One Square doesn’t answer its phone. Sitting here now in this joyless restaurant I realise that I should have taken that as a warning that the Sheraton doesn’t expect anyone who isn’t resident or doing business in the hotel to eat here. The diners here this evening- very few, maybe the bad word has got around- are corporate, all men. Their companies will pick up the bill, I expect, never a state of affairs that begets good food.

I’m here because One Square has a new chef. You certainly wouldn’t come for the experience. Although the restaurant is almost empty we’re sat at a cramped window table. Normally you’d want a window table. Theoretically speaking, this could have a phenomenal view over to the Usher Hall and the castle, were it not for the eyesores in our foreground: a concrete wall, crowd control barriers flapping with plastic hazard tape, and that weird grey igloo thing. Hard to know whether the latter is the council’s idea of an artwork, or a would-be futurist architect’s shed for street sweepers’ equipment. The other thing that’s wrong with our table is that it’s squashed in beside the service station. Seated, my dining partner’s head is about a foot away from our waitress’s elbow as she keys in orders. This table is snug in the wrong way. I guess it’s not a load of laughs to work here, perhaps that why our waitress clomps up and down gracelessly like the chatelaine of a boarding house, laying other tables loudly, possibly resentfully. In a film, she’d be played by Olivia Coleman.