Have you noticed how when you phone to book a restaurant these days, they
always ask for your first name as well as your last? It’s only started
happening in the last year or so, and it’s really very strange. It seems so
intrusive. And so irritatingly faux-friendly.
“And the name?”
“Coren. C-o-r-e-n.”
“Cohen, thank you. And your first name, Mr Cohen?”
“Er, Giles.”
“Thank you Jules. And were you happy at school, Jules?”
“Eh?”
“Are you having regular sex?”
“Depends on what you mean by…”
“Tell me, how old are you?”
“Um, 38.”
“38, cripes. And are you comfortable with your, ahem, size?”
And so on. Just take the damn booking. The name’s Coren, I’ll be there at 8pm.
And if you have to call me back, you can call me “Mr Coren”. I don’t want
strangers calling me by my first name. I’m not Australian.
Apart from anything else, it can lead to especial difficulties for those of us
– restaurant critics, international fraudsters, paranoid schizophrenics –
who tend to use false names when booking restaurants. I called Launceston
Place the other day, newly relaunched by the D&D restaurant group, and
booked a table in the name of “Foskett”.
“And your first name, Mr Focksit?”
“Oh, um, ah,” and suddenly I felt all devious and guilty, as when you see a
plod car in the rear-view and you’re not even pissed. I can make up one
name, say it in the mirror and do my best to look like a Foskett before I
land it on the receptionist, but to have to give myself a first name on the
spur of the moment is a real task. It always feels like a trick question
designed to root out my lie.
“Oh, um, yes, my first name, of course, no problem, my first name is, ah, my
Christian name if you like, is, er, Bob.”
“Bob?”
“No. That’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Not Bob. Who’s called Bob Foskett? Nobody.
It’s Erasmus.”
“Erasmus?”
“Yes. Erasmus P. Foskett. The third.”
“Really?”
“No. It’s Sam. I’m called Sam Foskett.”
And then what happened was that the nice French lady said, “Ah, hello Mr
Foskett. We have your number down as 020-7167 9795, is that still correct?”
“No. I mean, yes. Probably for that Sam Foskett. But I’m a different one.”
“So your number is…?”
“Are you expecting the real Sam Fosk… I mean, the other Sam Foskett that
night?”
Fortunately, they weren’t. Because if there’s one thing we Sam Fosketts cannot
abide, it is being seated next to another man called Sam Foskett who wants
to talk all night about how he thought he was the only one. And am I one of
the Marylebone Fosketts? And why has he never seen me at the Foskett ball in
June?
So, anyway, up rolled the Fosketts at Launceston Place in South Kensington
around 8pm, really rather excited. It’s just sooo posh around there. So
quiet. All these lovely little late-Georgian houses, many of them painted in
heritage pastels by Farrow & Ball. No dog poo. No hoodies. Shops open at
11am and close at 3pm and only sell flowers and hats and handmade ponyskin
wastepaper baskets anyway. And there’s a one-way system so intricate that
unless you are actually born here, you can’t get in.
And the place is looking good. The rolling corridor of a room, which coils
like a sleeping snake around the building, is slick and plush, dark grey and
leathery. Leathery in a good way, newly upholstered rather than wrinkly.
Although a good deal of the diners are the other kind of leathery, which is
fine too, and sort of reassuring. And then others are big and fat and male
and presumably sell each other art (proper art, none of your demned video
installations), and then on one side of us a French couple, on the other an
American and his Chinese wife. Totally South Ken.
The service, from the off, was immaculate. In my mental video of the evening I
see only the clean, crisp-cuffed hands of staff intruding occasionally at
the edge of a romantic penumbra that frames my date against a black wall,
and beautiful plates of food on the white linen table cloth.
We ordered the tasting menu. I haven’t done that in years, fearing always the
pointless faff of arrogant men trying to spread their meagre skills over
eight courses of increasingly stupid crockery, and of that growing envy, as
you wait for your seventh not very hot course, of all the people you watch
heading for their cars and their cosy homes.
But this is the sort of place that makes you want to stick around, and the
menu could not have been more enticing: “Hand dived west coast scallops,
wild sorrel and apple; English asparagus, spring onion tart; roast duck foie
gras, rhubarb compote, elderflower milk soup; Cornish mackerel on toast,
green tomatoes, Cambridge sauce; Gressingham duck, turnips and radishes;
bitter lemon slice, thyme sorbet.”
Perfect, just perfect. Not too many words. No false folksiness in the form of
subheadings such as “pig” and “hen”. Very little French. Lots of vegetables
and herbs. No lamb, beef, chicken or pork. And the great thing is that there
were only a couple of dishes on the admirably short à la carte that weren’t
featured here, so there was no sense of missing out.
First came a foamy little amuse-bouche in a little, round, plastic thermal
cup. The random flopsy posing as Mrs Foskett shouted, “I’m not ’aving that –
I'll be stuffed enough with six bloody courses as it is!” The posh people
all looked round. It was like being at Ascot with Eliza Doolittle. I really
must kick this flower-girl habit of mine.
The scallop was sublime: one fat, fresh, smooth, sea-tasting nut, sliced and
stacked against itself with a couple of little sorrel leaves and an apple
foam, served on a hot stone – very cute – which the flopsy later licked
(“just to see”) and burnt her tongue on.
The asparagus tips arrived on a slim and perfect little onion tart with two
more foams and two of those weird skid marks that seem still to be
fashionable, three or four years on, despite looking quite horrid. Here they
were sort of khaki, as if a person with a tiny heel had skidded on goose
poo. The chef, 28-year-old Tristan Welch, came from Pétrus and is quite,
quite brilliant, but I do wish he’d ease back on the foams – each dish felt
a little like driving to a terrific meal through salty fog.
The duck foie gras (sorry, sorry, sorry, I hardly ever eat it and I know I’m a
bastard) was beautiful, although, for me, the rhubarb compote was a little
sour for the dish. And from here, well into the second bottle of Albarino,
things go a little hazy.
The Cornish mackerel on toast was fabulous, whipped straight from the sea on
to a little rye wafer with some top-class quail’s eggs. Can’t quite remember
what the Cambridge sauce was – fishy I think. Presumably a bit like an
Oxford sauce except colder and flatter and still a virgin at 28.
The duck was smooth and pink and lush – with an almost sashimi-like texture –
and I told the flopsy that it must have been done in a sous-vide. But I was
only showing off. It may well not have been.
I see from the bill that we had cheese before the lemon slice and also a
couple of glasses of jurançon, 3 glasses of Clos Siete (which I gather is an
Argentinian red) and a grappa. But I do not remember them all that well. In
fact, I don’t even really know how things turned out with flopsy (did we or
didn’t we?). And I’m really, really hoping that I didn’t embarrass myself
too badly. I’d hate to make life difficult for Sam Foskett or Erasmus P.
Dooziflower, or whoever the hell it was I was pretending to be.
Launceston Place
1a Launceston Place, London W8 (020-7937 6912)
Meat/fish: 7
Cooking: 9
Smiling: 8
Score: 8
Price: six-course tasting menu, £45; three-course à la carte, £35
Kensington Place
201-209 Kensington Church Street, London W8 (020-7727 3184)
KP has historically been a sister to LP (no, LP is surely sister to the
bigger, noisier, smellier brother, KP) and is firing on all cylinders now
with the excellent cooking of Henry Vigar, and almost all the old buzz back
about the place.
Email feedme2@thetimes.co.uk if
you know somewhere nice, and maybe we’ll go there together
Book
a table at Launceston Place
As a marine biologist (admittedly lacking both the charisma and charm of Cousteau), I am in favour of reducing trawling, while I advance the onset of gout from my vast consumption of shellfish.
I agree that hand-dived (as opposed to foot dived perhaps?), sounds somewhat fey. 'Diver caught' perhaps?
Jon Neighbour, London, UK
Chloe, London: "hand dived" is as opposed to "trawled". The latter process damages both the scallops themselves and, more significantly, the sea bed from which they are trawled. Your suggested alternative term is vastly more cumbersome.
johnny, London, UK
The wine is Clos de Los Siete, from Mendoza, and it's very good indeed. It's mostly Malbec and Cabernet, and if you've had 3 glasses I can readily see why things were hazy - it's quite potent.
Paul, Bristol, UK
I assign Giles to get to the bottom of the how does it survive riddle regarding Angus and Aberdeen steakhouses.
Suri, Suriville,
Doesn't it occur to you that "hand dived" is another nonsense term, like "pan fried" (as if it might instead have been fried in a bottle of pop).
"Hand dived"; presumably, the hand dived into the water and came back out holding a scallop. Or do they simply mean "collected by a diver" ?
Chloe, London,