It's Always More Complicated

Readers may remember that some while ago partner and I were doing a certain amount of gastro-lunching, i.e. going to upmarket eateries for lunch, when the lunchtime set menu does not cost an arm and a leg but merely a finger and toe or two.

For various reasons this rather fell by the wayside, but today, because we already had West End plans for the afternoon, we decided to revive it, and went to The Square. (The name is probably due to its contiguity to Berkeley of that ilk: wrong time of day for nightingales and anyway there is no way they could be heard above the traffic. Currently has some v contemporary sculpture - this may be a Thing, because this was also happening in Regents Park.)

This was today's set lunch:
Warm Velouté of Jerusalem Artichoke with a Ravioli of Smoked Ricotta, Medjool Dates and Brown Butter
Salad of Lincolnshire Eel with Ratte Potato, Pencil Leeks, Fennel Pollen and Chive Oil
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Crisp Fillet of Cornish Cod with Roasted Chervil Root Purée, Shimonita Onions, Purple Sprouting Broccoli and Red Wine
Hay Baked Wood Pigeon with Roasted Cauliflower Purée, Buckwheat, Pear and Chestnut
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Red Apple [sorbet] and Vanilla [creamy pannacotta-y type thing]

And they asked about food sensitivities beforehand - actually there wasn't any problem with the menu itself but it meant that they provided a substitute amuse-bouche for me that didn't have cheese.

I had the eel and the pigeon.

We can no longer do the bottle of wine at lunchtime thing but I had a glass of Pinot Gris Kessler Grand Cru, Dirler Cade, Alsace (v nice).

After this we went and saw Yet Another Eugene O'Neill play (3rd this month), a short expressionist work from 1917, Fog. The denouement, I thought, made it rather suitable, perhaps, for the Halloween season.

I still have one unaddressed prompt, from wychwood, who asked for

potential book recs - you read a lot of mid-century British writers, obviously, and I see you talk about them, but I don't know much else about most of them and wonder where would be a good place to start. GB Stern is your favourite? What would you say was a good title to start with (possibly multiple suggestions for different potential types of readers), what is good about her, what you like about her?

Well, since I discovered today that I have already gained one follower for the cult of E M Delafield, and I note that Stella Gibbons' non-Cold Comfort works seem to be gaining traction among a modern readership (did I see, or was this a hopeful dream, that the manuscripts left unpublished at her death were going to be published?), I would, I think, like Stern to be next up to get more recognition than the intermittent republishing of The Matriarch. (It's recently been republished by Daunt Books with an intro by Linda Grant: I do wish publishers would look beyond the works that Virago, all credit to them, put out during the 70s and 80s, and explore back catalogues a little more.)

I am a fairly rabid Stern fan, though not all her work is of the same quality (I'm not sure I'd advise anyone but a real completist to bother with the very early novels, excepting perhaps Children of No Man's Land aka Debatable Ground, 1919), though I don't think she ever falls below readability level.

The two novels where I think she was really at the top of her game and doing really interesting things are The Woman in the Hall (1939) and The Augs: A exaggeration (aka Summer's Play) (1933).

However, if you like dense family sagas covering several generations and intertwined destinies of various family members, the Rakonitz Chronicles certainly bring that. Besides The Matriarch (aka Tents of Israel) there are various sequels and spinoffs exploring various branches of the Rakonitz/Czelovar connection. There's one fairly linear sequence that goes The Matriarch (1924) > A Deputy Was King (1926) > The Young Matriarch (1942) but bits of the story are interwoven in e.g. Mosaic (1930), which is mostly about two sisters of the French branch of the family. Members of the family also crop up in some of her other books. They're heavily based on Stern's own widely spread, cosmopolitan, relatively secularised Jewish family.

Her various dog stories - The Ugly Dachshund and others - are amusing and unusual.

Her account of a gastronomic tour of France during the 1920s, Bouquet (1927), is admired by many as a significant contribution to food-writing of the period.

She produced two volumes of essays on Jane Austen with her great friend Sheila Kaye-Smith (while these are perfectly readable, I think you have to be more of an Austen devotee than I am to really appreciate them).

At least once she essayed a mystery novel, The Shortest Night (1931) but while this has a nice depiction of a house-party on the Riviera, she was not going to rival the Golden Age Queens of Crime.

I also adore her several volumes of 'ragbag chronicles' which are practically a genre of their own combining achronological bits of memoirs, belles-lettres, whimsy, travel notes, observations about things in general: I deployed the concept of 'proto-blogger' in trying to explain the appeal of these works. They are possibly my favourite comfort reading (along with Jane Duncan's My Friend series).

At the side of the up escalator, ads for something promising 'Hot White Teeth in 2 weeks'.

To which my response was, are not hot teeth rather uncomfortable? or perhaps it is just a pleasing warmth.

Even so, perhaps not optimum for eating ice-cream with.

Which led me to think about that (though apparently it's a spoof?) Ben and Jerry literary-themed Oliver Twist ice-cream -

Um, gruel-flavoured ice-cream*? this is like sardine toffee and I don't think even Heston could bring it off, the concept is not want-more-ish, more push-the-dish-away-half-eaten.

Heston: 6th Michelin star

*Though on looking this up, I see that it's suggested as 'rich dark chocolate and simple vanilla flavors with a smattering of English Toffee'.

Last night partner and I went out for my belated (this is getting to be almost as much a tradition as the meal itself) birthday meal in upscale restaurant.

This time it was Hibiscus (it was actually between that and Pollen Street Social, which recently featured in our gastro-lunching project - I think it was an issue about which one could be booked for a Saturday evening that wasn't yet further months ahead.)

The USP of Hibiscus is Surprise Tasting Menu - at your place there is a card with the various seasonal things that may be featuring, and the options for 3, 6 or 9 courses (with wine flights optional extra). You tell them what you can't eat.

As partner and I usually have to miss out on tasting menus, as they tend to come as set and including at least one course one or other of us can't eat, we gave our list of no-nos, and picked the 6 course.

As you depart, they ( present you with a copy of the menu )

With this we had a v pleasant, slightly drier than usual, Gewurtztraminer.

Pre-meal canapes were some lovely warm black olives with lemon and basil, and leek mousse tartlets. The bread was delicious. Petits fours with the coffee came as Some Kind of Chocolately Cakey things and adorable wee madeleines.

And, I should probably mention, it all comes eye-bleedingly expensive, esp. the wine.

The food was undoubtedly delicious, but possibly just a little bit-overprecious - that 'kedgeree' amuse-bouche came done up in an eggshell pretending to be a softboiled egg.

Somewhat over-extended pauses between courses, and the general vibe of the place was a bit muted - one doesn't often complain that there is too much space between the tables, but it all felt a bit empty.

So even apart from the price aspect, it's not a place where we went 'must go back some time', though it was worth doing the once.

Kate Bolick: why marriage is a declining option for modern women. Apparently this 'caused frenzied comment'. And, as is usual for this kind of thing, totally lacks any kind of historical perspective: would like to whap her over the head with Gordon and Nair's work on late C19th Glasgow which demonstrates that quite a lot of unmarried women were not, actually, pathetic dependants in some male relative's household but heading their own establishments, and Kath Holden's work on early C20th single women. and also point out that alas, women in advanced western societies very seldom die in childbirth these days, releasing grieving widowers back into the marriage market with particular reference to any women who missed their chance the first time round.

Am also profoundly irked that, if women are not marrying so much, the people they are not marrying are men, and does anyone get in a fret and a panic at all those middle-aged single men out there who don't want to settle down? We think not, alas.

Am additionally inclined to make argument that just as women stopped becoming domestic servants when other employment opportunities opened up, women no longer need to marry for a meal ticket or even a recognised social role. There may be reasons, as with the flight from domestic service, why women no longer feel obliged to find and hang on to some bloke.

But isn't it always wymmynz who cause handwringing and angsting by pundits, eh? Young women are now earning more than men – that's not sexist, just fair - in spite of all those people running round going that sky b fallin ravenz be leevin Towah, end of sivilizayshen as we no it etc.

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Hark! do we hear a wailing and moaning in the streets of Bloomsbury? surely it is the shades of the Bloomsbury Group on hearing about the School of Life offerings of bibliotherapy to Observer columnists? Actually it's not even therapy, as such, it's just advice to people who feel in a reading rut or that they're not reading books, or something. Being stuck for what to read or feeling that one's choices are a bit narrow is not the same as e.g. self-medicating during times of stress with Charlotte Yonge or Jane Duncan.

Plus, oh dear, how very restricted a range of largely litfic and popular nonfic the picks are. I doubt there's anything there that you couldn't pick up in a reasonable branch of Waterstones any Saturday morning. While the one choice that did make me smile was The Greengage Summer for Robert McCrum, who regularly pushes the edge of ponceyness, I think he should actually be reading Little Grey Rabbit and some classic-era comic books.

It's all terribly safe okay books.

Not to mention, it used to be that you could take low-risk no-cost essays outside one's usual reading range in any decent public library, in particular out-of-print authors, but that's pretty much gone the way of the dodo.

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The words poncey and Polish cooking seldom find themselves in the same sentence, but while one of the areas in which I am usually at home to a degree of teh ponss is cuisine, I was nearly moved to disbelieving giggles by Nigel Slater's account:

Much of the food I ate in Warsaw was contemporary and exciting: Robert Trzópek's breast of guinea fowl with sweet pumpkin sauce and piercingly sharp cranberries at Tamka 43; the crab dumplings with salmon roe and tomato in the sedate dining room of the Regina hotel and, at a private dinner, the toasted gingerbread crowned with pear purée and marinated herring*. The city's chefs are hungry for stars, and their energy and enthusiasm is testament to that.

The most extraordinary meal of the trip was dinner at Wojciech Modest Amaro's new restaurant (a mere three weeks at the time of my visit) Atelier Amaro, where each course was accompanied by a selection of sweetened vodkas. Rare, artisan drinks produced in tiny amounts flavoured with the tips of emerging pine shoots and their roots; lovage; mirabelle plums and even new potatoes. Some are made in quantities of fewer than 10 bottles and each one is chosen to flatter a particular course, say an autumnal mushroom soup with lurking sweetbreads and a swirl of moss**, or a terrine of moose with tarragon ice cream. Only the lovage vodka went undrunk, and that was only because I know my limits.

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Katharine Whitehorn, Someone's enduring memory of you? You might well be surprised…

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Blud thikt with cold: Reborns: dolls so lifelike you could mistake them for real infants. Creepy - both the concept itself, and how people react to them.

Reports on a couple of restaurants recently visited, and a theatrical excursion.

A couple of weeks ago, booked to see Racine's Britannicus at Wilton's Music Hall, located near the Tower of London, which does not appear a terribly promising area for the gastronome, unless one heads somewhat north towards Brick Lane. However, there is a very nice restaurant, Rosemary Lane, to be found in Royal Mint Street.

The service, though very affable, seemed a little rough around the edges but that might have been a factor of our turning up so early and so soon after opening. One gets the impression that weekends are not their busy time - we were the sole diners at first though eventually a couple of other tables were occupied, and when we passed it on our way back to the Tube it was still far from full.

The food, however, was wonderful. I had a starter of cured lightly smoked halibut with grapefruit, fennel and red onion salad, though alas the small leaf salad garnish was red chard. For my main course I had the slow-cooked pork belly with celeriac remoulade and braised celeriac and apples, which was wonderful - I don't think I've ever been anywhere where the crackling was at such a point of perfection. The portions, I should add, were generous. To conclude, we both had the red Elephant Ear plums,fresh ginger, brown sugar crumble with vanilla ice-cream - cooked to order. Possibly this could have been just a bit more gingery.

We then waddled off to the theatre, which is in the aforementioned former, and rather dilapidated, though in the process of restoration, music hall.

The stage was in what used to be the auditorium, with rising rows of seats where, presumably, the proscenium used to be. I wonder if this had an impact on the acoustics, or whether it was just that we were right in the top row.

It was a good production, but, given that Racine is short on action and long on the characters rabbiting on to one another, it would have helped to be able to hear all of it more clearly.

Last Saturday we tried the Horseshoe gastropub in Hampstead (doesn't seem to have a website). This suffered a little by contrast. Although it was a lot busier, it was also rather noisy, and the tables somewhat cramped.* The food, though quite acceptable, wasn't quite in the same class as Rosemary Lane - their twice-cooked pork belly with celeriac remoulade and roasted apples didn't really match up to what I'd had the previous week. Also, the starter, venison scotch duck egg with red coleslaw, sounded rather more exciting than it turned out to be. The apple and blackberry crumble was a bit unmemorable, as it took me a while just now to remember what I'd had.

*We feel that this is really not the place to take anyone with whom one is contemplating adultery in Hampstead.

Sing yay for the kedgeree sans tomatoes but plus mild curry sauce!

Now you've solved that one, could you perhaps turn your attention to the consistency of the rice, as verging on the al dente is not what I expect in my kedgeree.

(Am not only turning into Disgusted Tunbridge Wells but Disgusted Old India Hand 'my bobberjee in Ooty, now he knew how to make a decent kedgeree', Tunbridge Wells.)

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Also on the gastronomy front:

All aboard for a Gastronomic road trip around London
To celebrate the third annual London Restaurant Festival (Monday 3rd – Monday 17th October inclusive), we invite you to take a truly gastronomic road trip on Wednesday 5th October.

Our ‘Gastro Gallop’ takes you on a tour of our acclaimed pubs and dining rooms from the City to Hatton Garden, Holborn and on to Sloane Square and the King's Road. Start the evening with cocktails and canapés at Chiswell Street Dining Rooms before enjoying courses at The Hat & Tun, The White Swan, The Botanist and The Cadogan Arms.

As well as starters and mains that include seared Isle of Man king scallops with crisp bacon and pea purèe or Yorkshire roe deer ‘Wellington’, there’s a tasting plate of desserts awaiting at The Botanist with delights such lemon meringue pie; Devonshire custard tart and fig pudding.

Finish your evening at the nearby Cadogan Arms with coffees, digestifes and an impromptu game of pool on one of the three American eight-ball pool tables. Our culinary safari includes five courses in five different venues plus fine wines and cocktails for just £60 per person inclusive of transport.

Since I got a promotional email for this event only yesterday, might I hazard that bookings are not rushing in?

It sounds rather ghastly, though I suppose it could work. I'm just rather pessimistically envisaging a group of people some of whom chuck their food down like they are waste-disposal units and others who slowly savour each mouthful, chewing it 100 times like Mr Gladstone.

As I have probably mentioned hitherto, partner and I try to have one occasion per year when we go to some really upscale restaurant. This is technically meant to be my birthday celebration, but over the years there has sometimes been a good deal of slippage.

Last Saturday's was probably the largest degree of slippage yet, since it actually counts as last year's birthday treat, initially deferred on account of various commitments, and then there was the whole business of deciding where, and then when we did get round to deciding and booking, the only Saturday evening they could offer us was ages ahead.

We had actually been to Le Gavroche before, many years ago.

It is, I will concede, eye-bleedingly pricey. (Though they practise the quaint custom of giving Teh Laydee a menu sans prix*, I caught glimpses of partner's as he tilted it this way and that to try and read it in the dim light.)

As per usual, we were unable to try the tasting menu (Menu Exceptionnel) because it contained stuff I couldn't eat and stuff partner couldn't eat (which are non-overlapping categories).

So we ordered a la carte - I'm not sure it's changed inordinately since our last visit, though is possibly a little less totally about ye trad Fr haut cuisine and a little more having had some contact with changing trends. They still retain a number of signature dishes, however.

There were delicious little amuse-bouches - 2 as soon as we got sat down, pretty much, and then another one while we were waiting for our starters. The bread was very nice, though perhaps the choice was not quite up to Tom Aikens, where I could have happily sat down to a tasting menu from the assortment on their bread tray.

Vast amounts of staff all around, doing everything but actually cutting one's food up and putting it into one's mouth... Far more women front of house - I don't think there were any last time, or only very few.

The food, of course, was lovely - I had roast bone marrow with ceps and other things for my starter (mmmmmm), followed by the darne de turbot with chive butter, heritage carrots and other stuff, which was not perhaps quite the completely Platonically perfect turbot, but I still had to resist picking up and sucking the bones for the last tastes. And that great old standard, Omelette Rothschild (which I think I had last time) pour le dessert. Followed by coffee and petit fours.

While we didn't go for the really expensive wines (and you can get really, really, pricey wines there) we had a very nice Viognier.

While I quite like having a space for digestion and reflection and recuperation between courses, I thought there was possibly just a little too long a wait between starter and main.

At some point during the evening, Michel Roux comes out to make a round of the tables. (And we did not, unlike the table next, whip out a digital camera to take our photo with him.)

So that was last year's session of gastronomic indulgence.

*What they did at the table adjacent to ours consisting of an entire group of some 6-8 laydeez, I have no idea. Or what happens if 2 laydeez dine together.

But, aside from now being able to commit astounding performative feats of memory, can he remember a) where he left his keys and b) birthdays of significant other and relatives? Enquiring minds would like to know, as this seems to me to fall into the same category as 'you can get men to do the ironing providing they can do it halfway up Everest or on a highwire so that it counts as extreeeeeeeeme'.

Sing a very resounding yay for that maligned breed, the social worker. Piece about Margaret Humphreys, as played by Emily Watson in Oranges and Sunshine, who discovered the lost story of the children involuntarily emigrated to Australia. Though, you know, there were well-meaning people involved in the project who thought it was all about transplanting the children to flourish in a better environment. Which was misguided, but the whole thing was not just about reducing social welfare costs in the UK and providing cheap labour for the white colonies (because children were also being sent to Canada). There was an element of the anti-urban romantic primitivism virtue of the wide-open spaces thing going on.

Charlotte Higgins on what a great writer Rosemary Sutcliffe was.

Marks and Sparks on the Champs Elysees - Agnès Poirier rejoices. May previously have recounted tale of how, when my mother was lodging French language students in the long-ago summers, they all stocked up, at Maman's request, before they left, with Birds' Custard Powder, HP Sauce and similar items of the Great Brit Gastro Trad. Also, that when the ferries were still running, whole French families used to come over with large shopping bags and denude the supermarket shelves. Meanwhile, English families were taking the ferry or hovercraft, or latterly travelling via the Tunnel, to shop in the hypermarches of Boulogne. The grass is always greener? Other people's food is more delightfully exotic?

Five topics from chickenfeet2003

Imperialism
A recurrent theme in human history - except, empires are all different, and even the nominally same empire is different at different points in its chronological existence. The only thing they have in common (I hazard) is that they are not monolithic, that they represent at any given point an equilibrium of balancing tensions between a whole range of interests and individuals. As a historian, I don't know whether I hang out in the wrong circles and this is all happening elsewhere, but the British were not the only Imperial/Colonial European power during the C18th-C20th, but I never seem to come across much on the others - I met someone who was working on the Belgian Congo, and someone who was working on sodomy trials under the Dutch at the Cape in the early C18th, but when I was co-editing the VD book and we wanted to have chapters about the colonial dimension as well as just what was going on in Europe, our fairly wide range of contacts didn't in fact come up with any work on non-BritEmp sites, which was a bit frustrating. It also, bizarrely, seems to replicate a hegemonic notion of the Empire upon which the sun never sets.

Another and unrelated thought that was aroused by something on someone else's lj recently; Kipling's 'The Man Who Would be King' and H G Wells' 'The Country of the Blind' as parables of failed or misguided imperialism, where the protags find that The Natives do not need or want a Honky and indeed it turns out very much the worse for the latter. Maybe. It's a while since I've read either.

Seafood
Mmmmm, seafood.... is there any pleasure to match a platter of nice fresh seafood, with an array of picks and crackers and fingerbowls and napkins at one's disposal? This formed the basis of some very memorable meals in my gastronomic history. It's something I tend not to cook at home since partner either doesn't like or has adverse reactions to quite a lot of things that fall under that heading. The crayfish in (I think) garlic and coriander at the Mauritian restaurant that used to be in Cleveland Street in the shadow of some of the grimmer buildings of the Middlesex Hospital. The various luscious things with names like Moreton Bay Bugs in Australia.

Pardon my drool.

Guilty pleasures
I'm not sure I like the concept of guilty pleasures - too many overtones of ads of women sneaking a forbidden chocolate bar, ooh-la-la. The only pleasures that might be considered guilty are those which come at someone else's expense. I can totally get behind, however, the concept of embarrassing pleasures that one would rather not admit or be found enjoying. I have a lot of embarrassing enjoyment out of 50s and 60s pop music, some of which has completely deplorable sexual and racial politics (I don't think Little Anthony and the Imperials get a pass on the Sexy Primitive Native Babe line of 'Shimmy Shimmy Koko Bop' for being black themselves, and as for The Sweet's 'Wig Wam Bam', the less said, the better). Also, sometimes I like to sit down and rot my mental teeth with Laurel K Hamilton: *blush*.

Opera
Not quite, if it ain't Mozart, it ain't opera, but I haven't ever managed to really get into any opera that isn't. Though I do rather like Purcell, who is probably a bit of a marginal case. I was thinking the other day that it's ages since I last saw a performance of The Marriage of Figaro, and I should really, really like to.

The road less travelled
I suppose this would cover my particular academic field, at least when I started out. It was lovely, in one sense, not have a huge literature to survey and engage with; though the disadvantage was the lack of existing work to bounce ideas off. There still seem to be parts of what I do that are not, academically speaking, well-travelled (see recent plaint on finding myself still The Person Asked To Do The Necessary Chapter).

If anyone would like five things to stimulate their thoughts, ask away.