Albemarle Street, W1S: a first meeting that opens with tea

One block, and a surprising amount inside it

The street is W1S from end to end. A hotel occupies a run of houses on the eastern side at W1S 4BP, and its tea room has been serving the same thing at the same hour for longer than anyone can remember. Halfway up stands the Royal Institution, where public lectures are still given in a steep wooden theatre, and where a Friday evening can be far better company than a bar.

The rest is galleries and their windows, a dense run of them, most of which will let you in without an appointment if you look like you might want to talk about what is hanging. At the top the street meets Grafton Street and turns towards Bond Street. At the bottom it gives onto Piccadilly, with the Royal Academy directly opposite.

It is also blessedly quiet. Albemarle Street carries very little traffic, no nightlife of its own, and a pavement wide enough to stand on. For an arrival that nobody notices, it is close to ideal.

Tea first, when it is a first meeting

Delphine suggests this often enough that it has become something of a house habit. A first booking of two hours at £500, beginning in the middle of the afternoon at a tea table where the room is bright, the conversation is easy and neither party is committed to anything longer.

It works because it removes the awkwardness that a hotel room at eight o'clock can carry for someone who has never done this before. By the time the pot is empty, you both know whether you want the evening that follows, and if you do, the booking is simply rewritten at the next length: three hours at £700, or the four hour dinner at £900.

If you would rather begin at the lecture theatre instead, say so. One of our companions will tell you that an evening starting with a Royal Institution discourse is the best opening in London, and she has never once been argued out of it.

Where you are likely to be staying

W1S 4BP is on the street itself and the address most often written to us here. At the foot of it across Piccadilly stands W1J 9BR, with a dining room that has firm views on dress. W1J 8LT is three minutes west on Stratton Street. W1S 2YF is four minutes north on Conduit Street, and W1B 4DY four minutes east at the top of Regent Street.

None of those houses has any connection with this one. A companion attends as your guest, which is all she is and all she appears to be.

The upper floors of this street hold flats and company apartments as well, and several of the galleries have living space above them. Delphine takes the number, the floor and the name on the bell, and does not ask what the rest of the building does.

Two minutes to Green Park

Green Park station is about 2 minutes from the bottom of the street, on the Jubilee, Piccadilly and Victoria lines, which makes this one of the easiest addresses in London to reach from an airport without changing trains. Piccadilly Circus is roughly 6 minutes east, on the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines. Bond Street is some 9 minutes north.

Your companion travels by car and is set down at whichever door you name. W1S is central, so her journey is already inside the figure and nothing is added to it. Beyond the second fare zone a taxi fare both ways is quoted as one sum in advance, and an airport hotel evening is taken at three hours or longer with her travel counted inside it.

She is paid in person on arrival, the figure exactly as Delphine wrote it to you, and nothing is added to it afterwards.

Two who choose this street

Jasmin picks Albemarle Street for the Royal Institution alone. She sits near the front, listens without moving, comes out arguing, and eats afterwards at whatever is still quiet and open. Tina comes for the dark rooms and the serious kitchens at the Bond Street end, orders far too much, and walks home to Covent Garden through the back of Soho in any weather.

Molly is a minute away on Dover Street, and Karolina crosses for a viewing most weeks. Everyone else in the Salon attends this street on the same terms.

The streets on either side

Directly west, the doors of Dover Street run parallel for the whole block. North, Berkeley Square is three minutes up Grafton Street under the plane trees. North east, the W1S blocks by Bond Street hold the salerooms and the arcades. South, across Piccadilly, the Green Park side takes the park hotels and the St James's corner. Piccadilly itself is the southern boundary and the Royal Academy the landmark everybody navigates by.