar? I'm not paying for it!' Now that's what I call an excellent starter. For the full throttle, three-star restaurant row, one must begin table-side at an operatic level and thunder on until dawn, or at least until one entire dinner service has broken.
Other notable points: the volume of the arguer's voice always rises in direct proportion to how wrong they are and the purchase of Rosa Klebb flick-knife shoes for sly, under-table attacks should be at least considered. Remember that if you and your partner truly do want a romantic supper, your best option is to stay in bed with a bowl of spaghetti. If the rest of you want to fight, then get out here so we can all enjoy it. Uma Thurman had the right idea in Pulp Fiction
'Don't you hate that?' she says to John Travolta, as they have dinner together in a restaurant called Jack Rabbit Slim's.
'What?' he replies, puzzled.
'Comfortable silences.'
3 fight-friendly restaurants
Pico Bar & Grill
74 Albert Embankment, London SE1 (020 7820 1282)
Cheap and cheerful Madeiran restaurant under a railway arch opposite the MI6 building in London. Good, crisp shellfish shrieking with garlic and chilli, plus salt cod, tapas and meat on sticks. The main feeder tracks to Waterloo run directly overhead, so plan your row for when the Eurostar thunders above. In this space, no one will hear you scream.
Antico Caffe Spinnato
Via Principe di Belmonte 107-115, Palermo , Sicily (no bookings)
A rather elegant Palermo coffee shop and ice cream parlour, where mad Sicilians quarrel at top volume no matter what happens, so no one will notice your timid, Inglese pipsqueak squabble anyway. Drink bitter cocktails laced with citrus peel and eat chilled bowls of pistachio ice cream beneath dusty and despairing palm trees.
Chardon d'Or
176 West Regent Street , Glasgow (0141 248 3801)
Brian Maule's restaurant may be many things, but it's not a peaceful place to dine on a Saturday night. Lively Glaswegians pack the joint to its very tastefully neutral seams as waiters plough through the crowds to deliver plates of scallops and roast duck. There is not a shred of calm anywhere inside the chic interior, so just feel free to roar on regardless.
· Read Jan Moir's restaurant reviews on www.areyoureadytoorder.co.uk. A new review is added every Thursday