Dining in the sky: does fear make food taste better?

London boasts some of the finest restaurants in the world, many of them with spectacular views over the capital. So, it is baffling why anyone would actively chose to spend £50 on breakfast at the most recent venue to open: London In the Sky. Unless you were a pepper pot short of the full cruet set.

But I am surrounded by 20 fellow customers, most of whom seem to be looking forward to our “flight”.

I say “flight”, but in fact it is more like a slow winch to a certain death.

That’s because London in the Sky is a table suspended from a crane, 100 foot in the air.

Attached to the table - by rather insubstantial-looking poles - are chairs that look as if they have been ripped off a fairground roller coaster.

The middle of the table is cut out, and replaced with a platform on which stands an oven, three waiters and the chef, Anna Hansen. They are all strapped into harnesses.

In all, there are seven tonnes of steel, human bodies, and cutlery, which are due to dangle from a single wire, high above a park in Docklands. There is a flimsy transparent plastic sheet above to stop any rain, but otherwise it is completely open to the elements.

The floating restaurant, developed in Belgium nearly 10 years ago, has appeared in Britain quite a few times, but only as part of corporate events. This is the first time it has been open to members of the public, who will have to fork out £250 for an hour-long dinner, where some well-known chefs will be cooking, including Atul Kochhar and Alyn Williams. Apparently, nearly all bookings are full.

Restaurants that feel the need to boast about their health and safety records are usually dodgy kebab shops and about as welcome as a dose of Ebola. But a man from London in the Sky shows me a sheet of instructions informing me that no loose footwear is allowed, neither are pregnant women. And then comes the killer line: “Each Dinner in the Sky event is covered by £10 million public liability and third party insurance.”

I am seriously starting to question what I am about to do. That’s because I suffer from vertigo -- not cripplingly so, but enough to make me feel deeply anxious when I stand near the edge of any roof, cliff or ladder.

^{Telegraph writer Harry Wallop tucks in to breakfast at 100ft}

“I’ve not been up in this yet. I am slightly apprehensive,” says Hansen, the founder of Modern Pantry restaurant in Clerkenwell. This does not comfort me, as I, along with all the other guests, are strapped into our seats with double safety belts. She adds: “I don’t really like heights. So, I am not sure why I agreed to do this. It was a moment of madness.”

Then, the crane slowly starts to winch us up, and the above the roof of the nearby Docklands warehouses is revealed the O2 Arena and various impressive-looking ships docked near Greenwich. But I am unable to enjoy the view as I spend most of my energy making sure I do not look down. I can sense, out of the corner of my eye, the ground steadily receding beneath my feet but I am studiously looking ahead at Hansen and Dale Agar, who runs London in the Sky and is acting as a waiter.

“After five minutes, you won’t notice that you up in the sky. You will just enjoy yourself,” he says, trying to soothe me. It is a lie.

My entire body is frozen into a corpse-like stiffness and I dare not loosen my vice-like grip on the table. This makes eating difficult.

My toasted oats, nuts and seeds, green apple, roast apricot and The Collective Straight Up Yoghurt -- posh granola -- is, I think, delicious. But my taste buds appear to have shut down.

“I was wondering if fear might make food taste better,” says Dr Marcus Posner, a young eye doctor, and one of my fellow guests sitting at the table. I inform him that I don’t think it does. He agrees

He won a seat on the “flight” in a competition and says he is up for trying any new experience. He seems unfazed. But he has been skydiving.

“This is different from sky diving,” he says. “Dangling is a bit more unnerving.”

We all have very small foot rests under our chairs, but this does nothing to alleviate my profound unease. I can feel the wind whipping up my ankles. I just want to get down.

Halfway through the meal, the entire open-sided contraption swings around, so that we can see another view. This causes even more discomfort as we all gently sway, like an abandoned puppet. To add to the insult, the view is actually very dull - the back of various tall, ugly skyscrapers.

The crane, unfortunately, is situated on the east side of the Docklands, which means you only get a slither of a view across to the city between a gap between the HSBC and Citi buildings.

^{Suspended above London's Docklands, the 'hovering restaurant' with views over the City}

The food continues to impress, I think. Some tea-smoked salmon with yuzu hollandaise at least took my mind off where I was, for a bit. Though it turns out that eating a meal while strapped into a fairground chair is rather uncomfortable, as I find it impossible to lean forward.

After half an hour, the moment comes that I have been waiting for: we descend. Each metre, as we sink down, is a blessed relief.

Eventually we touch down and I am released from my torture chair. It is only then that I realise that I have spent the last half hour so screwed up with tension that I have failed to digest anything. As a result, I have stomach ache.

Agar is keen to find out how I found it. I tell him.

He looks a little crestfallen. But I am not sure my opinion will have any impact on the success of his venture, which is running until September 21, with nine “flights” a day.

I hope his future diners enjoy themselves more than I did.

For more information on London in the Sky, visit www.eventsinthesky.co.uk/events/london-in-the-sky/