St James’s Park, W1 (020-7451 9999)I don’t know what St James’s Park is to you, but as far as I am concerned, it is my park. To the statistically-minded tourist it is, no doubt, the oldest Royal Park in London, uniquely convenient for no fewer than three royal palaces. To fans of Cold War-era espionage thrillers, it is a place where effete Russophiles in homburgs and trench coats meet to exchange briefcases and bodily fluids. To Henry VIII it was an excellent spot to put another deer park (one just can’t have too many). To a duck it is the hinterland of a small but conveniently located landing strip. To most Londoners it is a place to which one never goes: too small, too central, no ball games, no topless sunbathing, no drug dealers, no gigs, no tolerance of the faeces of their nasty little dogs. But to me, at least for five years, it was my park.
Not my “home park”, you understand, that’s different. Your “home park” is where you ride your first bike, kick your first ball, get your first sun tan. It’s where you graze your knees, climb trees, kick a ball over a sweater and shout “in off the post!”, cut your hand on a broken Panda cola bottle, throw dog poo in a girl’s eye, fly a kite, and then get it stolen by topless ginger-headed kids on Choppers who have tiny nipples on their milk-white, skinny chests and at first try to befriend you, then say, “You’re posh, incha?” and steal whatever you have. For me that place was Basing Hill Park, off the A41, by the footbridge, just before you have to choose between Brent Cross and Hendon Central. Basing Hill was never a deer park. Perhaps only because Henry VIII’s kingdom did not stretch quite that far north.
St James’s Park was my “school park”. Very different. The nearest park to school is where you have your first snog, your first fag, your first private session with a porn mag (that’s why the parks people leave them for you in the bushes). It’s where you smoke your first joint and run from the police for the first time (they’re only parks police but they count, anecdotally). “Your” park is where you went to do the things you were not allowed to do at school.
And because my school was located in
the armpit of Westminster Abbey, that park was St James’s.
To me, now, the place is touched with a diffident, ugly poetry. It connotes the sweet but sickly combination of privilege and pointlessness, nature and nurture, crudeness and urbanity, wildness and conformity that is an English park, and is an English public school education and is, to stretch a point, my life.
Along one side of it runs Horse Guards Road, the darkest street in London, the unlined, unlit, untravelled, curving road between the park’s eastern boundary and Horse Guards Parade, where once a year they troop the colour, and the other 364 days they don’t. I skim round it with my headlights on full beam quite often, shortcutting home from a night out, and feel instantly plunged into pre-streetlighted days, almost into the countryside, expecting deer and weasels to shoot across the blackness. And there, on the park side, lit from the inside as if for the establishing shot of Hansel and Gretel: The Movie, is Duck Island Cottage. Built for the official bird-keeper in 1837 (although there was a cottage on the site and a post of “Governor of Duck Island” as long ago as the 17th century), it seems a gingerbread cottage, and I’ve always wished I lived there: Giles Coren, Duck Cottage, Duck Island, St James’s Park, London.
If I did, then I would be delighted with my new local restaurant. Eating has never been much of a thing in London parks. Ice- creams made of chicken fat and coloured with tartrazine for £3.99 a lick was about the size of it. St James’s Park was no different. But a Royal Parks initiative made the right decision when it got Oliver Peyton in on its plan to do something about the catering. Peyton changed our bar culture for ever at The Atlantic in the mid-Nineties, and then did interesting things with restaurants at Mash and Isola and Coast and The Admiralty (each time different, each time both visually and gastronomically ambitious). And he has done us all a big favour again.
Inn The Park (this criminal pun is the only bum thing about it) is a round wooden building by some famous firm of architects that is faintly reminiscent of an ecological information centre in the middle of a nature reserve. And it has a grass roof so that it doesn’t ruin the Queen’s view of the lake from her bedroom window.
On the decking around the perimeter are, in warm weather at least, some of the best tables in London. On both my visits I ate looking out on scrummages of dazzlingly scented stocks and lupins, fountains, the turrets of Marlborough House and cute American students on rollerskates.
The food was very good. The menu is stubbornly English of the kind that is, in its determined unposhness, really quite posh. Nice, in an English garden, to order a side of fat green minted garden peas, roiling in sweet butter, and to drink a wild garlic and potato soup. I had a veal and bacon terrine that was butch and robust, and garnished, unusually, with quite enough cornichons, pickled onions and salad. Smoked salmon came with pale fresh cucumbers very lightly pickled, “façon juive”. Smoked eel was fat and smooth and jangled on a plate with crispy Denham bacon, beetroot and
horseradish. The wholemeal bread and the sourdough toasts were all good and served in cutesy balsawood basketlets.
There was lots of positive information on the menu: pork chops were lop-eared and British, lamb came from the South Downs, oysters from Falmouth (is that good? I assume so or they wouldn’t put it down). A big plate of oxtail was many strong bones heaving with lean meat and dark flavour, the jus a little thinner than in a truly ideal world. Two fat fillets of grilled
mackerel (hurrah for mackerel, don’t smoke the poor bastards, people, grill them fresh and they just keep on giving) came on sprightly purple sprouting broccoli and yucky chicory (but maybe you like chicory).
The Brit-only policy means no Coca-Cola, so now’s the time to wean your brat on to organic pear juice or Chegworth Valley apple and raspberry. Ice-creams are not park-standard Lyons Maid but “English strawberry and clotted cream” or “fresh mint and chocolate fudge ripple”.
Service is terribly friendly and works effectively (boys in green, girls in red, busboys to the station, waiting staff to the table, etc) and only fails when the ladies on the door fail to prevent the plebs from wandering into the outdoor dining room. The fatties with the coloured rucksacks and white trainers are supposed to go round to the self-service bit which, while traditionally parky in principle, offers quality pastries, salads, organic kiddy meals, “pots for tots” and all sorts of sophisticated bits and pieces that are more Central Park than St James’s, and would have baffled the hell out of Henry VIII.
Location: 10
Food: 7
Service: 7
Score: 8
Price: £22 a head sans grog (nice wine list, though).
Kenwood House
Hampstead Lane, NW3 (020-8348 1286)
Stride across Hampstead Heath, greatest park of them all, marvel at the custardy majesty of Robert Adam’s greatest legacy, gawp at the Iveagh Bequest, and then have topping scones and carrot cake for tea (or a hearty lunch if you prefer) in the beautiful walled garden.
The Pavilion Tea House
Greenwich Park, SE10 (020-8858 9695)
Lots of honest English food in honest English Greenwich. New management makes a fuss about sourcing organic and free-range, which is delightful to see (three cheers for the Owlet Farm apple juice and coffee from Union Roasters).
E-mail feedme@thetimes.co.uk if you want to go for a walk in the park.
