Pasta, a good bottle and Bianka by the marina

Some women dress for the evening. Bianka dresses for a decade, usually one that ended long before she was born. Curvy and 165 cm, she favours fitted waists, a full skirt that moves when she walks and a small structured bag carried in the crook of her arm. Her long light brown hair lightens to sun-streaked gold towards the ends, and her hazel eyes warm by several shades in candlelight. None of it reads as costume. It reads as a woman who decided early what suits her.

What guests remember afterwards is the attention. Bianka listens properly, then returns to a detail you dropped an hour earlier, which is rarer than it should be. She talks in relaxed, fluent English. Her Sundays involve a floured board and pasta rolled by hand, and her Saturdays usually involve a market rail of old dresses. Wine she treats as a conversation rather than a performance, so she asks what you enjoy before she opens the list.

East of the Tower, her choice is Emilia's Crafted Pasta on the edge of St Katharine Docks, where the tables look over moored yachts and the kitchen rolls its pasta where you can see it. She suggests three small plates to share instead of two large ones. By the time coffee arrives the marina lights are on and the walkways of Tower Bridge glow above the rooftops. Then a slow lap of the basins, and a short cab or a stroll to your hotel.

She comes from Knightsbridge, around half an hour by cab, and likes a day's notice to hold the right table. Start with the Wapping page for nearby hotels, weigh the lengths on rates, then give booking your date.