Two names, one booking: a pair of companions for the evening
Some evenings are better with four people at the table than two. A duo booking puts two companions from this register into one evening, on one confirmation, with one start time and one finishing time. It is company and conversation for a longer stretch of the night, which is what every heading on this site is, and the number of people at the table is the only thing that changes.
Each companion is booked at the ordinary ladder, so two women for two hours is two fees of £500 and nothing else is added for the pairing. The desk will not put together two women who have never met, because the whole value of a duo is that they already have their own shorthand. Pairs that work are listed below and elsewhere in the register; the West End and Shoreditch take most of them.
Why the pairing is chosen and not assembled
Two women who know each other arrive with a conversation already running, and a guest can step into it or sit back and enjoy it. Two who do not will spend the first hour being polite to each other instead, which is a poor use of an evening you have paid for twice. Cordelia keeps a short list of pairs who genuinely get on and will tell you which of them are free.
How the evening is usually built
A table for three is the common shape, somewhere with a bit of noise in it, because a duo evening is livelier than a dinner for two and a silent dining room suits it badly. Three hours at £700 each is the sensible minimum. Two hours works if the evening has somewhere else to be afterwards, though most guests find it finishes too early.
Some duos are booked for a room rather than a restaurant, which the desk arranges in exactly the same way. Company, conversation and the hours in the confirmation are what is being booked, here as on every other page.
One message, one confirmation
Send both names, the date, the hour, the length and the address in a single message. The reply names both women, the figure for each and one start time, and both travel to arrive together rather than ten minutes apart. If one of the two is unavailable, Cordelia says so and offers another name from the same short list instead of quietly substituting anybody.
Notice, which is longer than you would think
Two diaries have to agree, so a duo is harder to arrange at short notice than any single booking. A day ahead is comfortable, an afternoon is often enough on a weekday, and the same evening is possible but narrows the field considerably. Friday and Saturday want more warning than that.
Four names who pair well
Molly and Tiffany both work the east of the city several nights a week and are easy company together in a room that is not trying to impress anyone. Cindy and Roxi suit a noisier evening, an early supper and a show, and neither of them runs out of things to say. Other combinations are possible and Cordelia will tell you which.
What a duo booking is not
It is not a different arrangement dressed up, and nothing beyond time and company is being offered here any more than anywhere else on this site. Two bookings, two fees, one evening. The terms cover a duo in the same sentences as every other length.
Each companion is handed her own fee in person when she arrives, separately and without ceremony, and neither of them discusses it again for the rest of the night.
Where a duo evening actually works
A room with some noise in it. A busy dining room, a bar with music low enough to talk over, a table in a courtyard on one of the forty good evenings London manages in a year. What suits it least is a hushed restaurant where three voices carry to the next table, because a duo evening is lively by nature and the room should be able to take it.
The east of the city does this particularly well and so does the theatre end of the West End, where an early table and a late curtain give the night two halves rather than one long sitting. Tell Cordelia what sort of room you want and she will name two or three, hold one, and write the address into the confirmation.
Cancelling one half of a duo
If one companion has to cancel, the desk writes at once with an alternative name and you decide whether to keep the evening, change it or drop it entirely, at no cost. If you cancel, the ordinary rule applies to each booking separately: three hours of notice or more costs nothing, and inside two hours half of each figure stands.
Two notes worth reading first
Other arrangements
One line is enough
Write the district, the hour and the number of hours. What comes back has a name in it, a time in it and a figure in it, and nothing moves after that.