I was an extremely unpleasant schoolboy. Not in the conventional,
catapult-and-bogey sense, but in the attention-seeking, “immature”,
in-love-with-the-sound-of-his-own-voice sense. As one of my teachers put it
in a report: “Giles thinks he is the smartest, wittiest, most charming boy
in the school, and he doesn’t care who knows it. Which is just as well
because he’s the only one.”
Not especially gifted, I was nonetheless desperate to impress, quick to scoff,
pretended to know everything, and disguised my ignorance with joke after
joke after joke, none of them funny, none of them charming. Little, you
might be on the point of observing, has changed since.
In a childhood characterised by cringing intellectual fraudulence the most
revealing indicator of things to come was inspired by a French lesson in
which the teacher, Mr Cumberland, pretended to be a waiter and went round
the class asking us what we wanted for pudding. Each 13-year-old boy
constructed a reply using one of the desserts written on a list that Mr
Cumberland had photocopied for the purpose, such as: “crème caramel” and
“tarte aux pommes”. I ignored the list and demanded “Ile Flottante” which I
had gathered from my parents was the fashionable pudding of the moment in
the South of France.
“And where have you eaten such a dish, Mr Coren?” asked Mr Cumberland, a
wide-eyed, short-tempered, deeply Christian man. “The Gavroche,” I said,
repeating a word I had heard often in what appeared to be sophisticated
conversation. “Ah, the best restaurant in London,” said Mr Cumberland. “I’ve
never been there. Perhaps you would like to write an essay in detention for
me tonight, Mr Coren. Subject: ‘dining at Le Gavroche’”.
And so that evening in the detention room I wrote my first restaurant review.
It read: “Dear Mr Cumberland, I assume you put me in detention because you
are jealous. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I haven’t eaten at the
Gavroche either. But as soon as I do you will be the first to know.” And
then I went back to the dormitory and got on with the lonely business of
being a friendless boy at boarding school.
Alas, Mr Cumberland died (through no fault of mine) some years before I
finally made it to the Gavroche, which was last week. Still, a promise is a
promise.
Le Gavroche is no longer in Sloane Street as it was when we last spoke, nor is
Albert Roux the chef. His son Michel, brought up an Englishman, has that
honour. But it is said that in culinary matters he is more French than the
father. Le Gavroche takes its name, of course, from the French word for
“urchin”, showing a fey, very Gallic faux-humility I would probably have
done well to display in class.
The dining room is very soft, very deep, very green, but the ceiling is low,
giving a satisfyingly exotic, almost Pullmanish quality to the place.
Awaiting an aperitif in an armchair at one end of the room, the first taste
I had was of lilies. The arrangement was so large and so fresh I could feel
the pollen on my palate, narcotic and ominous. And then there were
half-shelled crab claws in the lightest of batters, and little tartlets, and
pink champagne. Silvano Giraldin, the famous maître d’, shimmered like
Jeeves in his black tie while young sommeliers muttered in corners and
scattered suddenly, silent as cats.
Then, at the table, came appetisers that included langoustines, pink and
smooth as babies, in heart-fluttering butter sauce flavoured with ginger,
and before that other langoustines, perhaps with avocado.
Since you died, Mr Cumberland, the London dining scene has been overrun by
barbarians. First the Italians with their marvellous tomatoes and very
little else. Then the Thai and the Japanese, the Californian, even, would
you believe, the Australian. And such high French cooking as survives is
bedevilled by smallness, restraint, sarcastic piquancy, misplaced intensity,
gimmickry and facile wit. Not at Le Gavroche. Here Mr Roux, a marathon
runner and a modernist, outshines the memory of his father’s work by
immersion in even more rigorously classical principles. No simple feat.
Frog’s legs and snails with crumbled tomatoes bubbled in six little pots of
green. The famous Mousseline d’homard was full-bodied and insistent, not the
baby food such dishes so often resemble. Four cross-sections of nutty
lobster midriff groaned under spoonfuls of caviar at its side. And then
artichoke heart topped with almost-rare foie gras that lapped over the edges
and peeked out from the duvet of chicken mousse that strove to cloak them.
The artichoke gave body and a little sharpness but there was no bitterness
to kill the liver - I guess Mr Roux is better at timing his artichokes than
I am. And there was truffle, too, fat shavings of black; the best and
Frenchest thing I’ve eaten in London, Mr Cumberland, since, well, since last
we spoke - fit for the table of Talleyrand or Napoleon.
Slices of roasted lamb, very red and full flavoured but soft like agneau de
lait was joined on the plate by a sort of merguez sausage roll of its
forcemeat that was both dangerous and seductive, full of herbiness and spice
that helped the lamb along. Sweetbreads in calvados sauce were rather well
cooked by comparison with the modern fashion and offered their nutty
robustness for my approval, rather than their melting delicacy. A poulette
de bresse en cocotte arriving with quiet pomp at another table looked an
admirable chicken supper for two.
But I was already busy on a palate-cleansing salad of rocket with Parmesan and
truffle sliced over the top - I always like to cleanse my palate with
truffle. And then a feuillantine of strawberries mortared with mascarpone
that layered fat, cultivated berries above little elfin wild ones; and a
passion fruit soufflé that was too much, now, to bear, and could only be
tasted.
Restaurants so often flatter to deceive nowadays, Mr Cumberland - the very
behaviour that irked you so in life. They arrive to great applause, they
chatter and jest, they ingratiate themselves with the vain and the witless,
and then they close. Not Le Gavroche, Mr Cumberland. It is everything you
would have wanted in a restaurant: serious, dedicated, frivol-free and
patient. And when I tell you that there was a celeb in that night you will
be reassured to hear that it was not Patsy Kensit or Graham Norton, but Bob
Dole, war hero, Republican presidential candidate, grown-up.
Ile Flottante, you will be even happier to hear, was not on the menu.
Food: 9
Service: 9
Maturity: 10
Price: set lunch is £40 a head including wine (but tip,
you tightwad, tip). Dinner à la carte depends on how much you’ve got.
43 Upper Brook Street, W1 (020-7408 0881)
Restaurant choice: Grown-up french
Pétrus
Wilton Place, SW1 (020-7235 1200)
Always a favourite of mine for serious French cooking, Mr Cumberland, though
you might have found it a little immodest. Marcus Wareing’s flagship moves
this month to the space vacated by the late Tante Claire, formerly one of
the most grown-up restaurants in London. I am sure that
it will behave itself.
Lindsay House
21 Romilly Street, W1 (020-7439 0450)
When my mummy and daddy asked where I wanted to go for my birthday this year I
said Lindsay House. Mr Corrigan is a great chef but if you met him, Mr
Cumberland, you might find him a little bit noisy, a little bit naughty, a
little bit rude. A bit like me.
If you know somewhere really grown-up, e-mail feedme@thetimes.co.uk and
maybe we’ll go there together
