RESTAURANTS AS THEATRE Alice Thomson
THE STRATHARDLE Highland Gather- ing was in full swing. Carrot-topped chil- dren spun round on the stage, their hair neatly plaited, their socks frilly white, exe- cuting perfect dances of the sword. The SNP MP was judging tossing the caber, and mini-skirted, bare-legged adolescents queued up for curry and chips. My goldfish cost me £8 in failed attempts at throwing ping-pong balls into coffee jars and the labrador that won best-groomed dog was promptly sick on a toffee apple in the bouncy castle. But it couldn't mar a perfect, sunny day.
The highlight was the home industries tent, where women had been beavering away for months to compete for the trophy of most competent housewife. In one cor- ner were the flower arrangements: best dried flowers, best wedding cake adorn- ment and best single stem in a candlehold- er. Then there was the needlework section: a square of orange fluff won first prize for knit and purl, and a Barbie in a cream pon- cho won most impractical dolly's outfit.
But the food tables were the real treat. There were rosettes for Scotch eggs, potato salad, sherry trifle, small jars of meat paste, raspberry cordial, Scotch pancakes, Dundee cake, suet pudding, jam tarts, cock-a-leekie soup, vegetarian quiche, cauliflower cheese and brandy snaps. Entries had two small bites taken out of each side. This year there had been a new addition: kebabs. They sat neatly in a row, made of pork, tomato halves and green peppers. Entries were garnished with pars- ley or hundreds and thousands and placed on simple white china. The pastry was thick and crispy, the cakes stuffed with currants and the Scotch pancakes looked plump and content. Everything was of a perfect beige- ness.
No diver-picked scallops with griddled foie gras, or aged zamorano manchego with membrillo. No roast trelough duck breast with wok-fried sugar snaps or deep-fried tuna nori rolls with pickled daikon. It was heaven. Not a trace of new-English ponci- ness — horseradish remoulades or jellied rabbit with prunes — not a hint of Pacific Rim kangaroo, Japanese wasabi flying fish roe, pot-bellied Vietnamese or boiled egg Ethiopian. It was old Scottish — what you read was what you got, no surprises — just lots of white flour, white sugar and pow- dered eggs to accompany the occasional well-boiled vegetable, all conspiring to cre- ate a comforting, untampered blandness.
The only problem was you weren't allowed to eat the samples. I hadn't cracked a brandy snap for years. But the phalanx of sturdy women guarding the door in their plastic Snoopy aprons were beady-eyed. I envied their husbands who could sit down to these award-winning cre- ations every night without being surround- ed by 14,000 other Conran eaters (that's the number of people our Terry's now entertaining for dinner). They knew they were eating exactly the same food as their grandfathers, not some Dakotan garage mechanic's lunch or Korean fisherman's breakfast.
Returning to London was depressing. What will the capital do when it tires of shaved parmesan -or can't be bothered to trifle with a starter of lemon rice pudding with a tomato sorbet and basil sauce? Pubs don't sell pickled eggs and quiche anymore, our taste buds recoil at diced Russian sal- ads and cheese slices. Shepherd's pie has to be called `parmentief, batter pudding, `clafoutis' and baked Alaska has become `omelette norvegienne'. We can't even eat mashed potato without adding cream, black pepper or spring onions.
I found the answer in the Honest Cab- bage. There is nothing dishonest or preten- tious about this new restaurant in Bermondsey. It calls itself a former pub turned neighbourhood café, and that's exactly what it is. There is a bullet-hole in one of the windows, but there the exotica end. The walls are old-fashioned vanilla with a few splodges of purple and green, the chairs come from a local church and the 'toilets' are pristine and practical. I was first taken by a friend who had recently become a very 'close acquaintance' of one of the chef/proprieters (this honesty is catching). But I was so impressed that I returned two days later with a Scottish friend who was pining for mince 'n' taffies with mealy pudding and ruing the day pizza first arrived in Kincardineshire.
The menu is as straight as a prize- winning cucumber. There is one dish under each heading: soup, sandwich, salad, pasta, pie, pot, vegetarian, meat and fish, followed by three puddings. The waiters were amazed when I asked for further elabora- tion on the nigoise: 'it's a salade nigoise tuna, egg, beans and lettuce'. What about the roast fennel with orange? 'It's fennel and orange.' I couldn't face the 'grey mul- let', however delicious. Food should never be called grey. Blue, red and pink are fine, but grey food is unnatural, even in a choco- late Smartie.
The calves' liver and bacon was very pop- ular, as was the chicken and ham sandwich. Everything came with two veg and mash or chips, and the menu changes each day. The first time it was carrots and cabbage, the next it was corn-on-the-cob and courgettes. The only foreign words on the menu were boccoli pasta and fried pratulina, an Italian sheep's cheese, which turned out to be the most delicious, ripe, dribbly, deep-fried cheese on salad (not the multicoloured leaves-in-a-bag variety but proper hand- shredded lettuce).
My Scottish friend had the veal and red- wine pie. 'Crisp on top, soggy in the middle, meat tender, mashed potato nice and chunky' was the verdict. I had prawn salad. The prawns were a plump teenage size, the tomatoes just blushing. The only surprise were the anchovies, which tasted like rusty fish-hooks in the middle of all this fresh- ness. The puddings — apricot cream tart, lemon mousse and pear and almond pie came with jugs of cream and brown sugar and yet more maternal generosity. We could only nibble at them, feeling like Strathardle judges, but they all got rosettes.
Prices are distinctly Caledonian. Soup is £3, main courses £7 and puddings £3. Bread, potatoes and vegetables are free. Booking isn't obligatory; most people seemed to drift in from nearby offices on the off-chance that there's a space. Suits were no-nonsense off-the-peg and there was a liberal smattering of baggy cardigans and well-washed T-shirts. The waiters may have been dressed in frighteningly fashion- able combat trousers and vest tops, but they were old-fashioned in their attention to detail, preventing one elderly gentleman from sitting on his glasses and finding another woman's contact lens that had fall- en in her boccoli. Half the tables were filled with single diners, munching chips and reading paperbacks. In the next millennium all those aircraft hangar restaurants will look chillingly dated, but the friendly café will be hipper than this year's Gucci cargo skirt.
The Honest Cabbage, 99 Bermondsey Street, London El; tel:• 0171 234 0080. Lunch for two f20.
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