Consuming Interest
The Diner Out
By LESLIE ADRIAN Last year I sent out a list of recommended restaurants to people who wrote in for them : and I was astonished by the number of readers who did. But, as I wrote recently, such lists very rapidly go out of date. Reluctantly, I have de- cided that the best plan for the future is from time to time to recommend restaurants in this column—reluctantly, because the reputation of such recommendations has been largely destroyed by writers who have not scrupled to announce their impending arrival at the restaurants con- cerned, in the expectation of being lavishly treated, in both senses of the word. I shall preserve anonymity; and try to look on the restaurants with an incidental customer's eye , (rather than with the eye of a regular, who is often given better treatment because he is known—and because he knows what to ask for and what to avoid); my intention being to cater mainly for the occa- sional visitor to London rather than for the Londoner himself.
The queries I get fall into roughly three categories. The visitor wants to know either (a) the 'best' restaurant (because he wants to impress some guest or because he likes to have a no- expense-spared celebration of some kind); or (b) a good restaurant, but not too expensive (often the request is for some new restaurant which has just started up or just come under a different management); or (c) an agreeable cheap restaurant of what used to be called the 'chop house' type (and still is, in the City), but not necessarily English, where the cooking may be no great shakes but the atmosphere is sym- pathetic. There are also, of course, questions about restaurants in particular districts—in Notting Hill or Chelsea, say—by people who are staying in hotels there; and about restaurants specialising in the dishes of some particular country. But the first three are the commonest; and I propose to try to answer them briefly here.
There is no `lrse in London at the moment. The restaurant which is most commonly given that title has, 1 am sorry to say, ceased to deserve it, largely because the service has become expeive-account-minded. The other day a friend of mine was taken there for a business lunch, and not a very lavish one : an aperitif, two courses. a bottle of wine, a cigar and coffee. The bill came to over £9. The host would have signed it without protest if my friend had not known him well enough to express incredulity.
They queried it, and found that 30s. worth of somebody else's liqueurs had been added; they had also been charged for large cigars when they had made a point of taking small ones.
The point of this cautionary tale is not just that bills should be checked, which is common sense at any restaurant : it is also that the cost came to over £3 a head when the bill was cor- rectly totted up; and good though it was, it was not worth it. The fact is that most of the people using this restaurant are there on expense accounts and sign their bills without looking at them; and of the rest, many are there for prestige purposes, and would feel the exercise wasted if they had to have a row over the bill.
The only restaurant which might be recom- mended on this level is the Caprice, which has enthusiastic supporters, but where, I feel, diners tend to be herded together like sheep in a pen. Some restaurant-goers obviously enjoy this, par- ticularly those who like to feel they are shoulder- to-shoulder with the famous. Not I—and for the same reason I can never recommend the in- numerable little restaurants which have sprung up in the last five 'years, particularly around the Kensington/Knightsbridge/Chelsea area, where the food is often very good but where the diner often finds himself in too close proximity to not very appetising neighbours.
But to come to positive advice. I am not going to try to give a detailed assessment of London restaurants : I shall merely indicate some per- sonal preferences and try to explain them. The meal I have most enjoyed in recent weeks was at La Rave: it has the disadvantage of being a formidable way down the King's Road, almost at World's End, but the advantage, to my mind, that you can bring your own wine (or they can send out for it). The most consistent of the French restaurants in Soho, in my experience, is the Epicure : it is a trifle cramped, but not, like some of the Chelsea places I have referred to, uncomfortable. Of the Italian restaurants in Soho, I have found Bianchi's the best value. It always seems to me foolish to pay a lot for Italian-style food, and I would rather go to Bianchi's—or, for that matter, Bertorelli's, where the food can be pretty dim but where the ambiance is still agree- able—than to more pretentious places.
On balance, though I have not found them consistently reliable, the two Beotys—one in Ken- sington, the other in St. Martin's Lane—are good, in a rather more expensive range. For people from abroad whom you want to take somewhere English there are Wheelers, in Old Compton Street—for fish—and Rules, in Maiden Lane. I cannot recommend the restaurants in the Percy/ Charlotte Street bracket; they can be good, but I rarely find them good enough to justify the cost.
I recently found myself at the Escargot, in Greek Street, twice in four days, and found the dinner excellent both times; it, too, has a sym- pathetic atmosphere, with its venerable waiters and its general air of long service—a pleasant contrast with the many which look as if they opened yesterday to cash in on the mugs. The Escargot may be forgiven even those dreadful Paris prints on the walls if it always produces as good a meal.
Incidentally, when writing about suppliers of Essolene Glycol for anti-freeze purposes, I should have said that the major suppliers this season were Shell, ICI and Chas. Page & Co. Ltd.
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