RESTAURANTS AS THEATRE
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UPLIFTING THE SOLE Le Monde in Cardiff —
Contained within a dark, woody upstairs room in Cardiff's Continental Café Quarter (and that's official), Le Monde looks and feels like an updated version of the classic 1970s wine bar. The tables do not actually sport wax-encrusted old wine bottles as lighting, but I bet they used to, and their spirit lingers on. The food is very Nineties, though; cleverly simple and fresh, but with a twist. Rather than choosing from a menu, diners visit a counter where the fish (there is meat too, but that would be missing the point) is displayed on ice. You choose. They weigh it, cook it very simply and serve it to you, often without even a sauce, accompanied by good chips.
The crawfish tail (£18.75 a lb), though not often seen elsewhere, is a Le Monde staple, and strangely compulsive for the extra pungency which makes you appreci- ate how subtle is lobster. The actual lobster I have never tried because, unlike the craw- fish, it is precooked and chilled. Deep-fried calamari (£4.95 or £9.90) are fresh and suit- ably briefly cooked. Chips (compris) are crispy, light and copious. King prawns (£6.95/£12.95) lack real salty sea-dog fresh- ness, but are nicely meaty in compensation. They are served with a bisque sauce which is a copybook example of how gratifying something simple, not to say classical, can be if done well. Eating them, like a lot of things in Le Monde, is a pleasantly slurp- ing, peasantly manual, wholeheartedly digi- tal experience. The house Chablis (Louis Latour £17.95) is well balanced and spicy so that it is hard to see why anyone bothers with anything else; though, should you want to, the list — scrawled on the walls like the menu — is extensive.
As well as artlessness of cooking, Le Monde has another advantage over its Lon- don cousins: unpretentiousness of clientele. Not that it is not smart — the place is jam- packed with fake Victorian street lamps and ersatz shrubbery, and the floor is well coated in sawdust — but it is not so relent- lessly self-conscious. No one in Le Monde is looking out for people they know, either personally or by reputation. You will not catch the person you are talking to glancing over your shoulder every few minutes to get a glimpse of whoever has just walked past. You will bump into neither Adrian Gill, Sylvester Stallone, nor even, I would wager, Vincent Kane. There will be no need to scrutinise that funny-looking little man at the corner table in rapturous congress with Catherine Deneuve. He will not, after all, turn out to be your agent, or anyone else you know. Nor will she be Catherine Deneuve.
At about £50 per head for two courses, wine and the tip, Le Monde is not much cheaper than the most fashionable London establishments; but the punters are a damn sight more relaxed. The non-business clien- tele tends to be open-necked, good- humoured and bibulous. Groups, rather than couples, are the rule, and a good, but not too boisterous, time is usually had by all.
Le Monde is, however, afflicted with the same cancer that strikes a chill fear into light-hearted restaurant-goers the world over. Just as tediously in Caerdydd as in Llundain, the death-watch beetle of the restaurant world is at work irradiating whole sections of the room with pomposity and self-regard. His name is Corporate Man.
It is pretty much the form at Le Monde to begin with a quick drink standing at the bar, whether or not you are waiting for a table. Standing at bars being one of Corpo- rate Man's main skills, he and his braying, guffawing colleagues use it as a launch pad for the outrageous incursions to follow. In Le Monde, as everywhere else in the world, they are almost always English, though occasionally Scottish or Irish. Even in Cardiff, they are never Welsh.
`You must be Jimmy Pinstripe. Recog- nise a Corporate Man anywhere. Good to see you, Jimmy How are you? Welcome to our humble little abode here. Not quite what you're used to up in Manchester, I'm sure, but we do our best. Now, have you met Johnny Timeserve from the Derby office? Johnny heads up the Data Systems side over there. Johnny's been in Corporate Inc. for nearly as long as I have, so that tells you something about how old he is. Ha ha ha. Anyway, now for more serious matters, what can I get you guys to drink? Jimmy? Dry white wine. Johnny? Dry white wine. Well, I think I might just join you and have a dry white wine myself. Barman, barman, three dry white wines, please. How's it going up there in the Manchester office? A little bird told me that old Peter Stripeshirt is looking very vulnerable because of all the problems they've been having with the new JIT stock-control systems. Could be time for a new broom is what we're hearing down here. Bit of a backwater here in sheepshaggerland, obviously, and we don't hear much, but what we do has an uncanny habit of turning out to be right. . . . '
Three or four Corporate Men can go on like this for hours, and they do. They are the most boring, narrowest people in the world, which, incidentally, would be a far better place if the same rule were applied to Corporate Man as was invented for light-fingered schoolchildren by impover- ished corner-shop keepers. Just as no sane newsagent-tobacconist will admit more than three children at the same time unless accompanied by an adult, so there should be a limit to the number of Corporate Men who can patronise a particular restaurant simultaneously. The only exception to this should be the restaurants of large interna- tional hotel chains, which are Corporate Man's natural habitat.
Notwithstanding this corporate scourge which afflicts all restaurants, Le Monde is a pleasingly unpretentious place to do the shellfish and white burgundy thing. And there's no danger of being bothered by bloody film stars.
Sion Simon
Sion Simon writes a weekly column in the Daily Telegraph.
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