Sixes in Great Portland Street

PEOPLE used to advocate excitedly on behalf of the pineapple carpaccio for pud but I must be honest and tell you that I never really took to the Villandry in Great Portland Street.

This is a part of London where even now the peckish can do well to explore the back streets for surprising pizzerias and alpine lager pubs.

In contrast Villandry, with its reassuringly continental name, was full of people trying to keep up with the lunchtime arms race waged by their office colleagues; diners who either noticed the lemon sole prices and didn’t need to care – or noticed them and had to pretend they didn’t care.

The company blamed a rent hike when the administrators arrived in 2018; the eatery was closed even before the coronavirus savaged the West End’s lunch and dinner options.

Who’d have thought, though, if you were dissecting a crab lunch sometime before the end, that one day the hall you were sitting in would be a glow-in-the dark cricket pitch?

And yet that’s exactly what has come to pass. New venue Sixes has been happily playing its way in at the crease in the old Villandry building since opening last summer and is now operating without the same Covid restrictions that have challenged all hospitality businesses for the last two years.

It is billed as the world’s first social entertainment cricket venue: visitors arrive at Sixes not just for the wings and chips, but also to clatter a bat and ball around in four nets.

They are not all glow-in-the-dark by the way; I mentioned the luminous section first because of its absurdity and the possibility of wrinkling the brows of any Telegraph-takers up at Lord’s still seething that some games don’t last five days and women play too.

But while Sixes may be a bit of fun for the evening sloggers to enjoy, it has turned out the sound of “leather on willow” – yes, we are still talking about cricket and not anything on the south side of Oxford Street – has not been as soothing an accompaniment for the club’s neighbours as may have been predicted.

Next week Sixes will see whether it can secure new licence conditions. It wants to add a fifth net for play and a new function room in the basement, but residents have warned this isn’t genteel, cider-fused village green stuff. The howzatting is, they claim, instead rather loud.

“The doors of the restaurant are frequently open and the noises from the patrons of the cricket nets and their enthused friends, colleagues etc travel across the road to our building,” reads a complaint from a resident in nearby Weymouth House. “Organising a further venue in the basement for corporate events – which again can become rowdy – means that as those customers exit the premises on the ground floor there will be further opportunity for the escape of loud noise.”

Another objector said that they had lost “a sensible level of peace and quiet” at home due to the noise from Sixes.

A property manager for a nearby block meanwhile wanted to share “serious concerns” with the council. “We are a luxury residential block and believe the proposed changes will disrupt our business and most importantly our residents,” the objection said.

The umpire call on the application is due next Friday. I’ll be interested in the decision.