Paper Moon is the Italian restaurant inside the Old War Office on Whitehall, now a hotel called Raffles London at the OWO. It has nine restaurants and bars, because it is a Disneyland for the 1 per cent in the fraying centre of the British state, which is enraging and hilarious. I reviewed Saison in November and found it as chilly and finessed as the British state pre-crisis. OWO reminds me of a theme park I visited in Georgia, Russia, two decades ago in winter. It was a fine endeavour but pointless, the happy children had fled. You can’t have a grand hotel inside a post-Imperial bin fire. It makes no sense.

Paper Moon is grey, and Art Deco, of course: the pre-calamity aesthetic
of choice

Paper Moon is rather better than Saison: perhaps Italian food can’t help but exude warmth. Or perhaps the stakes are not so high, the further you move from OWO’s bloodless heart, which is a painting of Earl Kitchener’s face in triplicate. The room, which is through the courtyard, over-looking Whitehall, is smaller and less terrifying than Saison’s painted atrium; the staff seem more cheerful.

Paper Moon is grey, and Art Deco, of course: the pre-calamity aesthetic of choice. It is soothing and the tree – unlike at the Louis XV in Monte Carlo – is not full-sized, which is a relief. I’m not a fan of establishing outside inside at vast expense, though I expect it will get worse with climate change. (Dubai already has an indoor mountain thanks to indentured servitude and the madness which comes with too much money.) Plaster, marble, wood and wool: all are grey. The art is retro portraiture: Deborah Kerr of The King and I is above our table in furs, impersonating Elizabeth II. She is opposite a photograph of a hot Italian woman and a goat, who look equally annoyed. Apart from Deborah Kerr and goat, it is empty on a weekday lunchtime.

Paper Moon was founded in Milan in 1977 and a surviving 1970s Italian restaurant is always an excellent thing. It has branches in Istanbul, Hong Kong and Doha, so Whitehall barely tests it. The kitchen feels long-established: ossobuco (£47) is exquisite; risotto porcini (£28) perfect; merluzzo nero (battered black cod with tartar sauce) and calamaretto spillo (seared baby squid) as good as you will find. We also have pizza OWO (essentially an American Hot at £23) and tiramisu (£14). It’s rare for a high-end Italian restaurant to feel so relaxed but then, the staff are gifted.

Paper Moon has another thing going for it: the rising prices of fast, and bad, food in London. You can spend as much in the Angus Steakhouse at Piccadilly Circus, and almost as much in Five Guys opposite, and their chips come in a paper bag. These are more complex and gilded surroundings. If you come on Saturday – demo day! – you can watch the hard-left try to abolish liberal democracy through very clean windows and eat pizza with a glass of wine for £40.

I’m still concerned that, as we come to war with Russia, our ancestral war room is a Mediterranean all-day restaurant but I went through this on the Karl Marx walking tour of Soho. Everywhere Marx lived and worked is now a restaurant, cocktail bar, or snack bar: what begins as an intellectual marvel in a dynamic world always segues, at some point, into the place you buy burritos. That’s just the way. I’m told we still have a war room beyond Saison and Paper Moon, just not as fancy, and this is as good a metaphor for decline as even this column can give you.