Four Rooms art dealer’s Twitter rant against Highgate Cafe Rouge’s plastic plants

The star of Channel 4’s auction show Four Rooms was outraged to see that the Highgate Village branch of chain French restaurant Café Rouge has acquired some fake foliage to border its outside seating area.

Mr Salmon took to Twitter to voice his angry objections to the plastic topiary outside the eatery in South Grove, which were introduced following a recent refurbishment.

The businessman, who lives in Highgate, wrote on the social media website on Friday: “Why has @Cafe_Rouge put tacky plastic plants outside the Highgate branch!

“Bloody awful. This isn’t Essex.”

Just a few days later, on Tuesday, he once again took to the social media website to express his hatred of the plants.

He wrote: “Highgate residents. Please stop eating at Cafe_Rouge until they ditch the tacky plastic foliage that is a blight on our beautiful square.”

Expanding on his dislike of the synthetic bushes, Mr Salmon told the Ham&High: “It’s just tacky and just what you would not expect to have in Highgate, or in any nice area.

“Plastic flowers are something my parents would have had in the 1960s. It’s just tacky, it’s like putting lino on the pavement.”

He added: “Plastic plants look horrible and it probably costs less money to have real plants, but they don’t want to water them.”

But the plants were defended voraciously by the branch’s manager Dean Tilbury, who stressed it was not a cost-cutting exercise.

“We don’t want to alienate anyone in the local community of course, but this is happening across refurbishments in Cafe Rouge branches and a decision has been made to source the best quality fake plants,” he said.

“Before the courtyard when it had real plants looked much messier.

“We are incredibly proud of our new building, which includes the new courtyard.”

Mr Salmon owns a number of businesses including vintage furniture gallery Decoratum in Marylebone and his art clients include supermodel Kate Moss, singer Lily Allen and actress Uma Thurman.