O ff to the Duke of Cambridge, which, when it first
opened in 1998, was the world’s first fully certified organic pub, a fact I thought I’d mention, just in case you care about such things, although I’m not especially sure I do. Indeed, as it happens, I am currently trying out one of those organic box schemes where fruit and veg are delivered to the door and, my dears, the dirt on those carrots and potatoes. Shocking. Never seen anything like it. Makes you long for clean ones in plastic. Plus, the other week, they sent me something that looked hideous, like a dirt-splattered human brain, which I’ve since learned is celeriac, and which I can’t stand to look at, let alone eat. (It’s also very smelly.) So far, then, the whole business is proving not particularly economical and very muddy. I do think that if you want to save the earth you could, at least, try to pull out less of it.
Anyway, I’m off to the Duke of Cambridge to meet some girlfriends, all journalists from a variety of publications but, alas, none from the Daily Telegraph which, I would just like to say is a magnificent newspaper with the most sensible attitude towards staffing levels. (Just thought I’d slip that in. I need to keep this gig. Organic box schemes are expensive, and no more so than when you chuck away most of the contents.) The Duke of Cambridge is in Islington, down a side street just off the Essex Road and round the corner from where the Sunday farmer’s market is held. I know there are good reasons for it but still, organic food is just so mind-blowingly expensive. You potter around the market, see a chicken you fancy and say, ‘I’ll have that chicken, thank you’, and then the man serving will say something along the lines of, ‘That’ll be £19 please’, and you yelp with the shock. Of course, one likes to think that the chicken has had a nice life, but what did this one have? Its own room with ensuite, DVD player, valet service, Philippe Starck fittings and little Molton Brown shower gels? It must have done.
Into the pub, which appears to be largely full of 30-somethings who think they are cool and probably are, particularly the blokes, with their Jay Jopling glasses and slight stubble and spiky hairdos. The staff, amazingly, look quite healthy, which is odd because I’ve always found the more healthpromoting an establishment, the more deathly ill the staff look. Take the staff in health-food shops, who are all greasy hair and wan, spotty complexions and those stick-like wrists that you seriously fear will snap should they pick up so much as a (salt free) rice cake. It’s often enough to send you to the KFC over the road to order a big bucket of something with extra Sudan 1 and, while you’re about it, young school-leaver in silly KFC paper hat, bring me a barrel of Sunny Delight to wash it all down. Chop, chop, my man, which is also, I’m guessing, what the chicken says to the valet service when it needs its bath run or trousers pressing for a dinner dance at Claridge’s.
So, the staff are healthy-looking but incredibly surly. We arrive in dribs and drabs and our waiter is most put out, coming to the table and hissing through his fully certified organic teeth: ‘Are you all here yetT and when we say we are not, he marches off with the most stroppy gait. I am thinking that maybe he could do with something bad and toxic to cheer him up, like a kick up the arse. Perhaps even a free-range kick up the arse, no aiming range having been specified.
Eventually, we do all assemble. ‘Are you all hereT asks the waiter. We are, we chorus. He takes out his notebook made, possibly, from trees on their 49th recycling. ‘Ah, good,’ he says. Not so good, we say, because we haven’t looked at the menu yet. Sorry. We quickly appraise the blackboard behind us, and decide to go straight for mains as, it’s true, we are running very, very late now, what with finally assembling and then gossiping like the unstoppable gossips we are about this and that and how the redundancies at the Telegraph are an excellent thing, and not before time.
The menu is wonderfully hearty, packed with big, meaty things, which is good, as I like big, meaty things. I choose the organic (naturellement) pork chop with sweet potato bubble-and-squeak and tapenade for £14.50, which is the price of most of the mains. In other words, not cheap. Still, I love a pork chop. And I love pigs for all that they give us: sausages, ham, salami, bacon, gammon, ribs, belly, scratchings. Now, if a pig were to be kept in its own room with ensuite and little Molton Brown shower gels, etc., etc., I think it might be the least we could do. My pork chop arrives and it is huge. Massive. Like a paving slab on top of the bubble-and-squeak. And it has been brilliantly cooked, is wonderfully sweet and tender. However, the tapenade, which comes like a great slurry on top, rather obscures the taste and much of it has to be scraped aside. The sweet potato bubble-and-squeak is delicious, though, brown and crisp on the outside, all moist within. One friend has the organic salmon, which she praises to high heaven. ‘It’s not madly pink so it must come from somewhere good,’ she says, ‘and my mash is also extremely good. I think the price is right.’ Another friend, who happens to be a food editor, has the roast cod fillet with braised leeks and caper nut butter and asks the waiter just how organic the cod is, meaning, I think, wild or farmed, imported or not? He says, with a shrug: ‘It’s just organic, because everything here is organic.’ I really do think that, in eating places above a certain level, waiters should know where exactly the food comes from. He’s a miserable sod, basically. He probably doesn’t get enough E-numbers.
Pudding? You bet. I go for the pear and apple crumble (£4.50) while others chose the pears poached in red wine and spices (£4.50) and the cheese board (£7.50). Mine is lovely, tart, not over-sugared, and with a blissfully buttery yet crunchy crumble. The pear is good too, and the cheese board (brie, stilton, cheddar) is excellent and generous. So the food here is good. No question. But it just seems a little too poncy and arrogantly pleased with itself somehow. At one point, I went up to the bar and not a single barman acknowledged my presence or moved to serve me, even though they were not serving anyone else. I had to do a very loud ‘Excuse me’. Frankly, the whole place could do with a bit of a free-range kick up the arse. And maybe a Fairtrade punch on the nose, too.
Duke of Cambridge, 30 St Peter’s Street, London N1. Tel: 020 7359 3066.
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