Cafe Anglais (and Ye Olde Eng­lish Upholsterer)

Yes, I’ve tried a new restau­rant, believe it or not! I know, I can get in such a rut with the few restau­rants I feel loy­al to, but unfor­tu­nate­ly today’s lunch, while very nice, just con­firmed my cur­mud­geon­ly atti­tude toward most restau­rants. Let me explain.

My friend Gigi and I met up today at the much-hyped Cafe Anglais in Bayswa­ter for a gos­sipy lunch out. I think I am not alone in pre­fer­ring lunch out to din­ner out, almost every time. Why? Well, look at it this way: you don’t need a babysit­ter because your child is gain­ful­ly employed at school, you tend to eat less at lunch and so feel less guilty, you’re (at least I’m) not tremen­dous­ly tempt­ed to drink a cock­tail or wine as you would be at din­ner, so you spend a lot less, and maybe my favourite bit, you can walk the longish walk home after­ward and work off some of your glut­tony. Plus most of my girl­friends are not real­ly inter­est­ed in girls’ din­ners out, since most of them hard­ly ever see their hus­bands (not a prob­lem in my 24/7 state of wed­ded bliss). It makes me laugh to remem­ber some­thing my GP said when John quit his job. “My hus­band can nev­er retire. I have told him, I mar­ried you for life, but not for lunch.”

Well, 29 days out of 30 or so I’m hap­py to have lunch with my beloved, but then there comes a day when it’s time for a spot of girl­friend time. And Gigi’s one of my favourite lunchtime com­pan­ions. Whether it’s kvel­ling about our remark­able daugh­ters (hers at age five is an absolute read­ing prodi­gy), catch­ing each oth­er up on films and tele­vi­sion series that each oth­er sim­ply has to see, or dis­sect­ing the food, we always have fun. And as you well know, I’m no intel­lec­tu­al snob, but there’s some­thing to be said for raw intel­li­gence in a lunch com­pan­ion. She’s just clever. We had a great time.

How­ev­er… the food. It was all nice, I don’t want to mis­lead you. The menu is inter­est­ing­ly con­struct­ed: lots and lots of hors d’oeu­vres each priced at 3 pounds, so it was tempt­ing to order about six of them. Then a num­ber of fish choic­es, lots of gamey roast options, and a sur­pris­ing­ly large selec­tion of side veg­eta­bles. I was attract­ed by all the var­i­ous pota­to options: Bor­de­laise, dauphi­noise, Anna. But I did­n’t real­ly want the roast that they would nat­u­ral­ly accom­pa­ny, and I did­n’t want to look like a freak and order three pota­to dish­es and noth­ing else. So I opt­ed for two hors d’oeu­vres (anchovy toast sol­diers with a pot of parme­san cus­tard, and cubed yel­low­tail tuna with a dot of wasabi and soy) and a ter­rine de foie gras. And here was my prob­lem. Every­thing was nice, but I could have made it all at home, and great­ly enjoyed doing it. And I’m no rock­et sci­en­tist when it comes to cook­ing. I just find increas­ing­ly that all I want to eat out at a restau­rant is some­thing I could­n’t con­ceiv­ably pull off at home. Asian deep-fried soft­shell crabs, a real Indi­an saag paneer, creme brulee de foie gras.

That being said, it’s a love­ly, love­ly place. It’s locat­ed in what was, unbe­liev­ably, a McDon­ald’s in the icon­ic White­ley’s depart­ment store build­ing in Queensway and the ambi­ence is very chic and yet peace­ful. We were the first din­ers today, and I was quite skep­ti­cal at the notion that all 170 chairs would ever be filled, but they were. So go along, do, and bring a large appetite because then you can order up one of the roast entrees and have all those pota­to side dish­es, and report back to me.

Let’s see, today brought us a vis­it from arguably the most Eng­lish per­son I have yet met here in our adopt­ed land. As you may remem­ber, crazy Keechie has caused an awful lot of fam­i­ly strife, to say noth­ing of hun­dreds of dol­lars in dry clean­ing, by her incli­na­tion to use the fur­ni­ture as a lit­ter box when she gets stressed. And iron­i­cal­ly, while she used to get stressed by peo­ple, now she appar­ent­ly gets stressed by… no peo­ple. As in when we try to go away. Over the sum­mer she had an absolute field day with the sofa cush­ion, and at Christ­mas with the love­ly bench cov­ered in suit­ing fab­ric. This has not made her pop­u­lar with her father who is always look­ing for ways to reduce the num­ber of cats in his house­hold. At any rate, for months now we have been try­ing to find an uphol­ster­er, and actu­al­ly did find one, who took our sofa cush­ion and then appar­ent­ly went into the wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gram, for he’s nev­er been seen or heard from again. I just can’t imag­ine that the sud­den acqui­si­tion of one very smelly sofa cush­ion would dri­ve him from his home and busi­ness, but he nev­er answers phone calls or the bell if we vis­it him. Fair enough, by now I don’t think we want the blast­ed thing back.

My friend Susan is a dec­o­rat­ing mar­vel, with a tru­ly deserv­ing house, and so I turned to her. And up sur­faced her lit­tle man today, one C.H Frost of Abing­don Road, with a pullover AND an ancient suit jack­et (but not the suit trousers to go with it, you under­stand), a very con­spic­u­ous hear­ing aid and a won­der­ful turn of phrase that took me right back to, oh, say 1939? Well, it took me there, if not BACK. “Oy, I’m a mean man myself, sir, not want­i­ng to spend oth­er peo­ple’s mon­ey. But you’ll get every far­thing’s worth from a good fab­ric,” dis­re­gard­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of this cur­ren­cy from the realm. Shall we have to pay him in shillings?

And when his mobile phone rang, “If you’ll excuse me, sir and madam…” and then when he fin­ished his con­ver­sa­tion, “Now I don’t ‘old with these things as a gen­er­al rule, because peo­ple can ring you any time. Mind you, there was a day when I was a young man when a client called me on Christ­mas Day! Christ­mas Day! Peo­ple will take lib­er­ties, they will take lib­er­ties.” He caressed our sofa and admired its pro­por­tions, albeit cush­ion­less, and asked if we’d like the mate­r­i­al on the arms replaced by the mate­r­i­al under the cush­ion. “Just as well use it, since folks won’t be see­ing it, ‘idden as you might say it is under there.” Now that’s com­mon sense! John and I felt that we were lying safe­ly in the lap of com­pe­tence and fru­gal­i­ty, and he went away with assur­ances that he would be back soon with sam­ples for us to choose from. Whew. I don’t even care about the cush­ions: I feel we got our mon­ey’s worth just to meet him. I do love elder­ly Eng­lish gentlemen.

Well, home­work beck­ons. I can’t make the last class next week, so I’ve got to pro­duce my writ­ing sam­ples for the final now, as well as tomor­row’s bit. Get this exer­cise: first you choose a neigh­bor, some­one you know but not well, and list his or her salient qual­i­ties. Then you make a sep­a­rate list of peo­ple you know who have had “bombs” in their lives. That is, events that define them, that change their lives. Then you have to give one of those “bombs” to your neigh­bor and write up the moments before the “bomb” and after. It’s so dif­fi­cult! I can describe my neigh­bor (I chose Janet who bor­rows Tacy) with no dif­fi­cul­ty, and I can think of any num­ber of peo­ple I know who have had “bombs,” but some­how the assign­ment to com­bine them is total­ly throw­ing me. As well, why do I have no prob­lem pro­duc­ing thou­sands of words for this blog, but the neces­si­ty of thou­sands of words for my home­work is so daunt­ing? I think it’s the fic­tion­al aspect of it. Also it’s the dread­ed adage, “Show, don’t tell” that I find com­plete­ly impos­si­ble. I have to tell! Don’t know how to show. But I must buck­le down. It’s very hard to turn my atten­tion to fic­tion­al mat­ters when real life is so… interesting!