Low life
Recommended
Jeffrey Bernard
The main trouble that I find with the majority of pub and restaurant guides and columns is that they're too damn nice about the establishments they sample. There are roughly 4,000 pubs in London and how many of them are really any good? 10? 20? Well, hardly any more. Admittedly I'm eating and drinking in ever-decreasing geographical circles, hemmed in as I am by not having expenses as your staff hack has, but even so I doubt whether a trip north to Hampstead, west to Notting Hill, south to Camberwell or east to Wapping would pay any sybaritic dividends. Space invaders and unimaginative chefs are ubiquitous. And so, of course, are 99 per cent of the bloody customers. But take L'Escargot in Greek Street. It lives on a phoney reputation created largely by magazine plugs. And why? Because Eleanor the maitresse and late of Bianchi's, is a very nice lady whom no food writer wants to upset. Neither do I. The fact remains that it's a rip off patron- ised by really dreadful people, as is Langan's Brasserie which is now also beyond the range of my pocket. Peter Langan may have — and did have — the style to ex- tinguish a kitchen fire with champagne but how could you stomach even good food seatd in the same room as the sort of people who are about to present breakfast televi- sion? Perhaps, if food writers had to pay for their grub out of their own pockets and not expenses, we might hear a different story.
As perceptive readers of this column pro- bably know, the Coach and Horses and the vodka therein comprise my psychological life jacket, but not even Norman's perfect. A space-invader wanker himself he's also got an unpleasantly noisy fruit machine and he's got a sawn-off birrel containing bottles of wine at one end of the bar, which im- pedes social intercourse there and which has damn nigh ruined that corner of the pub. To the regular such trivia are important. The bar staff have lapsed into putting the ice into your glass with their fingers and I don't know where their fingers have been. 1 stopped using the rather charming Carlisle Arms up the road because the barmen handed you your glass by the rim and I didn't know where their fingers had been either. But Norman picks up valuable house points for different reasons. Not only is the Coach a clean pub — with excellent French bread in- cidentally — but Norman can understand and appreciate the veracity of being called a prick. He is one of the very few who can take as well as dish out.
What worries me is that we're going to get some very nasty fallout from the French pub when Gaston retires,. What's odd is that Gaston's pub should have attracted
so many creeps, since he's one of the best guvnors ever. Whether it is the publican or the customers who make a pub is something of a riddle. But anyway, speaking as a.man who spends some time in pubs and safe in the knowledge that no one will take the slightest notice of what I have to say, I can recommend two or three. I say safe because there's nothing screws up a restaurant like a recommendation from a Maschler or a Parkinson. It makes for staff complacency. But as to that riddle of guvnors or customers making it all happen, the best landlords I know, apart from the aformen- tioned Norman and Gaston are Dave Potton of the Duke of York by the Spec- tator, his brother, Malcolm Potion of the Prince of Wales in Hampstead Road; Roy England of the White Swan in New Row and Vince Marshall, of the Swiss in Old Compton Street. You can keep your wine bars.
As for food on my manor I suppose the Gay Hussar is as good or better than anywhere. I also like the Soho's Friend in Meard Street and the Karlywah opposite the Coach — two oriental places that you can get out of without being beaten up by the waiters. What a pity you can no longer get out of Wheelers without getting beaten up by the bill.
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