THERE aren't too many people, especially in the restaurant business,
who can claim to be having a good recession, but Steven Glaister, who owns Glaister's just off Ful- ham Road, sweetly owns up to have `bene- fited from the present downturn in the economy'. The place is cheap and comfort- able; the joint jumps. That, of course, shouldn't be surprising. But, in a way, I find it odd that it is those restaurants that offer `home cooking' that are doing particularly well. You'd think that when times were had people would just stay at home for it.
Not, I might add, that I am surprised in the particular instance of Stephen Glais- ter's success. I am hesitant, however, about talking it up. The whole point of the place is that it doesn't have the frenzied tension of the fashionably in-demand, nor its self- consciousness. It might be the `in' brasserie in one of the more illustrious university towns — it has that languid, undergraduate air. There's no pressure, no hurry. You feel you could sprawl over an ever half-finished cup of coffee all afternoon, as if it were merely a matter of sitting out a couple of lectures. Of course, it is rather a notch up from your usual run of college hang-outs, but the idea is the same: dark wood pan- elling, familiarly rickety chairs and glossy buttermilk walls on which hang turn-of-the- century advertising posters and chalky blackboards with the day's specials.
The food is what a friend of mine who eats there regularly calls `comfortingly average', but, as he adds, 'it's just what one wants for Sunday lunch'. I come here now and again for Sunday lunch, and I quite agree. This is not the time I want culinary high jinks. When I come here I want a
Is it Edith Cresson or the Turkish onions?'
bloody Mary and sausages and mash. The sausages here are coarse-grained and herby, the onion gravy manages miracu- lously not to be oversalted and the potatoes — and this is rare these days — are actual- ly mashed, they are not pulped by the food processor into a ghastly gloopy soup. I keep meaning to give their eggs Benedict a whirl, but I seem rather reassuringly locked into habit here. I think it's that sort of place. The friend with whom I normally come here is as regular in his practices. He always has a kir, then the bacon cheese- burger.
I have never been much tempted by the starters, and was rather dismayed when I ordered the potted shrimps once to find that the shrimps arc melted out of their pots so that they flounder about on butter- drenched toast. The whole point, as I have always understood it, is the combination of the crisp hot toast and that cold, compact butter-mound of shrimps. (The bread and butter pudding also suffers from a surfeit of melted butter. Go for the vanilla ice- cream with melted Mars bar on the pud- ding menu instead.) Both the sausages and the baconburger (which comes with chips, not the proper kind but the matchsticks which have so undeservedly won favour in practically all kitchens) cost £5.95, as do the salmon fish- cakes in parsley sauce. Other main courses are more, but not much. For around £7 you can have grilled lamb cutlets, or liver and bacon, and, at £8-ish, beef stroganoff. The most expensive thing on the menu is a fillet steak (just grilled or with bearnaise, au choir) for £9.95. There's a three-course set lunch for £12.95 every day and on Sundays there is always roast beef.
In the summer you can while away an afternoon quite happily with a bottle of icy, oaky chardonnay and a plate of grilled sar- dines in the garden at the back. This is not exactly a garden, but a muralled area, much garlanded, covered with a glass roof, which can be raised in the hot months. This is a cheap place, but there is nothing mean and confining about it. A decent dinner for two should not cost more than £40-ish, and very easily less.
Glaister's: 4 Hollywood Road, London SW10; tel 071 352 0352.
Nigella Lawson
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