One of my favourite local restaurants, and certainly my nearest, closed down
before the end of last year and has lain desolate ever since, a horrific
vast-windowed vibe vacuum that swallows all the cheer and jollity from the
chunk of high street opposite the bottom of my road. Peering in, with a hand
cupped to the glass to silence reflections, one sees the shiny sofas still
sunken with the impressions of the last arses that heaved themselves up at
closing time, the unlighted fag machine, tables spread with the final relics
of Trimalchian excess, beery footprints on the wide floor, tumbleweed,
ghosts.
Rumours of what will replace it have been the talk of 2006: “It’s been bought
by some old former pop star cokehead who wants to turn it into a music
venue”; “It’s going to be a strip club”; “It’s been bought by the council to
be run as a canteen by and for asylum seekers with violent criminal
records”; and, most scarily of all, “It’s going to be an All Bar One”.
Months passed. Nothing. And then last week, suddenly, out on the street, piled
up on the pavement along the length of the establishment, were a lot of very
familiar-looking, but rudely contextless chairs and tables, mirrors and
bar-tops, potted palms, stacks of leatherette menu folders, like the viscera
of some new-slain gastro-monster.
There, at the roadside, with the thin North London soot of diesel particulates
and crack pipe ash beginning to cling to their drizzle-moistened surfaces,
were the innards of a thing that once fed me six or seven times a week. The
soft, brown sofas on which I used to sprawl, half-slaughtered, after the
giant Sunday roast of slow-cooked mutton shoulder with Yorkshire and roast
potatoes, carrots, parsnips, creamed leeks, gravy and three bottles of the
£17 Deakin Estate shiraz. The coffee tables on which I put my feet. The loo
seats on which I, well… you know.
And there, too, was the gilt-framed “daily specials” blackboard, not now
proclaiming the chef’s daily whim (black-currant-glazed belly pork with pear
and Jersey royal dauphinoise, £10.95 – char-grilled albacore with samphire
and crushed Jerusalem artichokes, £11…) but declaring simply, and with
heartbreaking non-specificity, “For Sale”.
Nor was it merely the blackboard that was up for grabs, but the whole
caboodle, the stripped paraphernalia of the restaurant I once loved. Even
the ping-pong table on which I used to play in the basement long into the
morning, with the stereo on full and one waitress kept by on double time to
bring the drinks. Even the aquarium (do not let me think of the wee tropical
fish that once swam there). And, wait, no, surely not, the little
half-lectern that stood by the door, with the framed review, only his second
for The Times, by a young critic who raved at the glories of the place and
bestowed upon it a mark of 8.3 (in the days when a youthful lack of rigour
meant marks calculated to only one decimal place) which did it no good in
the end.
Of course, I did not buy it. Or anything. This was not a pile to sully with
offers of cash. It was an installation. Street culture. An artwork of tragic
objets trouvés (ye gods, there were even the three
never-all-working-at-the-same-time pissoirs – as if Marcel Duchamp himself
were presiding), articulate of a little lost world of mine that cannot be
bought piecemeal, objet by objet. That is the job of art galleries, and is
why I don’t go to them.
Except occasionally for lunch. I had been meaning to drop in on the National
Dining Rooms at the National Gallery for a while because, like art, it looks
good on paper, being owned by Oliver Peyton and applying the same hardcore
Brit-only sourcing approach as his wonderful Inn the Park.
The space is bold and gigantic, which goes very much against the “embarrassed
hovel” style of most gallery restaurants, and was designed by David Collins
“in neutral tones with bespoke moss-green furniture and
especially-commissioned lighting”, which is good, because you don’t want a
chap just going into a shop and buying the moss-green furniture and lights
that happen to be lying around. Or picking them up off the street outside a
place that’s just closed down.
There’s a big black granite bar and lots of glass food showcases (details that
I suppose will one day find their own way into an impromptu street jumble on
the road outside), and lots of wood and air, and a lavishly suited head
waiter who used to work at Sketch – so he’s moved on, in a way, from the
preliminary drawing to the full oil painting.
The menu looked jolly, but the aircon had the room so cold that I fancied the
items I recalled from the sample menu sent out last winter (oxtail soup with
bone marrow dumplings, honey roast duck with glazed apples and mead, double
chop of Elwy Valley lamb with spelt, pork belly with pease pudding and
scrumpy…) more than the – admirably seasonal and equally imaginative –
summer stuff on offer now (Norfolk asparagus with chopped duck egg sauce,
Cromer crab with spring onions…).
I had a stuffed courgette blossom (they mean “flower” – only trees have
blossoms) with courgette, pea and herb broth, but was more charmed by the
crunchy, sweet trunk of the vegetable than the flower, which was stuffed,
oddly, with a dumpling dough tasting mostly of flour. They made a soup of
very gentle vegetables admirably punchy though. English Heritage tomato
salad involved very sweet, soft-to-collapsing yellow fruits, firm red plums
and one of the rarely seen black variety, sliced and laid low across a wide
plate under pickled shallots with bundles of lovage.
My Label Anglais chicken was a good bird, of course, but not really right up
my street in having been, I think, poached, and then served as three thick,
skinless breast pieces and an oddly denuded leg. Not bad in any real way,
but not a roaring anthem to all that is great about hens. It was served with
summer vegetables, which are not so different from spring vegetables. Small
carrots and stuff, you know.
Roast beetroot and Wensleydale tart was very good – short, crispy pastry and
nice big slices of earthy beetroot – but the attempt to melt a crumbly
cheese for the filling was not a triumph (nor a disaster). It came out like
cheap mozzarella. Back to boring old goat’s cheese I’m afraid. The red chard
leaves were excellent, chunky, ferrous leaves, but inadequately washed, so
that most mouthfuls were too gritty to truly enjoy.
My best dish of the meal was a dessert of free-standing “burnt” clotted cream
with a lovely caramelised lid on it (which required a real expert’s whack –
a short, hard, stopping whack – to crack properly without splurging cream
everywhere) on stewed gooseberries with four little elderflower tempura. A
cute turn on the classic gooseberry and elderflower pairing of rural
culinary folklore, but slightly marred by the elderflowers having been fried
in an oil that lent them just a teeny hint of savoury, which overpowered
their perfume.
I did not eat as well here as I’m sure one would four times out of five, but
in theory it is very much what I look for in a restaurant these days. And
it’s worth a try if you’re passing. If you take a window seat you will even,
as I did, have the opportunity to take in the full impact of the sculpture
of Alison Lapper in Trafalgar Square – gigantic, pregnant, naked, armless –
while you eat. Which I’m sure you’ll enjoy very much, if you like that sort
of thing. n
The National Dining Rooms
Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, WC2 (020-7747
2525)
Meat/fish: 8
Cooking: 5
Idea: 7
Score: 6.66
Price: Steep – I paid £71.78 for two, for two and a half
courses, no booze.
Verso
84 Clapham Park Road, SW4 (020-7720 1515)
Michael Cloake writes: “An unassuming Italian in an
unassuming area – however, the owner/manager chap is always very nice and
the food is tasty and well presented. Last night I had a sea bass, bresaola,
king prawn roule thingy which was fantastic. I just think it deserves a bit
of recognition.”
Bell’s Diner
1-3 York Road, Bristol (0117-924 0357)
Bill Butt writes: “Vindaloo ice-cream, truffled macaroni
cheese, carrot and ginger foam… Think Fat Duck in Montpelier, Bristol – an
area that is not posh Clifton but boasts a drugs scene second to none.”
Click here to book a table at this restaurant
E-mail feedme@thetimes.co.uk and maybe we’ll go out
for lunch
