Do you want to know what I ate`? Normally I don’t go into that until near the end of the review, but I’m still too full, 13 hours after I scoffed my last mouthful, to think about anything else. I’m too fat to write an intro. And also it might be cathartic, what with the confessional element. I might feel better, morally, when I’ve got this load off my chest:
I had a glass of pink champagne.
I had six medium-sized briny olives (either lucque or lucca olives, I forget which, and I can’t corroborate with my girlfriend because she is so full she is staying in bed all day and refusing to enter into any conversation even vaguely relating to food).
I had five little breadsticks, dipped into a small mound of labneh (Lebanese cream cheese) and olive oil.
I had a warm, foaming artichoke shooter with a small, salty, crispy cornet containing three sweet extrapolations of tomatoes – yellow and red – at different temperatures.
I said “no, thank you” to the offer of bread.
I had a glass of white wine that smelt as if it was going to be sweet and was very citrusy initially but had a dry, acidic finish. I forget what it was.
I had a tomato sorbet with three paprika’d shrimps, with an almond gazpacho poured on to it that was pale green and contained chilli flecks and scrunches of peppercorn. Pretty restrained.
I had a glass of riesling.
I had a Berkshire crayfish. Only two inches long but with (relatively) gigantic claws, all big and pincery and the colour of burnished copper, and a very expressive face. The phrase “Honey, I Shrunk the Lobster!” came to mind.
OK, I had two of them. In a girolles velouté. Very, very classic. Except that it was served in one of those wonky spaceman helmet bowls that were briefly fashionable in 2002.
I had a thin slice of watermelon (carpaccio, they called it) with lumps of lovely salty feta which battled it out nicely with the big chardonnay bollocks of a glass of quite old (I think 1999) pouille-fuissé.
At this point I was still fine. Still peckish. Still talking. Hadn’t burped once. My girlfriend still loved me.
I had a small slab of wild trout, very rare, pinky-orange like salmon, but with crispy skin, on peas in a mustard emulsion, with little wee lardons and stuff.
I said, “You know, Rachel, we’ve only got the saddle of rabbit and your shoulder of lamb with sweetbreads to come. I don’t think I’m going to be full.” And so I ordered us the English rib of beef for two with mash and condiments.
I had a small saddle of Lincolnshire rabbit, rolled around a paste of its slick, tangy liver with a warm salad of beans and little brown snails and crispy infant squid.
I had a glass of pinot noir.
I had a mouthful of Rachel’s Welsh lamb and two chunks of sweetbread, all lamby and creamy, with that faint, faint chemical tang you get.
I called the bread man over and said that on second thoughts I would partake of his wares. It was lovely, crunchy, tangy country bread and I used it to mop the rich juices from Rachel’s plate (and then I ate it, obviously).
I felt pretty full.
They wheeled the beef in on a trolley. Presumably because it was so big they couldn’t carry it. It was the size and weight of a wheel clamp. Black and salt-crusted outside and, when the chap carved it, the colour of royal blood inside.
I had the five slices of it which he served me, each a reasonably sized steak in its own right.
I had two slices from Rachel’s plate because she didn’t want them to think she didn’t like it – and she didn’t not like it, because it was staggering meat.
I had a glass of shiraz.
I dipped a spoon in the mash and licked the back of it.
I had a glass of something else.
I went upstairs to the bar for a fag.
I came back down and had a pre-dessert that I think was pink.
I had a glass of something from a pretty bottle.
I had a pavlova of some sorts – I seem to recall the taste of passion fruit, or possibly pomegranate, or both.
I had a double espresso.
I had a big crispy nutty thing and a squishy fruit square with sugar on it.
I had a 1977 calvados (I see from the bill).
I had a tiny dark chocolate thing with a hazelnut attached to the side of it. Or maybe I dreamt that.
My name is Giles. I have a serious problem.
But I do feel better now, for the writing of it down. All night I tossed and turned, occasionally prodding Rachel to say “I’m sorry about the beef,” needing to hear myself exonerated each time, to hear her taking the blame, too, saying, “It’s fine, it was delicious, I could have said no, now go to sleep.”
“But what will I write? I’m too full of that meal to think about it ever again.”
“Just tell them it’s great. Tell them it’s as good as Pied à Terre.”
“Do you think it is?”
“I do, yes. Maybe better. It’s less frilly. A bit less WAG. And tell them all that stuff you told me about how Bjorn van der Horst – that’s the chef’s name, isn’t it? – was at The Greenhouse before this and he got a Michelin star and was tipped for a second, but Gordon went to review it that week when you swapped jobs with him, and he thought everything was too sweet and overwrought and then how funny you thought it was that the two of them had opened this place together.”
“And then what?”
“Then say how people who don’t like the room are just nit-picking because it’s the same as posh restaurants in Knightsbridge always are and always have been. But don’t say those horrid things about the sort of people who live round there. And maybe say how the menu system is all a bit complicated, but the staff are sweet and the wine list is very user-friendly for this sort of place. And say how nice and handsome Bjorn van der Horst is. And how he looks like Clark Kent.”
“I can’t say that, people will think I’m gay.”
“No they won’t.”
“Because I’ve put you in the piece?”
“No. Because a gay man would never boast in print about how much he can eat.”
La Noisette
164 Sloane Street, SW1 (020-7750 5000)
Meat/fish: 8
Cooking: 8
If I’d eaten less: 9
Score: 8.33
Price: Everything I ate, apart from the beef, was part of, or came with, the “summer favourites” menu, a steal at £55. The beef was £40 for two.
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J. Baker’s Bistro Moderne
7 Fossgate, York (01904 622688)
Stuart Clarke writes: You may know Jeff Baker from his ten-year, Michelin-starred stint at Pool Court in Leeds. He now has his own place in York, offering the “very best produce from the greatest Yorkshire suppliers”. I ate lunch there last month and the food was as good as Pool Court, yet the atmosphere is incredibly relaxed.
Swithins
21-23 St Swithins Lane, EC4 (020-7623 6853)
Anthony Eaton writes: “I have recently stumbled across this well-kept secret in the shadow of Sweetings. Last time I took luncheon there, I and two others had scallops wrapped in bacon with Pacific prawns and a massive cold seafood platter which could have fed five comfortably. The wine list is excellent. It is frequented by “City Types” but one can forgive anything in light of the excellent food and service.
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E-mail feedme@thetimes.co.uk and maybe we’ll go out for lunch – or maybe I’ll just plagiarise your recommendation
