Laura Davis enjoys a night at Bar 52, but fails to find Oscar winner

IT'S not often that you walk into a restaurant and there's an Oscar-winner sitting at the table next to you - or, in this case, a potential Oscar winner. I don't mean potential as in an actor who's made a great film and is practising his acceptance speech in front of his bedroom mirror just in case.
 
I mean potential as in "there's a man sitting on the table next to me who sounds exactly like Steven Spielberg/Al Pacino/Daniel Day-Lewis but I'm not sure if it's him".
 
On this particular evening, the voice was the spit of Jim Broadbent, star of Moulin Rouge, Bridget Jones and Iris (for which he won the Oscar).
 
We were in Bar 52, a bar-restaurant which opened about two years ago only to close and reopen once again under new management five months ago.
 
It was empty when we arrived, save for a few people at the bar and one man eating right at the back of the room.
 
I didn't get a good look at his face before sitting down, and it was only when he explained to the waitress that he was trapped in Liverpool by the high winds and was staying in a nearby hotel that I recognised his voice.
 
"Oh," I thought. "Perhaps he's filming in Liverpool and it slipped under the Daily Post's radar."
 
Of course, it would have been rude to stare so I concentrated on the menu instead, hoping to catch a surreptitious glimpse of his face later on.
 
In his recent series of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay appears to have been on a crusade to wipe out pretentious dishes in favour of simple good cooking.