from Chelsea to Olympia

What a crazy Lon­dony cou­ple of days I have had: the sort when I emerge from my self-imposed Shep­herd’s Bush cocoon and enter the world of cul­ture that’s liv­ing on my doorstep in this won­der­ful town. And actu­al­ly there’s noth­ing more Lon­dony than what hap­pened last night at about 2 a.m. (I know, what on earth was I doing awake?) when, upon open­ing the win­dow for some fresh air, I spied a sil­very fox, reclin­ing in the street, lick­ing its tail! Now, see­ing a fox in the mid­dle of my neigh­bor­hood is not unknown to me, but it’s still a bit unex­pect­ed, and this one was far from the usu­al des­per­ate­ly thin, tail between its legs ver­sion. This fox was quite mag­nif­i­cent: a plumy tail and glossy coat, perky ears. I whis­pered, “Hey you,” and he looked up, right into my eyes and we stared at each oth­er for a rather long moment. Then he went right back to his bath, smack in the mid­dle of the (admit­ted­ly desert­ed) road. A Lit­tle Prince moment.

There was, actu­al­ly, a rea­son I was awake at 2 a.m. We spent the evening with our friends Joyce and Matthew, next-door neigh­bors Sara and Sel­va, and anoth­er cou­ple Emma and Chris, at the Chelsea Arts Club. And dear read­ers, may I report that this expe­ri­ence goes down as the sin­gle most eccen­tric, tru­ly Eng­lish adven­ture I’ve ever had here? For­get stomp­ing the divets at the Prince’s polo field, or pic­nick­ing at Glyn­de­bourne for the opera, or watch­ing Avery ride her pony to Buck­ing­ham Palace on New Year’s Day. Those are all mas­sive­ly cool and to be appre­ci­at­ed. But the Chelsea Arts Club? As my Devon friends would say, “Oh. My. God.”

First of all, you could walk right past it and not notice the tiny lit­tle sign, along with two rat­ty buzzers to let you in. But you enter, and it’s a world of uneven floor and ceil­ings (John’s head near­ly touched at times, and Sel­va’s at least as tall), paint­ings of every descrip­tion lin­ing the walls, salon style, floor to ceil­ing, a bul­letin board announc­ing the recent deaths of mem­bers (“So you know how many names there are left on the wait­ing list before YOURS comes up,” John hissed and I smacked him to shut him up, but of course it turns out to be true. Then there’s a fur­ther bul­letin board crammed with notices: “yoga instruc­tor and moth­er-to-be look­ing for room to share from March,” and “will trade stu­dio in Shored­itch for bun­ga­low in Ibiza begin­ning June,” and so on. And this was mere­ly the entry­way, through which streamed, both in and out, men most­ly, in elab­o­rate satin waist­coats and cra­vats, long white beards, ges­tur­ing long fin­gers, or impos­si­bly young men in trousers half falling off reach­ing out to take your coat, or scruffy look­ing men my age look­ing des­per­ate around the eyes and talk­ing six­teen to the dozen to oth­er men look­ing just like them.

We were tak­en to the bar, a room entire­ly tak­en up with a green-flan­nel-cov­ered bil­liards table and peo­pled with more of the same char­ac­ters. Every­one, I mean every­one, looked famous only I did­n’t know who they were. I nev­er know what painters look like, how do you? Where does any­one see them? I thought they should each have a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of their work tatooed upon their fore­heads because I could at least iden­ti­fy THAT and get excit­ed. And no Amer­i­cans. Which can be nice. We took our drinks out to a tent in what is alleged­ly a spec­tac­u­lar­ly neglect­ed and beau­ti­ful gar­den in back, and chat­ted. Chris turned out to be rather a mas­sive­ly famous por­trait painter who has just fin­ished com­mis­sions from the King of Sau­di Ara­bia and, oh yes, Queen Eliz­a­beth. He proved incred­i­bly mod­est and charm­ing, and whipped out his iPhone to scroll past pho­tos of his three daugh­ters and come to the paint­ings. Unbe­liev­able. It is this fel­low’s mem­ber­ship that will pro­pel our friend Matthew into his own, if he lives long enough.

Final­ly in to din­ner, which takes place in one of two rooms that one is FOR­BID­DEN to call a restau­rant, but are “din­ing rooms.” And they are, too: one with an enor­mous com­mu­nal table around which were more famous-look­ing peo­ple, look­ing up to see if we were any­body impor­tant, then return­ing instant­ly to their food and con­ver­sa­tion. Because peo­ple were con­stant­ly leav­ing from every pos­si­ble door­way to smoke, there was a sort of old-fash­ioned smoky air to the room which was a nice com­bi­na­tion of the old days and the smok­ing ban: just enough to give the place char­ac­ter, but you did­n’t have to choke.

We squeezed past every­one to our own table in the sec­ond room and sat down to paper menus and real­ly aver­age bread, but who cared? We were in a place Whistler found­ed, for God’s sake, just on a whim, where invalu­able paint­ings and draw­ings hang in seem­ing­ly for­got­ten splen­dor. And I was lucky enough to be sat between Matthew and Sel­va, two of the most atten­tive and charm­ing of men, so it was an embar­rass­ment of rich­es con­ver­sa­tion­al­ly speak­ing. Matthew, the painter, is a gen­tle, vul­ner­a­ble soul who punc­tu­ates many of his soft remarks with a beseech­ing glance and a gen­tle stroking of his fin­gers along one’s arm. Sel­va, quite the oppo­site, epit­o­mis­es the Anglo-Indi­an Oxford-trained bar­ris­ter, with his ten­nis-play­er mus­cles fill­ing out an impres­sive cash­mere jack­et that deserved some stroking too, but I restrained myself. Bril­liant, supreme­ly self-con­fi­dent hand ges­tures of that Oxbridge Eng­lish type I am total­ly a suck­er for. We’ve been invit­ed one day to lunch at the Law Court Din­ings Rooms in Lin­col­n’s Inn Fields, and that would rank as well as an amaz­ing­ly Eng­lish thing to do.

We tucked in to starters and mine was a sur­pris­ing­ly fresh and tasty tuna sashi­mi with a mouli (white radish), car­rot and cele­ri­ac coleslaw and toast­ed peanut dress­ing: love­ly and light. I had har­bored a total­ly unfair fear that the Club could not pos­si­bly be mas­sive­ly old-fash­ioned and Eng­lish AND serve edi­ble food, but hap­pi­ly I was wrong. John had lam­b’s kid­neys with green beans and hazel­nuts, and for once I was glad to be sep­a­rat­ed from him as he would have want­ed me to try them and I’m too close to the veni­son expe­ri­ence to have any unknown offal, thank you.

The wait­ers rushed around look­ing annoyed and har­rassed and as if they had left paint dry­ing on their can­vas­es at a MOST inop­por­tune moment, in order to bring us our unde­served food. In fact, all our main cours­es arrived and were plonked down uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly on the table. “Who has the lamb shoul­der?” the wait­er barked, to silence.

“SOME­ONE had the lamb shoul­der!” he insist­ed, only to be joined by a col­league who instant­ly whisked away all the food except for mine, a love­ly plate of sea bass. Hmm. Sel­va asked, “Does­n’t any­one else look hun­gry? Well, I know Kris­ten will share.” Final­ly mine was tak­en away too: we’d been giv­en some oth­er table’s order.

It was a delight­ful evening. Because I am a food writer, I was giv­en lots of sam­ples from oth­er peo­ple’s meals: Matthew gave me my first taste of sar­dines not from a tin. Gor­geous! I would def­i­nite­ly cook them. Which would bring our fam­i­ly accept­able-fish list up to an impres­sive… five. Bet­ter than none. And Sel­va donat­ed a scrap of pheas­ant with pearl bar­ley and red cab­bage, and sure enough, there was a lit­tle piece of shot in it. “That’s how you know you’re in Eng­land,” he assured me. “Do you hunt?” I asked, and he said imme­di­ate­ly, “I don’t kill things.” Inter­est­ing answer.

Although there was occa­sion­al talk about every­one’s chil­dren (rang­ing from 4 to 22), the con­ver­sa­tion was refresh­ing­ly undo­mes­tic: we talked about paint­ing, writ­ing, the Queen’s per­son­al­i­ty (sweet), gar­den­ing (can’t), the food, Oba­ma (of course). Joyce has spent time as a food writer and as such was com­plete­ly encour­ag­ing to me about my upcom­ing meet­ing next with with the Radio 4 fel­low, which I’m stead­fast­ly not think­ing about in order not to flip with nerves. She’s keen that I join the Guild of Food Writ­ers, which I’d be more than hap­py to do, but first I have to sell, lit­er­al­ly sell, two pieces before I can. Want to buy a blog post?

All too soon the cab was out­side to take us home, since we all live with­in six blocks of one anoth­er, and we trooped out, again past all the age­ing (most­ly), dan­di­fied, slight­ly past their sell-by date artists lin­ger­ing over their din­ners. Fab­u­lous. And in the cab Matthew asked if I’d like to write restau­rant reviews, and I laughed and told them a bit about the expe­ri­ence in Devon where we all reviewed the pre­vi­ous night’s meal and how I hat­ed doing it. “I know what you mean,” he said, “One of my best child­hood friends is a food crit­ic and he’s so hate­ful about it! I don’t know how he lives with him­self, some­times, and he’s real­ly a nice chap.” “I always think about A.A. Gill,” I said, “why any­one would want to incur that kar­ma.” “Oh, that’s my friend!” Matthew laughed. For heav­en’s sake. Gill did write a hilar­i­ous piece for the Sun­day Times Cul­ture sec­tion a cou­ple of weeks ago, rail­ing against per­son­al farm­ing. I”m para­phras­ing, but it was some­thing like, “Of course you can grow your own food, but it’s like whit­tling an auto­mo­bile. You can do it, but it’s stupid.”

I would have liked to be a lazy bum today and rest on a fab­u­lous evening out, but I had a tick­et to the BBC Good Food Show at Olympia, and so I was a good com­pli­ant girl and went. Now here I want some praise: unlike my usu­al method of telling you about things that are over, or will be over so quick­ly you’d have to heli­copter in to do them, today is the first day of the Show so you can go Sat­ur­day or Sun­day. It was good fun, although I have made a men­tal note as usu­al not to go on my own next year. It’s miss­ing some of the fun not to have any­one to ooh and ahh with, frown crit­i­cal­ly with you, eat the last bite of some­thing you don’t like, con­vince you to stop sam­pling EVERY cheese you encounter. So I’m tak­ing names to accom­pa­ny me to the next thing. Still, I had fun.

What you do, as with the Taste of Lon­don, is buy lit­tle tokens that rep­re­sent a cer­tain amount of mon­ey (in this case a pound each, which made me won­der what was wrong with using the lit­tle token called a pound coin) and then you go around with a map of par­tic­i­pat­ing restau­rants and have lit­tle two or three bite sam­ples of their sig­na­ture dish­es. It’s a great bar­gain, espe­cial­ly for some­one like me who likes a lit­tle bit of a lot of fla­vors and for whom a restau­rant por­tion is always too much. For five tokens I got Kai of May­fair’s unbe­liev­ably ten­der Wasabi Prawns, huge tiger prawns sort of napped with a wasabi may­on­naise and sprin­kled with tiny cubes of man­go and basil seed. Two of them! So exot­ic and while some­thing I prob­a­bly COULD do at home, I nev­er will because of John’s anti fruit+meat stance. Of course this love­ly restau­rant is about five blocks from our old flat, but did I ever go? No.

Then I moved on to Sumosan’s T+T Roll, an improb­a­ble-sound­ing but astound­ing­ly good sushi roll with tuna and truf­fle oil. Oh my. It does sound odd, and I was skep­ti­cal, but it’s a mar­riage made in heav­en. The soft­ness of the tuna with the hint of aro­mat­ic truf­fle was huge­ly pleas­ing, plus there were some very nice crunchy fried leeks tucked in for tex­ture. Three whole portions!

I real­ly, real­ly want­ed to like Alan Murchi­son’s cook­ing because he’s such a big per­son­al­i­ty (and very inter­est­ing on nutri­tion), but I did not. Per­haps I chose the wrong thing. He him­self was there, and enor­mous­ly appeal­ing: a rock­like, aggres­sive face that you would­n’t want to encounter in a kitchen close to a knife if your dice was­n’t small enough. A true chef’s face, which is both good and bad: good because it reflects strong char­ac­ter and impres­sive achieve­ments, but bad because there’s a LOT of atti­tude present as well, which is a mas­sive turnoff. I always prick up my ears when chefs say there is no room for ego in their kitchens… methinks they doth protest a tad too much? So I had a por­tion of his smoked ham hock and foie gras ter­rine, topped with far too much apple chut­ney, and all I could taste was smoke and salt and sug­ar. The tex­ture of the ter­rine was nice and firm, but I want my chut­ney on the side if at all, and I don’t want to feel like I’ve smoked a cig­a­rette and had a saline rinse when I eat. But you go, and try his fil­let of salmon in ori­en­tal broth, or the lemon mousse which looked nice if you have a sweet tooth.

I knew I was defeat­ed and had to turn in my remain­ing tokens. Next time, I swear, I will not eat so many cheese sam­ples, but it’s hard to resist! When there’s Snow­do­nia’s Red Leices­ter with Chili and Crushed Pep­pers, and Cor­nish Blue, so smooth and creamy, and … stop me.

OK, there were also the Ross­more oys­ters on the half shell stand… but I could­n’t resist the address. Lis­ten to this, my Amer­i­can friends: Lake­view, Old Hol­low, Worth, West Sus­sex. I’d eat any­thing that came from there. And I sam­pled (I know!) and bought a pack­et of fan­tas­ti­cal­ly expen­sive but delight­ful jam­bon iberi­co from Iberi­co Foods, which I think will work for din­ner tonight in an impro­vised car­bonara: not even cooked, just trailed along the top of the creamy sauce, with some porci­ni mush­rooms from The Mush­room Troop, who were giv­ing sam­ples of porci­ni pate, yum. I may ever eat again.

Final­ly I vis­it­ed the upper gallery with some­thing like 100 food pro­duc­ers’ stalls (more cheese! be strong), but by then I was flag­ging. I’m sure the Slow Food Move­ment peo­ple were inter­est­ing, so give them a try, but I was too tired. There were an awful lot of peo­ple, and it was HOT, and I hate to be hot. Amaz­ing crowds: school tours, old peo­ple in wheel­chairs, sil­ly spiky-haired young men talk­ing earnest­ly about wild boar, peo­ple with kids on leash­es, ele­gant Euro­pean tourists, you name it. But no Amer­i­cans. I think I was the only one, hon­est­ly. Two days in a row! Life is look­ing more interesting.