SUMMER WINE AND FOOD
My favourite summer restaurant
Gavin Stamp
I am rather surprised to have been asked to contribute to this as I have never been able to take writing about food seriously. More pretentious rubbish is published about food than even about modern architecture. What matters for me in a restaurant is that it should be pleasant to be in and, ideally, be somewhere interesting. I therefore vividly recall a wonderful lunch on a very hot day almost exactly a year ago at Little Thakeham, one of Lutyens's loveliest houses near Storrington in West Sussex, which is now a restaurant and hotel. I had not seen the house before and it did not disappoint. Nor did the management, for we felt as if we were private guests. There were few people there; the lunch was long and leisurely and then we were left alone to enjoy the garden for the rest of the afternoon — a spectacularly lush and clever garden which, I am told, is not by Gertrude Jekyll, as claimed, but I would never have known. We could even have gone for a swim, had we been equipped to do anything so un-Edwardian and vulgar. I can never remember what*I have eaten; I just recall the lunch being huge and deli- cious. My wife tells me it was excellent roast lamb, fresh vegetables and then strawberries. It was frightfully expensive, of course, but for once well worth it.
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