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LONDON can be hell at this time of year. This fusty heat which sucks on one relent- lessly, these hordes of historically-minded tourists (even Italians, who must be feeling the pinch, poor things), all the usual bad temper and bloody-mindedness, take it out of one.
Everyone always claims not to want to eat when it's hot, but they do all the same. Traditional summer meals are probably not the right way of going about it. Even if you can pretend to ignore the midges, eating al fresco is no picnic.
The thing is, eating in restaurants out of London can be a tricky business. More often than not you have to go much higher even than normal London prices for worth- travelling-for food. I have found, however, a restaurant out of London which is fabu- lously good and not exorbitant.
Lewes might not be the greenest depths of the British countryside, but it is terribly pretty. Kenward's is just off the High Street in a winding little pathway an arm's breadth wide called Pipe Passage. The passage leads northwards from the site of the West Gate in the High Street towards, and in parts along, the old town wall. In mediaeval times it was the sentry walk within the parapet of the fortifications.
Kenward's itself is a converted mid-16th- century brewery or maltings. There is a garden, and although you can't eat in it, you can sit outside to have a drink before dinner. They don't open for lunch.
The menu changes often, depending on what John and Caroline Kenward's gar- den, and the market, yield. It's a smallish menu (four starters, one or two more puddings and main courses) but well- chosen and well-cooked.
On the night I went, starters consisted of beetroot and parsley soup, mangetout and broad beans with orange, potted liver with :watercress and brill fillets with oysters and tarragon. Of those, I think the liver — chicken, guinea fowl and pigeon livers liquidised with cooked onion, egg, garlic, lemon thyme, stock, cream and sherry, baked in a bain marie and served in four leaf-shaped mounds — and brill — poached in a tarragony stock of turbot, brill and lemon sole (in which the oysters are steamed) which is then reduced and thickened — were the best, although I couldn't advise against the others.
For a main course, there was salmon with sorrel and dry vermouth, lemon sole in crab sauce, baked egg with mushroom and lovage, guinea fowl with spring onion and lemon thyme, veal with sage and cider and pigeon breast with spinach. The guinea fowl was particularly delicious: the legs had been cooked in the top of a hot oven for 20 minutes, and the breast cut into strips and sautéed with lemon thyme and spring onions, with a reduction of pork and veal stock flavoured with cider poured over. If fish is more what you want in the summer months, have the lemon sole, which is cut into four fillets, folded over and filled with parsley, crushed garlic and pepper and poached in a clear stock. These are served on top of a deeply-coloured, thickened crab stock (the crab is fried to get more flavour out), seasoned with saffron and ginger. I had the pigeon — breast meat marinaded in Malaga, cut into thin, scimitar-shaped slices, sautéed gently and placed in a round on top of a bed of , shredded raw spinach tossed in garlic, glossy like raffia. John Kenward cooks like an angel: nothing is too clumsily seasoned, too fussily arranged, too 'utter'.
If you have room, do try one of Ken- ward's 'surprises' for pudding. At this time of year there'll be a fruit one on the menu: we were given a slice of gooseberry tart flanked with elderflower and rosepetal water ices and some cultivated and wild strawberries. Earlier in the year they'd had a much-desired 'chocolate and orange sur- prise', which was a rich feast: a chocolate tart, orange tart, chocolate water ice, orange water ice and a mocha chocolate sauce. What I'd advise, however, is their vanilla ice-cream, so velvety and creamy it makes Cornish dotted cream taste thin.
The wine list is extensive but reasonably priced. We drank some 1983 Sancerre at £8.20 and a 1980 Leoville Barton (heaven- ly, but unfortunately the last bottle) which at £10.80 was £1 cheaper than at my local off-licence. There are over 40 wines under £8; best choices there, perhaps, are the muscadet at £6.50 and a fine rioja Ardanza at £6.80. Plenty of sauternes to chose from, mostly around £6.50 a half-bottle, but their best is a 1978 Château Raymond Lafon at £7.60. If you don't want coffee, choose from Keemun, Darjeeling, Jasmine, Earl Grey or Rosepetal teas. Gently attentive service from a waitress who looks like cross between a Burne-Jones and a Balthus is included in the price, which, even given the amount we ate and drank, came to under £16 a head. ,
Nigella Lawson
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