August 2009
A miscellany
It's been a long time since I had time to think about eating - or rather, write about it. Moving house is not only stressful but it's time-consuming and leaves no room for anything else. The dust still hasn't settled: I have one slipper, the pyjamas are in a box I haven't unpacked yet and most of my cookery books are yet to be located. The plumbers have left, and I now have hot water, but they will be back in a week (and then I will have no loo!). The electrician will be in residence after that. So in the meantime, I will do a quick roundup of meals eaten - usually in haste - over recent months.
The southernmost reaches of God's Own Country provided a couple of surprises. The George and Dragon, in Mexborough of all places, is a lovely homely pub with a friendly landlord, charming bar staff, good beer and a very acceptable pub food menu with real chips, proper shortcrust pastry pies (and a gravyboat) and a steak that is worth eating. Five minutes up the road in the oddly-spelt Cinamon restaurant in Swinton I ate a surprisingly good Lamb Haandi, which was tender, well-spiced and succulent. The Royal Electric Theatre (a former cinema unpromisingly grim from the outside but light, airy and modern within) offered the golden oldies of the Chinese restaurant world - crispy duck, beef with ginger and spring onions and honey roast pork - cooked and served competently.
Further North, the Black Horse at Asquith also offered proper chips. But their steak and kidney pie was almost inedible, with dry, tough, gristly meat, in gravy so salty that I could feel my blood pressure spiralling upwards with every mouthful. Waiting 35 minutes for a puff-pastry topping on a pre-cooked pie filling was not acceptable either. The sad little side dish of tasteless vegetables had clearly been reheated, and there was not a single spud. The excellent chips, strangely, came with the sandwich ordered by my mother-in-law (who kindly donated them to me). The waitress who served us was clearly trained in the Genghis Khan School of Charm. Definitely one to drive past in future, which is a pity as the views are spectacular and in days past it was a hostelry worth making a detour for.
After years of rural living, the idea of having a restaurant on the doors is a novelty. Brio's at Hornbeam Park, on the outskirts of Harrogate, was a Godsend after a stressful stint of unpacking boxes the day after the move. I had an excellent pizza (with my favourite toppings of ham and artichoke obligingly supplied), some good house wine and swift, friendly service. But how much pleasanter it would have been without the horrible brats at the next table! The father and doting grandparents of these spoilt little horrors allowed them to run amok noisily, climb on the comfy seats in a side area with their dirty feet, and throw food onto the floor, entirely unrebuked. In fact, the whole party simply ignored the hideous children as though they were not their responsibility.
After they had left, the poor waiter had to move the table and chairs to clear up the mess, using a dustpan and brush, and then clean the floor as well. When I commented, he said that they were regular customers who behaved like that on every visit. Come on, restaurant managers, put your collective feet down and refuse to put up with this! Customers like me are going to stop going to restaurants when other people's children make eating out a misery.
Further south, an evening flight meant a late arrival at the Premier Inn in Southampton in the pouring rain. With no desire to get wet feet again (and wearing my only pair of dry socks), I broke the habit of a lifetime and ate in the hotel restaurant. The very helpful waitress assured me that the dauphinois potatoes had been made that very day. Who could resist? (The alternative was boiled new potatoes, presumably cooked by Sir Walter Raleigh, and chips frozen at the last ice age.) Indeed, the dauphinois quite possibly had been made within the past 24 hours, but unfortunately with freshly-prepared wallpaper paste. After possibly the worst steak I have ever attempted to eat, I left a plate that looked as though it had received the loaves and fishes treatment - i.e., there was more left on it than when I started.
Breakfast was a more pleasant experience, which was fortunate as I was so hungry that - as one of my cousins used to say - I could have eaten a scabby donkey. Probably the one I pushed round my plate the night before. The croissants were fresh, crisp and I managed three, though I mourned the lack of anything resembling real jam.
That night it poured with rain again and after plodding round Southampton in search of anything more appealing than a kebab shop, a helpful passer-by told me that something resembling a restaurant quarter could be found on Oxford Street, and gave me directions. And so it proved, as the street concerned was almost continental in its dedication to food. After much indecision, I ate at Oxfords - which seemed to be buzzing with happy diners and had a jolly, bistro-type atmosphere.
As usual, when the starter arrived I felt that an invisible short straw had somehow been shoved into my soggy little hand. Surely anyone can produce a decent bruschetta which after all, is little more than tomatoes on toast? These tomatoes were lava-hot and soggy, with that total absence of flavour that only the British seem to be able to achieve. The belly pork that followed was reasonable enough, being tender and moist, with a genuinely crispy layer of cracking on top. But what idiot decided that it should be served on a mound of potatoes and cabbage, with not a drop of gravy or any other kind of lubrication to help it down? The glass of wine I had ordered had to be re-ordered, twice. It only arrived finally after I had almost brought the waitress down with a flying tackle as she passed my table, en route to flirting with the party of blokes at the next one.
The next morning, I looked forward to breakfast only to find that the croissants were dry, hard and were obviously left over from the day before.
Sometimes it's hard to be Pollyanna.
