Bruce Anderson

A perfect luncheon wine

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I suspect, though this may be romanticising, that if a French lorry driver with hitherto suppressed culinary tastes won France’s national lottery, and booked a table at the local much-rosetted restaurant, he would know what to expect. A great chain of culinary being would connect him to the heights of gourmandisme.

In the UK, we lack a gastronomic tradition. As a result, when it comes to assessing food, inspissated snobbery often takes the place of inspired gluttony. There are superb chefs: Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White, the Roux family. But there are also instances of pretentiousness: no names, no pack drill. These characters forget that the glory of a good cook is to make ingredients sing, however humble in origin.

‘Lucy wokes from home.’

That said, the range of dishes available in London surely exceeds that of any other city on earth. ‘London, thou art the flower of kitchens all,’ as Dunbar almost wrote. As in all cities, fine restaurants become clubs. Wilton’s, Boisdale and J Sheekey are three obvious examples. Many others will be irritated to be left off the list. But there is a further factor. For all its size, London is an agglomeration of villages, and as such sympathetic to restaurants du quartier.

St James’s is a quartier of urban palaces and the imposing retail outlets created to sustain them, such as Berry Bros. But it also has little tucked-away squares, some of them on the site of former mews. Then there are the alleyways. In the 16th and 17th centuries, in the service of St James’s Palace, the oldest retail trade flourished in its shadow: whorehouses. Did the girls dart along the alleys on their way to secret entrances? When one of the convenient byways was named ‘Crown Passage’, was this a bawdy pun?

Crown Passage boasts an excellent pub and a delightful ristorante di famiglia

Today, at least as far as I know, tarts are confined to restaurant menus.

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