Seven thousand years ago, in the marshes of the Yangtze and the flood plains
of the Ganges, people not unlike you and me — actually, very unlike you and
me — began to farm rice.
I should have started this the way they start Hollywood film trailers. Have
you noticed how they always begin with that man who has had his epiglottis
Velcroed, saying: “In a world without...”? It’s a good phrase, “In a world
without...” You just add your desired condiment word — “pity”, “law”,
“mercy”, “lavatory paper” — and you’re off. For those of you who find
writing a pain, I couldn’t recommend it more. It gives your most meagre
thoughts gravitas, while being suitably vacuous.
So, for instance, if you hate writing thank-you letters, just begin: “Dear
Araminta, in a world without gratitude/spotted Dick/that nice friend of
Trevor...” Students: if you’re tearing your hair out trying to compose one
of those tricky begging letters home, you could do a lot worse than: “Dear
dad, in a world without generosity/student loans/unplanned pregnancy...” You
should write it on the memo board beside the fridge. “In a world without
cornflakes/light bulbs/milkmen/the 4.15 from Doncaster...”
Anyway, where was I? In a world without rice, chopsticks would be sticks,
sushi would be dead fish and we’d have to throw potatoes at weddings. In
fact, east of Zanzibar, it’s impossible to imagine a world without rice.
It’s the grass that created two-thirds of the globe, a staple that is the
basis for some of the most elaborate and complex epicurean cultures.
And I’ve just seen where they end up. If you take the beginning of rice’s
journey with mankind as bronze-age China, then the furthest reach of its
evolutionary tryst is a bijou shop in downtown New York. Very rarely do
words fail me — which, in this line, is a blessing — but I suffered severe
lexical damage when I stumbled across Rice to Riches last week. I’ve simply
got to share it with you. Leaving aside the McGonagallish, not-quite-a-pun
title, this is a modish takeaway theme bar, very expensively decorated as a
cross between middle-period Starship Enterprise and a Schrager hotel. Sort
of Starck Trek.
There are video screens and twinkly pastel plastic takeaway boxes. It’s very
wowy-nowy. And the theme... In a world without taste or irony, the theme is
rice pudding. I swear, cold rice pudding in novelty flavours. Oh Pip, what
flavours! Pristine bowls of sludgy puppy vomit dyed into a National Trust
colour chart by the addition of spicy Indian chai (tea), summer
fruits and more.
“You’re not going in there,” screamed the Blonde. I’ve got to. “No, you
don’t.” This is what I do. “Dear God, please. They won’t think any worse of
you. I won’t tell anyone.” Don’t you see? A critic has to do what a critic
has to do. “Why can’t you just turn around and pretend you didn’t see it?
What about me? What about us and our life together?” What life would we
have? It would always be there between us. You might not mention it
tomorrow, or the next day. But one day, you would — the man who turned his
back on rice pudding and ran. “Oh, you’re all the same. It’s all about your
silly pride. Well, go on then. Just don’t expect me to wait for you. I won’t
wipe pudding off your chin. Boo, hoo, hoo.”
I stood in front of the counter and calmly ordered the pineapple and basil.
The term “inedible” is overused — I’ve seen film of a man eating poodle poo
— so I won’t say this defied possibility. But two mouthfuls made pooch poop
look like a mighty yummy alternative. You know how basil has a slightly
medicinal flavour? Well, with pineapple, it spookily imitates that smell of
Swiss industrial lavatory disinfectant. The rice was thick and slimy and
could have been what gave the sperm whale its Christian name. I can’t begin
to reconstruct the process by which someone became convinced that this
concept was a good idea or even on nodding terms with something that had
once met a good idea. My best guess is that it’s the creation of a coven of
bulimics who wanted something reversible: one dish you could eat three times
a day. I’m warning you, it’ll be over here inside a year.
Rice pudding aside, I ate surprisingly badly in New York. The city does seem
to have lost its gastronomic nerve, and there are just too many places
fiddling with fusions. I’m afraid Rice to Riches is a symptom rather than an
aberration.
Back in Britain, this week’s restaurant is Benares in Berkeley Square, which
pointlessly made me wonder how well a restaurant called Berkeley Square
would do in Benares. It’s on a site that hasn’t had much luck in recent
years. It doesn’t have a street window, so looks a bit like a corporate
headquarters. Inside, I rather liked it. I think the design is smart and
interesting, but the Blonde said she thought the lights were too bright and
the pulchritudinous Annabel said it reminded her of a Frankfurt hotel.
It’s another boutique Indian restaurant. Taking food high end, as the
Americans say, is a mixed blessing. Restaurateurs tend simply to up the
perceived value of ingredients — making pizza with lobster and truffles, say
— while losing the essential honesty and earthiness that made it winning in
the first place. Too often, they’re working-class girls with posh accents.
The mitigation for Indian food is that it was very grand in the first place
and had to start off in reduced circumstances in this country. The problem
is that to get customers to pay more than £5 for a curry, chefs have
Frenchified it, adding garnishes and European ingredients when actually what
it needed was to be made more authentically Asian.
Happily, Benares remains true to its heritage. The menu is shorter than at
most Indian restaurants. They don’t offer the same cooking method and sauce
with lamb, chicken or prawns. There are familiar dishes such as rogan josh
and murg makhani and then a lot of things you won’t recognise from your
local Moti Mahal. The dishes have been trawled from across the subcontinent.
The fusion is local and logical rather than capriciously intercontinental,
and, overall, the standards are high. I particularly liked a lamb shank
steeped in bone marrow and slow-baked with coriander and red chillies, and
the tandoori chicken with fenugreek, ginger and spinach in a tomato sauce,
though this may be more authentically Brummie than Bombay.
The price of about £13 for a main course is a bargain for this location and
setting. The restaurant was gratifyingly full of what appeared to be almost
entirely tourists and foreign businessmen.
I suspect Benares has been assiduously courting Mayfair hotel concierges. They
certainly courted me with a self-interested ardour. In a world without
waiters, life’s a buffet.
Lunch, Mon-Fri, noon-3pm; dinner, Mon-Sat, 5pm-10.30pm
