It can take a lot of stamina dining out in London, but leading journalist, Dominic Midgley, is more than up for the challenge.
MONDAY
Dinner at Boisdale of Belgravia was preceded by a sharpener of Hendricks and tonic on the cigar terrace so that the smokers amongst us could have a gasper before sitting down.
I wonder whether I am the only Hendricks drinker who keeps forgetting that the word has gone out from on high that every measure of Hendricks must be accompanied by slices of cucumber, an abominable fruit in my view unless sliced extremely thinly as a garnish on smoked salmon sandwiches. Dr Johnson had it about right when he said, “Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out”.
A straw poll of my dining companions re G&T garnishes yielded other pet peeves. One hated slices of kiwi fruit which have not had the skin peeled off, with the result that the fuzz permeates the drink. Another objected to the basil leaf in a drink that also contained a slice of pink grapefruit.
TUESDAY
To Sagardi, a new Basque restaurant in Shoreditch, for lunch with restaurant PR guru Henry Taylor and ghostwriter to top chefs, James Steen.
For his latest project, which took a marathon five years, Steen collaborated with Raymond Blanc to write Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons, a book that takes us on a lyrical tour of Blanc’s magnificent restaurant-hotel through the seasons and includes 120 of the great man’s most classic recipes.
It comes in two versions, one a sturdy hardback, the other a thing of beauty that you wouldn’t want to risk anywhere near the flying pots and pans of your kitchen. You know the sort of thing, silver-gilded pages, lavender-scented endpapers, personally signed by the author – the lot. It may be £162.50 on Amazon but as a limited edition, it will undoubtedly increase in value over the years.
Touch of Basque country in Shoreditch
Lunch proceedings began with a bit of theatre as our host poured Sagardoa cider from a bottle wielded at head-height into a glass in his left hand held as low as he could manage. Given the amount of incidental spillage during the pouring process – even by an expert – this is clearly not one to try at home if you value your carpet, rug or floorboards.
The thinking behind this technique is to introduce as much air as possible into the cider before serving and once it’s put in front of you the advice is to neck it in one or two swigs in order to gain the maximum benefit from this dramatic – but short-lived – oxygenation. As Sagardi’s cider-maker of choice Zapiain puts it: “The cider should be either in the bottle or in our stomach. The less time it remains in the glass, the better.”
Sagardoa has had a distinguished place in the Basque drinks cabinet since the 16th and 17th centuries when it was the only beverage consumed by the crews of Basque whalers heading for the coasts of Greenland. “It did not go bad like water and prevented the diseases common on long seafaring journeys,” I’m told. Who knows?
Perhaps it will have the same effect on the many communicable diseases to be picked up on the London Tube network. It certainly tasted potent enough.
WEDNESDAY
A kindly sponsor has invited me to Wembley to watch Tottenham take on CSKA Moscow in their final game of this season’s Champions League from the comfort of a corporate box.
As I wrote in an article about the wine available at football grounds a few years ago: “Football fans are more likely to chant ‘Who ate all the pies?’ than ‘Who slugged all the Chareau-Leoville Barton 2000?’”
But the standard of vintages on offer has greatly improved over the years. Led by that enthusiastic oenophile Sir Alex Ferguson, Premier League coaches have grown increasingly fond of a premier cru. As the Daily Mail columnist Des Kelly once wrote: “Ask any manager what they thought of Pesquera a few years back and they’d have said he had a decent left foot. Now, they know it is ‘laden with crushed and macerated summer berry fruits, with delightful rich nuances of chocolate and spice’.”
The quality of wines offered to the punters has improved too. Last time I checked, Arsenal’s Diamond Club, for instance, offered a Domaine Leflaive Puligny Montrachet 2006 and a premier cru Chateau Latour 1997.
And so I had high hopes as the waitress scurried off to get me a glass of white wine. Alas, it was a Chilean Sauvignon Blanc – La Tierra Rocosa 2016 – and the red turned out to be a 2015 Merlot from the same winemaker. I was too scared to try the Merlot but I managed to quaff a few glasses of the white.
THURSDAY
Christmas is coming and the invitations were piling up so this evening offered an eclectic trio of experiences. First stop was a seasonal bash at Bentley’s, a fine restaurant near Piccadilly Circus run by the amiable Irishman Richard Corrigan.
After a quick mulled wine among the tables set up outside, it was off to St Moritz on Wardour Street to see Shame – an indy band of edgy intensity who look set to take the charts by storm in the years to come – at the invitation of an old friend who is the father of the band’s charismatic frontman.
The evening ended with dinner at Viet Food in London’s Chinatown. I’ve never really worked out what to drink with Asian fare. Beer is probably the most flexible option but, having downed a couple of Asahis at the Shame gig, I was inclined to switch to wine. A 2012 Riva Leone Barbaresco from a list selected by Christopher Cooper, the former wine buyer and head sommelier with the Soho House Group, who now runs a consultancy called Drinkonomics, served me very well.
FRIDAY
A nice relaxing end to quite a week at Charlotte’s Bistro
Wound down the week at the bar of Charlotte’s Bistro in Chiswick, west London. Decent cocktails are hard to find outside the town centre but here they can muddle with the best of them. As I was sipping appreciatively on an Old Fashioned, a bottle of tomato juice caught my eye. Turned out to be from the Tomato Stall on the Isle of Wight. As every Bloody Mary fan knows, the search for the perfect tomato juice is a never-ending quest. But perhaps I will get one step nearer my goal with this organic number that is “pressed in small batches by expert hands”.
