THE GOOD LIFE Pamela VANDYKE PRICE
"Such a glamorous life . . . . all those delicious meals," sigh friends to me. What, I wonder, would they have made of the following, to which I was subjected in the presumed cause of gastronomy: salmon already covered in mayonnaise, in a shell, plus bits of greenery and a slice of hardboiled egg; followed by a slab of a chicken that had never seen a blade of grass, covered with what was doubtless intended to be a chaudfroid, but which I could have believed had been purchased by the yard in a plastics factory and unrolled on the bird before serving. This plate was also enlivened by a slice of sweating ham, cut from the tinned variety, more bits of unadorned greenery and some potatoes with — surprise! — more mayonnaise! These, because some fresh herbs had been added to them, were the high spot of my lunch and virtually all I could eat. More salad, on a separate plate, was so vinegarswamped I left it. (The butter hadn't come out of the fridge and the roll had a suspiciously steam-baked look; toast, brown bread and butter and gressini were not offered.) Then — in the last week in July — this apotheosis of cold on cold course, ugh on ugh sauce, was followed by a baked Alaska, which wasn't hot — much less flaming — on the outside, and wherein I was amazed to find what seemed to be a tinned pear! The service, whether for serving or clearing, hadn't made up its mind about what is done over which shoulder of the diner, so that moving one's head was a risk. The wine, a pale beverage which bore a label signifying that it would be a fine white burgundy if it could, plopped tepidly into smallish, heavily-cut glasses.
Now I wouldn't have liked this meal if it had been served in a tent in outer Mongolia — give me yak butter, at its most rancid, rather than that. But this meal was served in the finest of the private suites of a restaurant not a quarter of a mile from Piccadilly Circus. It was given by a group of people of eminence in the food trade to some journalists who, between them, influence millions of thoughtful readers. How I longed for the honest baked bean! As it was, I don't know who I despised most — the establishment for allowing such a meal to be chosen and accentuating its horror by bad cooking and uninstructed service; the hosts, who presumably initiated the menu and actually ate the stuff; or myself — for not announcing that, gastronomically, the occasion was as liable to corrupt as seriously as anything in print. But I am betting old and actually rejected my impulse to be rude. I went away early; and cut myself a piece of wholemeal bread which I covered with, as it were, tiles of good cold butter, washing it down with a glass of claret — at tea-time!
But there are many times when, even if one could criticise in detail, one is happy to praise too: the spinach served to me at the Brompton Grill (quietly reputed for good food) was superlative : better than I can do it myself — more one cannot say. Offering young Beaujolais " chambre or chilled?" as at the enthusiastic Wine and Dine Restaurant in, of all interestingly unlikely places, 50 Battersea Rise, is an excellent talking-point to be copied — it is ideal, of course, if you order both to make comparisons. There's the avocado soup of The Bell at Aston Clinton and the London Hilton — I enjoyed both so much that I went home and made my own version and imitation etc . . . and the excellent and astonishingly cheap hamburgers at both Yours Faithfully and The Great American Disaster, where even old squares are made to feel wanted as customers. Quality can be achieved at all levels — the hors d'oeuvre at the White Tower, the cold fish salad at the Etoile, the petits fours at the Empress and the Caprice — and the set lunch or dinner at The Ark, off Kensington High Street, or a steak or grill at a steak house such as that in Davies Street, where they are not only charming to customers who arrive at 2.30 pm on a Saturday, but believe you when your order your steak ' bleu ' and don't serve one that's underdone. Funny, none of these establishments complain of business being bad, they just go on doing their own good thing. But the culinary chamber of horrors mentioned earlier is perennially a-twitch with gimmicks to attract custom. Have they overlooked the fact that people go into a restaurant to eat and drink?
Previous page
