Food for thought with Liliane
Seeing as our old friend A A Gill instigated some sort of stand-off between food and theatre critics, I culled further evidence this weekend as to why he and his foodie friends are so smarmily self-advertising in their copy.
They have nothing worthwhile to write about, so they may as well write about themselves. To be condemned to sit in the sort of places where people like them go to all the time must be the equivalent of being a life member of Dante’s seventh circle of hell.
And then there’s the food. On the whole, it’s ghastly (with the honorable exception of the nosh at the Wolseley). I was stuck in a place called Wild Honey in Hanover Square for lunch on Saturday and was assured of its pedigree as it’s owned by the same people who run Arbutus.
It was utterly revolting. The waitress asked if I had any questions about the menu. I had two questions. Why wasn’t it written in plain English? And why was everything so ridiculously expensive?
I had two more later on: why have you added a service charge without asking my permission, and where’s the exit?
Five of our party of six stuck to the menu du jour. The first course was a choice between a tasteless, over-blended vegetable soup poured from a jug over a pretentious, crispy (though not for long) wafer and an onion dollop that looked like a dog’s turd, and thinly sliced pork with some kind of apple jus; it was disgusting, best described as spam and jam.
The main course was a choice between pollock and gnocchi (Gnocchi, gnocchi, who’s there? Pollocks to you but posh cod to everyone else) and two pathetic parcels of pasta containing vile and stringy bits of oxtail that tasted like shoelaces.
To finish, a mean-minded, stingy cheeseboard or an ile flottant that was less exciting than Angel Delight in the good old days.
Glad to get home, we immediately invited two of our best friends round for a dinner we’d prepared ourselves, a simple feast undreamt of in the wildest fantasies of Gill, Giles Coren or Jay Rayner.
They should be so lucky to have something this good to write about: fresh baked mushrooms in a mustard and tarragon sauce; cod in lemongrass and ginger served with tiny new potatoes and sprouting broccoli; Cornish yarg and Emmenthale cheeses; pineapple fruit salad with home-made meringues, treacle-imbued gingerbread and piping hot custard.
Who needs restaurants when you can quite easily and straightforwardly arrange food as you like it in the comfort of your own home at a fraction of the cost and in the company of people you actually don’t mind being with?
Every now and then the cry goes up for more supper club theatre in the capital. The King’s Head has given up on good food (and good shows) altogether now. But here comes the Pizza on the Park once again, with an American Songbook season presented by Jeff Harnar and starring, for one more week only, the amazing Liliane Montevecchi.
I managed to overlook the menu and was glad I did when I saw what was being brought to nearby tables — great wodges of unappetising pizza with horrid looking salads. It smelt awful, and so did most of the people eating it.
Actually, there were hardly any people in the house at all, which is an underlit hell-hole populated by a few dodgy-looking businessmen and decorated with far too many badly hung cheap red drapes and horrid potted palms.
The magical Montevecchi was an almost inappropriate blast of class in such circumstances, and her brilliant act, worked out to the finest filigree detail in every item of phrasing, movement and costume accessories, reeks of total showbusiness authenticity in a career stretching — and the lady can still stretch herself right across the grand piano — from Hollywood and Montmartre to Las Vegas, London and Broadway.
Her selection from Irma La Douce was as vivid and colourful as it must have been when she first played the title role over forty-five years ago. What a trouper, what a truly great star! Why isn’t the place packed? Maybe they heard about the food.