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South Lodge Hotel, Horsham, East Sussex
Lord of all it surveys
I have a soft spot for country house hotels, one fuelled by being glued to Downton Abbey every Sunday. Yes I know it’s only Upstairs Downstairs for 2000 but I like to sigh wistfully and imagine what I would do in the Earl of Grantham’s brogues faced with all his posh problems.
One of them, not mentioned, must be the fact that’s he’s trying to run a house the size of Kent with apparently no more than twelve indoor staff. We never see the poor man who has to run the Flymo over the hundreds of acres outside, presumably he is confined to a small hut.
Turning into the drive of South Lodge Hotel from the old Brighton Road, you get the sweep of driveway and suddenly the view of the house itself. Massively enlarged since being turned into a hotel it has been done with sympathy and only the newness of the bricks really gives away where new wings have been grafted on.
Meet me in the drawing room
This means my head movie, where I am greeted by genuflecting loyal staff, is retained all the way up to the front desk. They have built a whole new reception area in front of what was once the original front door, which is a bit odd, but it works if you don’t wonder why there are exterior windows between internal rooms. It has a big old fireplace and must be particularly welcoming in winter. Read more…
The Rosendale, West Dulwich
65 Rosendale Road, West Dulwich, London, SE21 8EZ www.therosendale.co.uk
A big old boozer in sarf lundun
I once heard a food writer say ‘Oh we don’t like chain restaurants’. I assumed he was using the royal ‘we’ but no. Apparently he was referring to some mysterious cabal, the admission criteria being snobbery.
He might have liked it at The Rosendale though, as the clientele has upper middle class written all over it. Close enough to Dulwich to draw in the local wealth, The Rosendale on our night was packed with thick-haired young men and beautiful blonde girls all drawn from the same gene pool and already firmly set on their Life Cruise Control.
Saved from ruin some years ago this lovely old boozer has real character and could well be in Highgate or Islington instead of, technically I think, West Norwood. Renaissance Pubs has done it out nicely in Gastro Pub, the new paint from Farrow and Ball, and it has a decent outside area for smoking, a garden and plenty of space to park prams. One of which is quite important to me. Read more…
Ducksoup, Soho
No expense spared
Is it a good idea to grill lemons? Is it a good idea to incinerate artichokes? Is it a good idea to open a minimalist bar restaurant in Soho?
I like simple griling, frying and roasting but an artichoke subjected to intense heat resembles something saved from a bonfire with a lot of burnt leaves and a subsequent vicious struggle for the tender centre. Grilling lemons adds a pleasant caramilisation but makes the seeds even more bitter in the mouth than usual. The Fritto Misto at Ducksoup, a new London restaurant, might be better named a Fritto Mysterioso, as in ‘why would they do that?’ Read more…
Tea time treats from the London Tea Company
These delicious teas have been sweetening the foetid air of the Foodepedia offices, staffed as they are by people who eat for a living and thus suffer from alimentary gusts and breezes, for a week or so now. It is suddenly like being in a boudoir, or the offices of The Lady perhaps. Even served in our hilarious tea mugs ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps’, the tea’s delicate nature remains undisturbed.
Green tea, it has been recently claimed, may ward off cancer, which is something we should all be trying to do obviously. Not least as there may well be no public health service to wash and bathe us in our autumnal years and green tea is cheaper than selling the house over the children’s heads to afford private care.
It’s the antioxidants that do it of course. Green tea is loaded with them but all too often, for me at least, it actually tastes medicinal. Nanny’s edict that if tastes horrible it is doing you good, never struck a chord with me.
London Tea’s Green Tea is very delicate and one of the few green teas I can actually drink without effort.
Favourite though is the White Tea with elderflower, lemongrass and a hint of apricot. Not only does it taste rather wonderful and smell even better, it has all the benefits of White Tea which is made from the youngest buds of the tea plant.
These teas are part of a large range from a rather cool company. www.londontea.co.uk
Bedruthan Steps. Charlie don’t surf, but we can at least walk
Let the train take the strain
There’s a magic moment as the First Great Western train leaves Exeter when you finally know that you’ve quit London. Suddenly the monotonous banks of earth and fields of green give way onto what seems like an endless expanse of water. The wet sand is reflecting a late September sun and small boats lean drunkenly in all directions, patiently waiting the return of the tide to float them back to sober and dignified bobbing.
It’s enough to make even the most tired and jaded Londoner perk up and look forward to the upcoming weekend break. With no car to worry about the only pressure is getting through the wodge of Saturday papers sprawled across the table. Our destination, Bedruthan Steps is 200 or so miles away and it’s good to let someone else do the driving for once. Read more…
Classic Vegetarian Cookery: Arto der Haroutanian
Bean there, done that
Like many people my flirtation with vegetarianism ended with the waft of a bacon roll. Working in advertising I was frequently on film sets at ‘sparrow fart’, as times before dawn were called, and when you’re hungry, cold and hungover a bacon butty is irresistible.
There was also the dawning realisation that the girlfriend, who was the real veggie, was frying everything in order to make it tasty and I was ballooning in weight. This was the 1980s you understand, we knew more about Rick Astley than we did about eating a wholesome diet.
It was clear though even then that the tastiest vegetarian meals came from the East or Middle East. Those cultures had long traditions of eating vegetables as something more than a boring side dish and could do things to them that made them stars in their own right.
Classic Vegetarian Cookery has been unavailable for almost 20 years, the author Arto der Haroutanian can now be seen to have been ahead of his time. An Armenian by birth he was brought up from the age of 12 in the North West of England and was a painter of international distinction, as well as the owner of a chain of hotels and restaurants where Armenian cookery featured. Read more…
Dawn of the Dead. Westfield Stratford City opening day
The recession is over?
It’s a bit eerie at Westfield Stratford, thousands of people all walking in the same direction and with the same expression on their face. ‘Day of the dead,’ says M glumly as we watch from behind the safety of our security barrier, He’s right the resemblance to zombies is undeniable, although to be fair most zombies wouldn’t be seen undead in a shell suit and many have better complexions.
It’s opening day at Westfield Stratford City. Some pedants have argued a city has to have a cathedral and Stratford doesn’t but they are missing the point, it does have a cathedral or at least a large temple of worship and it’s this new shopping centre.
The faithful have turned up in massive numbers, are they all skipping work or are they all unemployed? If the latter how will they afford to shop here? Questions unanswered when Boris Johnson clambers shabbily to his feet to deliver a characteristically up beat and witty opening speech. His jokes about Chaucer may go over a few people’s heads but at least he doesn’t patronise the crowd with jargon-filled rubbish the way Ken would have done. Read more…
Brasserie Joel, London
First Floor, Park Plaza Westminster Bridge, City of London SE1 7UT www.brasseriejoel.co.uk
Rather moody
The Park Plaza hotel is south of the river, but only just. Run full tilt out of the foyer and you’ll be in the Thames seconds later and soon bobbing past the London Eye.
South of the river but not of The South, the hotel resolutely turns its back on the area and instead looks toward Parliament across Westminster Bridge. In fact approach as we did from the rear and you find yourself forced to detour around endless pelican crossings before making your final assault on the front door.
Even then it’s not over, the escalators packed with happy tourists take you up to a modernistic foyer (i.e. it looks nothing like one) with no sign of, or signs to, the restaurant. It is in fact a sharp left and left again down a long moodily lit corridor toward a tall reception desk where a guardian coolly appraises your approach while you will yourself not to do a Miranda pratfall.
And yet in the restaurant it’s friendly and family, guests from many nations are eating and there are even small children too. Yes the mood is Hotel, but the food is something else. Back in the 1990s Joel Antunes was chef/patron at Les Saveurs, now sadly gone to the great griddle in the sky, and back then we flocked to eat there. Now he’s back in London and thanks to him this is no ‘hotel restaurant’. Read more…
The Drift, Heron Tower, London
Heron Tower, 110 Bishopsgate, EC2N 4AY. www. thedriftbar.co.uk
The entrance to Drift is around the side of the Heron Tower, but it’s worth going into the main reception to ‘ask directions’ just to get a whiff of that new building smell and stare in awe at the fish tank.
In fact it’s not so much a tank as Europe’s largest privately owned aquarium. It’s so massive you expect a heavily tied up James Bond to suddenly drop into it , and then a shark to appear looking peckish.
After security has firmly set you on the right path you find The Drift itself. A new London restaurant, triple-heighted, with a bar on the ground floor and the restaurant on the first, it’s clangy and modern but not unpleasant. The mix of seating, with tables of various heights plus large refectory ones that seat eight, means it caters for all pay grades in a pleasingly egalitarian manner Read more…
Waldorf Salad: In the garden with Executive Chef Lee Streeton
Chef’s rubber Croc shoes seem at odds with the mud we’re tramping through, but then so are his chef’s whites. ‘I’ve got big plans,’ says Lee Streeton Executive Chef at the spanking new Syon Park Waldorf Astoria Hotel while waving his arms around. ‘This land is mine!’
As veg patches go, it’s already a sizeable one. Courgettes are massed in yellow-flowered profusion. ‘We cook those, they go quick,’ Lee says charging up and down the veg beds in the dwindling light pointing out other plants and herbs growing furiously well in his deep organic beds, all sheltered from the worst of the weather by the hotel’s walls and close presence.
Many chefs these days claim to be pulling produce from the restaurant garden, but if you get a chance to peek outside their restaurants you have to wonder who is kidding who. A patch of herbs and a tomato plant do not a vegetable garden make.
Lee is certainly capable of keeping his customers fed from his. A cynical non-foody might say that’s because his dishes are rather tiny. One tomato can probably make ten plates the way Lee does it. I’m being a bit naughty though because, seriously, Lee’s dishes are examples of fine dining restraint and quality and are about textures and tastes combined with seasonality. Read more…
Nick Harman 