Thought for food
In Brighton
By RAYMOND POSTG ATE
HALF A CENTURY ago there was a sort of predecessor of mine (so far as I can claim to be a public gourmet) named Colonel Newnham Davis. A few of my seniors remember him still under his extraordinary pseu- donym, The Dwarf of Blood. He had a talent which I have not: he was able to make the account of one meal alone sufficiently interesting to hold the reader throughout a com- plete article. I remember reading in the file of (I think) the old Pink 'Un the story of how he took a schoolboy to lunch at the Trocadero, which is still (though I am told, alas, not for long) very much as it was when the two walked in. He fed his young friend—who, I suspect, was the nephew who afterwards became Bishop of Antigua— with everything that a thirteen-year-old could be presumed to wish for, getting only the languid assurance that it was 'jolly nice,' and (in a moment of abandon) the opinion that the fellows at school would also think it was jolly nice.
I find I cannot make one meal provide material for an article. Puritanism, or the effect of living through the rationing of two wars, makes one reluctant; a' report like that seems nowadays no more attractive than a recorded belch. I went down to Brighton with the intention of making a Newnham Davis analysis of one meal alone, but I cannot; I can have a good cohscience only in giving you a general view of the town's resources.
This, then, is a city for which almost any Londoner who has even a small tinge of raffish- ness in his character has an affection; it has a centre of great individuality, stamped upon it by the First Gentleman. (and First Cad) of Europe, and some lovely buildings. It has more entries in the Good Food Guide than any other South Coast resort, none of which came up to the standards that a French resort of comparable eminence would pretty certainly offer. There seemed to be one possible exception to this sweeping judgment, the restaurant in Preston Street, called La Mascotte, which was the one I went down to test a few days ago. 1 was particularly interested in it, firstly because the owner had begged me to put it in the Guide and the manager had pretty violently asked me not to, and secondly because Gilbert Harding gave me a brief sketch of it, fixing me with his eyes and blowing through his moustache like a sea- lion. 'Put them in if you like,' he said in that inimitable grumbling-Panjandrum voice. 'they can only cook three things, but they can do those. Beef Stroganoff, Kieff chicken and chicken with tarragon.' Then be saluted me civilly and lumbered off.
We took none of these three, my elder son and 1. The Polish manager has gone (1 was told he was no longer living) but the service was friendly if unskilled. The decoration is charmingly Brighton, with plenty of dark red curtains and wallpaper and (quite decorous) prints and etch- ings. Prices are high; the table d'hôte is 15s, and no wine worth drinking is under a pound. We had a quarter-carafe of cool, sweetish white wine at 5s. 6d. and a bottle of Calvet Volnay '55, all right but hardly worth 26s. 6d.
Record of the meal: 'CEuf mayonnaise,' mean- ing one hard-boiled egg with a leaf of lettuce and what tasted disagreeably like bottled 'mayon- naise,' 4s. 6d.; 5s. 6d. for an egg in jelly, well made. 15s. 6d. for two crepes stuffed with lobster and drenched in a sauce made of red wine and truffles—damned good, and a vegetable included. The same price for a chaudfroid of chicken, also very well made, but a most stingy portion—part of a small breast at that price is pretty thin. Cheeses at 3s. 6d. each; and a rather firm line had to be taken to get an adequate helping. Verdict: Yes, a good place to go to, but it ought to be better. Ambiance:. Essence of Brighton. One table next to us had doggy customers, who kept their pet severely under the table; the other had a bald businessman who was ingratiatingly entertaining a bright young blonde with small eyes, who drank (in that order) sweet sherry, bend- dietine and chartreuse. I left them eating their crepes Suzette; I suppose the end of the story was what one would hope. The pattern of Brighton gastronomy else• where, as in so many other places, is being changed by the new empires. Wheeler's, who have I don't know how many London fish restaurants now, have come down here. TheY have taken over the Sheridan Tavern at the corner of West Street, just by the front, and offe their invariable menu—you know, twenty-seven different sauces on a sole, and one item called 'Plaice (local),' which may well be the best. They have also taken a new, smaller and more attractive place in Market Street but I didn't go there but to English's Oyster Bar (East Street), where with the PRO to the Brighton Council had a plaice, local, which was all it should be— that is, it was instantly fresh, left on the bone and grilled, with butter. Also laver bread, tha very rare Welsh delicacy, which is more attractive than spinach or sorrel and also prevents goitre supposing you are threatened by that.
For the rest of the town, a hurried catalogue. The Nanking, in Market Street, is a cheap, very civil, not very distinguished but quite reliable Chinese restaurant; the Pump House a few doors away is a most elegant house with a low-priced lunch and a very good dinner. Ind Coope are working hard on the Royal Albion (Old Stelae) and the grill room is good. The Cricketers to Black Lion Street is the oldest pub in the town and serves a model pub dinner with Mddoc a I Is. 6d. a bottle or thereabouts, but I am told th' Watney's Stingo is the thing to drink there The Clarence in North Street, for years my owl favourite, is most 'Brightonian' in the small and jolly, not vast and Metropole manner. Tubby Edlin's Abinger House is on the front and have been rebuked for calling it real Regency 'Brewers' Regency' I am told is what I should have said; I arrived too late (at 2.35) to be served, but I lordlily walked in by the side door and looked round. The menu card indicated a reason ably good upper-public-house standard; the wine at an Edlin place are almost, certain to be OK It's a bit unfair to call it Brewers' Regency; 4.1 very well done and deserves the name 'Whistler Regency.' Rex, not James:
'Isn't that our waiter?'
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