And yet, when I most recently dined at the long tables of the Inner Temple, which have been feeding barristers since Chaucer’s Man of Law was still in short trousers (which, to be fair, was his whole life, long trousers being not then the fashion on either side of the age gap) and where still stands, they claim, the first storey of the Templars’ medieval buttery, that is exactly what I ate: asparagus en gelée (in December! Oh tremble ye Peruvian veg growers, when hibernating barristers half a world away crave spring vegetables), forgettable cow meat and a bowl of still pretty much frozen raspberries and blueberries.
If nothing else, that absolute bum-hole of a menu proves that the Templars really are nothing to fear these days. As anti-conspiracy theories go, you may find mine a little gastro-centric, but this is the introduction to a restaurant review, and gastro-centric is on the job description.
I had previously eaten a few times at Middle Temple Hall, where a friend of mine practises, and the food is not bad. But my girlfriend is an Inner Templar (as they are not known) and so when she invited me to dine, I took the opportunity of going to see what subsidised scoffs to come might hold.
But the food was a disappointment (even at nine guineas a head or whatever it was) and even as they were clearing the pudding plates away, I was thinking to myself, “Never mind, on what she’ll be earning in a couple of years she can buy that nice little back dining room at Sheekey’s.”
And even as I was thinking that, a face distinguished in both nobility of aspect and relatively advanced years, with white hair, beakish nose, and dark, mischievous eyes, loomed out of the medieval gloaming (it is an ancient gloam they have there, I’ll give them that) and said: “You never returned my e-mail.”
His e-mail? Which e-mail? The one containing the answer to the true riddle of Mary Magdalen’s granddaughter’s third nipple, and how it came to write all but one of The Canterbury Tales? The one about the albino high priest of Opus Dei who slew the Cheshire Cat with a spear of white asparagus? The one about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the parsnip shaped like Henry Kissinger (as all parsnips are) which prevented the Palestinian barber’s shop quartet from winning the 1967 Eurovision Song contest?
“No, the one where I suggested we went for lunch at the Vincent Rooms.”
“Ah,” I said. “That one.”
But who was he, that I should remember his e-mail? The heir to the throne of Babylon? My dead great-great-grandfather, who may or may not have been a circus strongman? A random old boy called Anthony Fletcher?”
“I’m Anthony Fletcher.”
“Aaaarghhh!” I cried, the coincidence being so spooky as to be almost biblical, and fled the room screaming.
On my return, Mr Fletcher produced his diary from thin air as if by magic (it was later revealed to me that he had had it in his inside jacket pocket all along) and we made a date for six months thence.
Six months later…
I arrive at the Vincent Rooms on the corner of the beautiful square in Pimlico where I played school cricket as a boy and discover that it is the restaurant dining room – open to the public – of the adjacent Westminster Kingsway Catering College, alma mater to Jamie Oliver.
All the food is cooked and served by students, the visible ones of whom appear to be not much more than 16. But it’s a big, bright, comfy-looking room in the modern refectory style (real restaurants having come round to the school dining hall idiom more and more in recent years) and the prices are staggering. Staggering.
Starters include: smoked salmon and dill vinaigrette, £4.50; baked duck egg with foie gras and orange jus, £4.50; cannelloni of ratatouille with wild garlic sauce, £3.50; salmon, mussel and sweetcorn chowder, £3.50. And then there was grilled barracuda with cauliflower aloo gobi and aubergine bhaji for £8.50; poached halibut with asparagus for £9.50; boiled bacon collar with baby root vegetables, caper dumplings and parsley liquor for £7.50. Then puddings at £3.50. In SW1. In a great room with a lovely view. Yup, “staggering” is the word.
Anthony claims to have been eating at the Vincent Rooms for 40 years and to have retired from the bar in 1959. This last fact seems to suggest that he is very old indeed. About 117 or 118. Beating my previous oldest reader-guest, Aslan Hamwee, by 24 years. But then he admits that he had been practising for only six years when he quit the bar, following (though not necessarily because of) the loss of a case involving a quadruple incest in Slough. “That sort of thing may be commonplace in the Welsh Valleys,” he told me. “But in Slough at the time it was thought very unusual.”
My hunch is that Anthony only joined the bar in the first place to entitle him to lifelong dining rights at the Inner Temple, which he has exploited regularly over the last 47 years. Couple this with his patronage of the Vincent Rooms and you see a life devoted to well-priced dining out in London. A laudable devotion, indeed. And by no means mitigated by meanness, for he brought a lovely bottle of ’88 Château Gloria with him, having noticed in a previous review that I was fond of it.
As for the food, well, you know, it was pretty fine. I’ve never been one of those people who go to the local hairdressing school for a £3 haircut on the off chance that they won’t come out after six hours looking like a fire in a carpet factory, but perhaps my lack of confidence in students has been misplaced.
The baked duck egg with foie gras looked luscious, and slipped easily down the neck of Anthony’s other guest, The Daily Telegraph wine writer, Jonathan Ray (whose own father, Cyril, if you’re after conspiracies, was my dad’s wine critic at Punch in the Eighties), and my cannelloni was hearty and by no means bland.
My main course of grilled lamb cutlets on garlic and rosemary polenta with other little bits and pieces of balsamic this and braised tiny that, was pretty exemplary, and not over-fussed-over (an ugly hyphenation, but a meaningful one). Jonathan had the boiled bacon collar which looked lovely and sloppy and pink in a sort of Kensington Place meets St John sort of a way, and the mouthful I poached was weighty and comforting. Anthony’s barracuda with exotic trimmings looked fun to me, and excited him greatly.
The service was competent and smiley and better than I’ve had from waiters twice and three times and even, in some seaside hotels on the south coast, eight times their age. The Vincent Rooms is a staggeringly cheap, very jolly, beautifully located, very decent restaurant which has been there for nearly a hundred years and which has never, ever, been reviewed in the press. It must be some sort of consp…
(Mr Coren was taken ill as he attempted to finish this piece. Police are comparing fingerprints taken from a poisoned Assyrian thimble found at the scene with those of a number of chefs)
The Vincent Rooms
Vincent Square, SW1 (020-7802 8391)
Meat/fish: 6 (costs prohibit organic sourcing – this place is basically a state school – but the on-site butchery of all meat is a rare plus, which is why they score a respectable “6” here).
Cooking: 7
Value: 10
Score: 7.67
Price: staggering, as I said. And bottles on the wine list average around £12.
The Swan
Southrop, Gloucestershire (01367 850205)
Tim Almond writes: “This pub near Lechlade is run by someone who formerly had something to do with Bibendum. Very good quality bistro food at really good prices. It’s better than the more expensive country-house hotels in the area.”
Fontwell House Restaurant
Fontwell Park Racecourse, Arundel, West Sussex (01243 543335)
Eric R. Stevens writes: “My gambling partner (wife) and my good self are currently undertaking a programme of visiting all the racecourses in Britain and sampling the fare at the racecourse’s principal restaurant. Of those we have so far visited, we would heartily recommend the Fontwell House Restaurant at Fontwell Park Racecourse. The meal was delightful, good value and we couldn’t fault it.”
Giles Coren returns in a fortnight
