I phone my mother to ask if she wants to meet
in Brent Cross shopping centre for lunch. This, I should add, was in the run-up to Christmas when I'd already
been to Brent Cross at least 456 times that week, haemorrhaging money like a mad person, first on good presents and then, when desperation and fatigue and the sobbing attacks set in, useless crap from the Gadget Shop. It's a miracle, actually. that I'm still alive to tell the tale, as every time you go near the Gadget Shop there will be someone demonstrating a remote-control helicopter with the sort of propeller action that, if it were not for some nifty and judicious ducking, would take your eyes out before slicing your head off. Apart from the fact the Gadget Shop sells useless, mindless rubbish and wants to kill you, I have nothing against it.
Anyway, my mother is keen, and suggests Carluccio's Caffe in Fenwick's. Carluccio's in Fenwick's? That's a new one on me, I say. She says, All my friends are talking about it. They say it's very good.' A good eating place in a shopping centre? How bizarre. I mean, you simply don't expect to eat well in shopping centres, just as you don't expect to eat well in motorway service stations, say, or on trains or in airports or anywhere in Wales. (Note to Welsh people: please don't write to me saying that I would never be as rude about Jews as I am about the Welsh, as it's very boring and also untrue.) Now, where were we? Oh yes. Carluccio's, and Antonio Carlucci°, who opened his first Italian food shop in Covent Garden in 1991, and now has several of these Caffes — which are part-deli, part-restaurant — across London. I have always, I must say, been quite taken with Antonio Carluccio — such a big, gentle bear of a man, although with rather terrifyingly harry ears. Still, they shouldn't be held against him. Actually, maybe they should, because if they weren't, if they were freefloating, how doubly scary would that look? Plus, they might fall in the minestrone. Whatever, the Carluccio's in Fenwick's is on the lower ground floor, to the rear of the household-wares department, where a woman today is demonstrating some kind of instrument that can slice a whole cucumber in less than a second. Personally, I have never quite seen the point of cucumber, which is surely no more than water in the shape of a stick, but should I ever need to slice one really, really quickly, I now know where to come. I also know that Carluccio's is where the Orangery — a self-service job selling congealed cheesecake and the like — used to be. I know this because in my gap year, when I should have been up the Andes or helping
others less fortunate than myself, I was instead working in Fenwick's, sometimes in the Orangery when they were short-staffed, but mostly I was a waitress in what was then the top-floor restaurant, Window on the World. As it happened, it wasn't so much a window on the world, more a window on where the North Circular joins the Hendon Way, but you'd be amazed how many people would insist on a window table, even wait for one. 'But, madam,' I would say, 'we're not talking a world-class view here. We're talking of where the North Circular joins the Hendon Way.' Still, they'd insist and insist and then wait and wait and wait. Jewish matriarchs, mainly. Silly cows. (Note to Jewish people: please don't write to me saying that I would never be as rude about the Welsh as I am about the Jews, as it's very boring and also untrue.)
Carluccio's is a bright, bustling place, all blue and cream and with all the staff kitted out in blue and cream aprons and caps. The front bit is the deli — panettones piled high — with the restaurant at the back. My mother is already here, predictably, as she has a horror of poor timekeeping and leaves for all appointments fantastically early to allow for traffic jams and abduction by aliens and the like. I join her at the table for two, which is so close to the people on the tables for two on either side of us that we might as well all be on a table for six. This is not the place for a secret tryst. At one point, we all reassure the mother to the left that the Simms computer game she has just bought her daughter for Christmas is just the thing. No, we don't think she'd have preferred the Sirnpsons. Yes, we do think your younger daughter will love the Barbie house. No, it's not in the way. My mother and I always sit with our knees under our chins.
To the menu, which promises food prepared using 'the best, fresh, natural ingredients from Italy'. For my starter, I order Sardine in Carpione — grilled fresh sardines served in a sweet-and-sour marinade of pine nuts, carrots, raisins, red onions, white-wine vinegar and bay leaves, at £4.65. It's perfect. Truly. The sardines are obviously spectacularly fresh, with moist, sweet flesh that falls off the bone and is doubly delicious when teamed with the crunch of the pine nuts. My mother has Antipasto Misto, a large plate of salamis and hams with roasted peppers, a green bean and mint salad, olives and roasted tomatoes, at £6.95. The meat is proper meat, and the green bean and mint salad a big hit. 'Really good,' says my mother.
might order that myself,' says the other mother, to the left. Next, we ask for a single portion of Penne Giardiniera — penne with courgette, chili, deep-fried spinach balls with parmesan and garlic at 5.5.95 — to share. We might be ladies who lunch, but we do not want to be fat ladies who lunch. However, when the waiter finally brings it — the service is sweet but slow, hindered as it is by the need to negotiate umpteen buggies and Barbie houses — it comes in two separate bowls. 'Is this one portion?' I ask. 'It's probably two,' says the waiter. 'The chef is feeling generous today.' Top chef! The penile? Beautifully flavoured, with a wonderful after-kick of chilli.
The concept of the Carlucci° Gaffe is a good one. High-quality ingredients cooked knowledgeably, priced reasonably and served fastish. Why not have one in a motorway service station, say? I mean, given the choice, don't people prefer good food to bad? Whatever, it was a nice lunch and I get out of Brent Cross safely, even though it was touch and go outside the Gadget Shop, where a remote-control stunt car nearly carved my shin off. Toodle-pip! And Happy New Year!
Carluccio's Caffe, Fenwick, Brent Cross shopping centre, London NI,V4. Tel: 020 8203 6844.
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