H. was in town from Belfast. We’d made vague plans to lunch at St John’s but hadn’t booked, were irritated to find it busy. After I mewled to the man on the phone, gently then sharply trying to persuade him, H. suggested Sweetings. I’d never been and had been told to go again and again, most especially by F. who really does know how to eat. Sorry F., I will never act so slowly on your advice again.
Cycling into the City I think about lunch, about lunching. When I was younger I really wanted to be the sort of person who went out to lunch. It seemed the apogee of cosmopolitan literariness. Lunches where the site of gossip and planning: coups were plotted, magazines started at lunch. I grew up in a village and, really, people don’t lunch in the country. They grab a hunk of bread, some ham, a smear of butter and stand looking into the deep maddening green distance. I wanted to order the second bottle of white at three-thirty, expecting to sit till five. A lot of my life has had this in mind.
Arriving before H., she is always late, is always surprised to be late, I look through the restaurant’s tremendous windows. Two waiters stand in black waistcoats and white shirts beside two large barrels, filled with water and ice, in which bob innumerable bottles of white wine with pleasing mustardy yellow tops. Beside them glasses, upside down, wait to be filled.
Inside, the scent of frying, slight, delicious. The walls are white but the paint has the murk of age, they have matured. Everywhere is air and light from the big windows. The paintings are of fish, as expected, but there are also still lives of blue cheese and claret, which is odd, and because odd, pleasing.
“Hello” says a young waiter. “Hello, two of us, but she’s not here.” “Of course, let me…” And he’s off. I survey the room. Yes, lots of City men (and a few City women) but what would you expect from a restaurant a few long strides from Bank? And anyway, they’re famously good at finding somewhere nice to eat.
From the ante-chamber into the main dining room, and along one wall, along the window, a bar and this is where I’m sat and laid here are a large piece of kitchen roll, for a placemat, a fish knife and fork on either side, a wine glass, and a small plate with a piece of buttered brown bread, cut in two. When did brown bread become the bread of fish? And this bread — well, it’s sliced bread, it could be Hovis. No pretension to grandeur here. No pretensions whatsoever.
A loaf of bread,' the Walrus said,
Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed —
the pepper and vinegar sit, with ketchup and Worcester sauce, in a neat little group. As I muse a silver gravy boat is placed before me “a little tartare sauce” murmurs the waiter and smiles. In it is stuck a spoon. Here ritual, the meal’s costume.
A big man a little way up the bar is drinking a pint of Black Velvet from a silver tankard, his wife is drinking white wine. I note with pleasure that a bottle sits in a cooler before them. No half measures there just a knowledge of what one does want now and will want then. When H. arrives, we order a half each, which comes swiftly in silver, glinting.
Black Velvet was invented to mark the death of Prince Albert. It is a mix of one part stout — Guinness — and one part champagne — well, honestly, any sparkling wine. The stout was added because even the champagne was to be in mourning, and the drink became fashionable at wakes, though the association has lapsed. Telling my grandmother about it, she said she’d have stout mixed with her milk as a child, for strength. It is a metallic drink, very savoury. “It certainly has something to it,” remarks H., after a sip, and I think how game for this Irish Catholic to submit so happily to the tarting up of her national drink.
The waiter appears and gently asks if we’d like to order — this man really does murmur, and smiles after, and one feels bound in collusion. He’s grey-haired and softly spoken, in his sixties. Older waiters are rare in London in a way they’re not in other European cities, and I miss them. They bestow a calmness, a ceremony, a craft. When we tell him we’re not ready he says “well, as long as it’s before three, there’s no rush at all.”
The same softness when the food begins to arrive — “oh, just let me place this here” the potted shrimp with its triangles of toast. I first had potted shrimp with my grandfather, and the rest of my family, at a little restaurant called the Oyster Shack which no longer exists, and remember a distinct disgust at the idea, which was mediated by the deliciousness. Here, sadly, the shrimp was a touch too cold and the toast not bulky enough to melt the butter.
It begins to pour outside and I take vague note. A piece of smoked eel with horseradish is placed before me. It is meaty, bolshy, territorial. Don’t eat eel enough, don’t eat eel enough to remember how it really is delicious and doesn’t feel at all odd, how unslippery. H., whose partner runs a restaurant, says they’re fished from the Irish sea and sent to Japan. “He can’t pay enough for them, and worries no one’d eat them anyway.” We really ought to change our minds about eel.
The best, though, are the whitebait — snaps of joy, crunches, a little devilled. I think of plates and plates of pescadito in Barcelona and feel just as happy here. Lemon, salt, a piece of brown slathered in tartare, the making of a treat. I could break into song about my love for sliced brown, and cannot keep it in the house otherwise I fall into a surfeit of sandwiches. Sourdough for toast, yes, but sourdough for a sandwich? No.
And oysters now,
I weep for you,' the Walrus said:
I deeply sympathize.'
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes .
they are little and shiny, and in their midst lemon impaled with oyster forks. “Oh how chic” I say, grinning. And moving something out of the way our man puts down chips. Excellent thick golden chips on a little platter, potato songs. Peace reigns in this corner of England. Glasses of muscadet come, one upon the other, flinty, light, poured from the bottle. “There’s a line on the glass, but we tend to ignore it.” The restaurant begins to ebb, tables empty, we eat steadily and slowly, unrushed, we could be here forever, our conversation now wine-cushioned.
A good lunch is like this. Unlike dinner, lunch is for friends — or, a friend. A friend one speaks to, properly. Dinner is for lovers or for big parties. But only at lunch is the possibility of good conversation really looked after. It’s something about the day spreading before one forever. It’s about being alert, unsullied by hours of life, it is in the conspiracy of two people who will order more wine, who will find themselves a touch undone but will fall out of the door excited, energised.
The waiters begin to lay a big table in the smaller dining hall, with flowers too. “The chef’s retiring after twenty years.” “Shall we leave?" “Oh, no, no, enjoy the rest of your wine, we don’t rush people here.” Here again, here because within Sweetings one could be nowhere else. And we do, glancing at their meal — Indian food served on the restaurant’s own platters — not rushing. When we are finished, our man leads us out, and we tell him over and over that he’s made everything perfect, and all this seems expected.
Oh London was wet, but we did not care, so wandered around the corner to a mediocre pub, but one full enough to be jolly, and at the bar decided to make our own Black Velvets. "Two half-pint glasses, empty… a pint of Guinness, a glass of prosecco.” Drunk as I was I did not mind when the glasses overflowed after sparkling wine met fast-poured beer. “Oh sorry” I mumbled and the bartender grinned.
Prawn Tagliatelle
After walking in the Autumnal picturesque — we’re down in Devon — Lo’ and I arrived home hungry and I made a rather good store cupboard/freezer pasta.
Crush and mince three cloves of garlic and fry in a generous knob of butter along with a pinch of chilli flakes. Do not fry too hot, don’t burn the garlic. When golden tip a bag of frozen king prawns into the pan stir about — when they’ve softened, raise the heat and add a glass of white wine and a tablespoon of tomato puree. Mix in. Meanwhile, you’ve cooked tagliatelle and it’s almost ready, and when the sauce has come together you tip it into the pan and mix in. Serve with a little lemon juice and drink lots of white wine.
An announcement!
I am very pleased to announce that I have a book coming out sometime next year, with a new imprint — Saturday Boy Books. The book will be a discursive meander, will address how to entertain and host, will have little stories, will be a bit autobiographical.
Sweetings
I adore what you say about lunch and how it’s for a friend and conversation
The writing was so good I had to hit myself in the forehead several times, choice of words and interjections