RESTAURANTS
Deborah Ross
WE're due to go on holiday next week hut. of course, we've yet to book anything. I'd like to say it's because we've been so busy working on Truly Crap Housekeeping (Christmas Special, as you have to plan well ahead in this business) but this. I'm afraid, would be largely untrue, as a kind reader, Mr Henry S. Holmes of Edinburgh, has done much of the work for us. Mr Holmes writes, 'Congratulations on Truly Crap Housekeeping. A fine magazine. However, I can't help but think it lacks something to entice the red-blooded male. Therefore I propose the following: a readers' wives page. To get you started I enclose this photo. It shows my wife saucily not emptying the cafetiere, nor doing the laundry, the dishes, the vacuuming and sundry other household tasks. Hope this helps.'
It does indeed. Mrs Holmes is shown standing by a bridge and a river, and it is such a lovely picture of someone doing absolutely nothing when she should be emptying that cafetiere or pairing up her husband's socks that we've decided to use her as our Christmas cover girl, and possibly as the centre spread as well. Now I know what you are thinking: what's Christmassy about this? Well, as far as I can see, she is also saucily not making a Christmas pudding or buying rubbish crackers from W.H. Smith with useless little sewing kits and whistles in. I thank Mr Holmes from the bottom of my heart but not, he'll be pleased to hear, from the bottom of my laundry basket. God knows what goes on down there. There are some things that went in in 1972 or thereabouts, and haven't been seen since.
No, we are holidayless largely because we are complete incompetents, for whom even lastminute.com is too late. We're more sort of soverylastminuteitspathetic.com. Or even soverylastminuteitwouldbehilariousifitwasntsopathetic.com. Anyway, whatever happens, I'm determined not to holiday in Britain again. I'm fed up with sitting in fleeces on beaches pointing at the sky, saying, 'I'm sure it's going to brighten up this afternoon', when there isn't a hope in hell but seems to be every hope of hail. At least, though, you rarely have to wear a swimsuit, which is good, as I look crap in swimsuits. You know, we once went somewhere quite nice — Mauritius, I think it was — but I've largely blanked the experience because, the day before we left, I rushed to M&S to get a swimsuit, as you do, and bought one with shorts-style legs, which were all the rage at the time. Stupidly, I didn't even try it on until we got to our destination, and do you know what? It made me look like Popeye, only rather less attractive, more masculine, and with fat exploding all over the shop, particularly in the upper-leg area. I had not bought an alternative. I lay on the beach covered by a towel, watching all the other English women who'd opted for the gingham bikini. And I knew what they were doing the moment they got back to their rooms in the evening. They were whooping. 'Thank God I chose the gingham bikini! Thank God I chose the gingham bikini! Did you see Popeye on the beach today?'
Still, 'abroad' is better for food, isn't it? It has to be. It would struggle to be worse. Honestly, I swear that British food, outside London, is just getting grimmer and grimmer and grimmer. Marie Rose? She is right to blush that terrible pink. Although, perhaps, she needn't be as ashamed as Veronique. I once ordered trout Veronique somewhere in the UK, without really knowing who Veronique was. Well, now I can tell you. She's a slimy green thing who tastes of old poo. If Veronique has ever had a date. I'd be most surprised.
The problem might, I think, have something to do with the lack of ethnic diversity outside big cities, which forces a reliance on British cuisine — something which doesn't properly exist. And even the things we are meant to do well, like roast beef and fish and chips, are often done extremely badly — the beef overdone and smothered in a glue-like Bisto gravy, fish and chips fresh from the freezer. And it might be about attitude, too. The British just don't care enough. The British seem to think of restaurants as the culinary equivalent of an Esso garage. Somewhere to refuel and go. Somewhere that does the job. fills the hole. In fact, we recently spent a few days in a hotel on the outskirts of Norwich (long story which, unusually, I won't go into). And the food? Well, put it thiS way. The scrambled eggs in the morning were made with UHT milk, presumably to give them that lovely unfresh UHT taste. Delicious? I should say not.
Anyway, on our return journey to London (London! Hurrah!) I thought it would be nice to have a decent meal for a change, but was not especially hopeful. We stopped first in Diss. which offered one kebab shop, a 'USA Chicken' and a chippie unenticingly called Mr Chips. We returned to the car and went on to Bury St Edmunds, where I was no more hopeful. However, wandering down one street we happened upon a place called Stone's, and blow me if it didn't look like a proper restaurant doing proper food. Example of starter: veal sweetbreads and goat's cheese with red-onion marmalade. Example of entrée: seared fillet of sea bass, saffron and minted-pea risotto with a chilli and coriander dressing. Pud: hot treacle tart with lemon-grass creme fraiche. YIPPEE!
So, in we go. Enthusiastically. Inside, it is sort of beige and uplit and looks newish, which indeed it is. It's been open only two weeks, as it turns out. We are a scruffy lot, but are greeted warmly and settled at a table. This place, I can tell instantly, is interested in good food, but not in a starchy, silver-service sort of way. I later speak to the owner, Jeff Stollen, who used run a business making road-traffic signs, sold up, and has thrown himself into this venture with his wife, Laurel (who makes the puddings and yet will never, I suspect, make it as a TCH cover girl), and their daughter, Vicky, the front-of-house manager who hopes to run the place one day. I ask Mr Stonell if he has any experience in the food business. He says yes. He says he has the experience that comes from 'eating it' and knowing what he likes, which is 'fresh, local produce — the best produce — lovingly prepared'. I can't think of better credentials.
It's early — sixish — so we're among the first to arrive, but the place speedily fills up. We order, and are then brought gorgeous, fresh warm rolls, accompanied by marvellous, ice-cold slabs of butter, and then a little 'compliments of the chef' tasting plate of crabmeat and caviar. This chef — Daniel Holland — can compliment me any time. I am thinking. My partner, unfortunately, rarely does so, although every so often he will say, 'You look clean.' Which is nice.
The meal is stunningly exemplary. I start with the soup of the day, a fish chowder laced with caviar and crème fraiche. Then I have the pan-roasted best end of lamb with creamed Parmesan couscous and a redcurrant jus. The lamb is divinely pink in the middle. However, I overhear the group of women on the next table asking for their chargrilled fillet of beef to be well done. 'We don't want any blood. Eugghh!' I sometimes wonder if we get the cuisine we deserve.
Only our son has pudding — brandy-snap basket filled with assorted ice-creams — as my partner and I are too stuffed. The dinner menu costs £18.95 for two courses, £23.95 for three, which I think is excellent value.
Now, I won't be here the week after next, as I'll be on the holiday we haven't booked. Toodle pip!
Stone s', 42 Churchgate Street, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk IP33 1RG; tel: 01284 764179.
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