Food

St Alban, 4–12 Regent Street, London SW1 St Alban is the latest restaurant from Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, who have almost mythic status as restaurateurs, and rightly so. They are, after all, the team that at various times have been behind The Ivy, Le Caprice, J. Sheekey and The Wolseley but never Garfunkel’s, which is weird but, hey, if it ain’t broke why fix it? This newest opening is on Regent Street but not on the groovy bit. It’s on the sombre, shopless bit south of Piccadilly Circus, and on the ground floor of a block so dreary and anonymous I miss it several times. At one point I even end up in a different restaurant entirely. Is this St Alban? ‘No.’ You’re not St Alban? ‘No.’ Who are you then? ‘Divo.

It happened in New York. As I reached for a small basket of ‘heirloom tomatoes, Little Compton Farms’ I felt my lips curling slightly — was it out of pity or contempt? — on account of the poor soul next to me who had merely chosen ‘vine-ripened organic’. It happened in New York. As I reached for a small basket of ‘heirloom tomatoes, Little Compton Farms’ I felt my lips curling slightly — was it out of pity or contempt? — on account of the poor soul next to me who had merely chosen ‘vine-ripened organic’. At the checkout counter the sun-ripened young woman ringing up my purchase favoured me with a warm, sympathetic smile. We happy few.

This is about a mother who takes her son out for dinner for his 15th birthday. Normally the son would not agree to go out for dinner with his mother. Normally the son treats his mother as something of an embarrassment, as well as a middle-aged nag, drag and bore. The mother is perplexed by this. The mother knows that while her parents were middle-aged nags, drags and bores when she was a teenager, she is not, no way. The mother may even say, ‘How can you think of me as middle-aged nag, drag and bore when, just last week, for example, I stayed up one night until nearly half-past nine?’ She may or may not then add, ‘And it’s not true that I live in John Lewis. Sometimes I don’t go for a whole morning!

My friend Nick — OK, he’s not exactly my friend, he’s my brother’s friend, but my brother lets his friends be mine, as he knows I’ve always struggled to make any of my own. Anyway, Nick says he’d like to take me to what is possibly his favourite restaurant in London. I like Nick. I trust Nick. Nick knows his food. Nick has eaten in all the top places not just in London, but in New York, Tokyo, Paris. Nick knows his wine and doesn’t just order the second cheapest bottle on the list to spare him the embarrassment of ordering the first. And, really, what follows is Nick’s review, as pretty much all of it is stolen from an email he later sent me.

I’m due to dine out with a couple of people who I’m sure don’t want to be named, so let’s call them Bob and Jim, even though their real names are Tobyn and Leaf. I let them choose the restaurant. I do this not because it’s one less thing for me to have to think about, which would be selfish, but because I am a generous-natured, generous person famed for my generous generosity. Ask anyone, apart from those who might actually know me and might hold a grudge for no good reason whatsoever.  Anyway, Bob and Jim, who are Tobyn and Leaf, but in disguise, eventually come back with The Ledbury. I look up The Ledbury and it is in Notting Hill, west London. ‘Are you sure?’ I ask.

My partner is a total tea fascist and whenever I make a pot it is never, ever right. It’s: ‘Did you use fresh water?’ Then it’s: ‘You used re-boiled, didn’t you?’ And then, with a sniffy look: ‘How long exactly did you leave this to brew?’ When I give up, think sod him, and just dunk a teabag into a cup for myself, does he leave me alone? No. I then get: ‘Ooh, make yourself a cup of tea, why don’t you? After all the pots I’ve made for you...’. You may well ask what has kept us together all these years, to which I don’t really have an answer although I can say, with some certainly, that it isn’t the tea, just as it isn’t the sex*. However, I have noted lately that tea is becoming just so in.

First off, I should say I’m no great expert when it comes to Swedish food. First off, I should say I’m no great expert when it comes to Swedish food. Yes, I’ve been to Ikea — so many veneers, so little time! — and, yes, I’ve had the meatballs in the café but, judging by the taste and texture, I think even they were MDF with a meatball veneer. I probably should have opted for the mushroom umlaut, but there you have it. However, having figured it might be silly to judge all Swedish food by Ikea meatballs and the sad little herrings in the refrigerated display, I think it might be worth giving Upper Glas a go.

Look, first off I’d just like to say that what follows has nothing to do with not being either hip or edgy. Look, first off I’d just like to say that what follows has nothing to do with not being either hip or edgy. I am hip and edgy. Some days I’m so hip and edgy that’s all there is to me: hip and edge. ‘Wow, look at the hip and edge on that,’ people have even been known to gasp when I pass them in the street. I just wanted to get this absolutely straight so you wouldn’t think I just wasn’t hip or edgy enough for his week’s restaurant; that I failed it rather than the other way around. That would be preposterous. You can say what you like about me, but you can’t say I’m neither hip nor edgy. No way.

My son and I are out for a night in the West End. This is unusual as he is a teenager and, usually, he wouldn’t be seen dead with me, not even after I’ve given him my word not to do funny dances in front of his friends or kiss him just as we’re passing the local gang of hoodies or appear at the school gate wearing leather and a push-up bra. Can you get fairer than that? I don’t think so. But he has his own social life now, which seems to involve going to somewhere called ‘the top field’ quite a lot. What do you do at ‘the top field’? ‘Stuff,’ he will say. What sort of stuff? I will ask. ‘Just stuff,’ he will say. What sort of just stuff? I will ask. ‘JUST STUFF!,’ he will say.

Pasha describes itself as a ‘Moroccan oasis in the heart of Kensington’, which you would do well to remember, as who hasn’t, at some time or other, found themselves in the heart of Kensington thinking, ‘I do so wish there was a Moroccan oasis around here’? It is just round the corner from the Albert Hall, on Gloucester Road, at the end of a small parade of chi-chi boutiques and bakeries so artisan that the price of a loaf of bread is pretty much up there with the cost of the average car. It’s the kind of place where you don’t so much buy a cake as take a mortgage out on one. Still, I do like Pasha, from the off. It’s just so OTT.

I try to make a booking at Dans Le Noir?, the new London restaurant where diners eat in total darkness and are served by blind and visually impaired staff, although I still don’t think I’ve quite worked out what the point is exactly. Anyway, I call and speak to a very nice-sounding Frenchman who asks if he might call me back. ‘Iz just that I cannot find ze bookings book just now.’ When he doesn’t return the call, I email via the restaurant’s website. No reply. I am beginning to think that this is why blind people, on the whole, don’t make especially good restauranteurs. However, this doesn’t mean I have anything against blind people. God, no.

The Michelin-starred French restaurant Roussillon has just launched a ‘Mini-Gastronome’ programme. This means that on the first and third Wednesday lunchtime of every month children aged 11 and under get to eat a free seven-course menu designed to introduce them to top-class cooking while ‘exciting their palate and their eyes’. To be perfectly honest, I think most children are enough of a pain without excited palates and eyes, but it might be worth a shot. However, what child to take? I can’t take my own son because he is now a big teenager and much too busy slamming doors and leaving wet towels all over his bedroom even though returning them to the bathroom would involve what? A walk of almost three yards? (And it’s downhill!

After writing about how difficult it is to find a truly great steak in London, my friend Robbo calls to suggest the Guinea Grill in Mayfair, if it is still there. He says he first went to the Guinea in the 1960s, for a celebratory dinner funded by richer, more sophisticated London relatives — he is from somewhere called, I believe, ‘Leeds’; have you heard of it? — and was astounded: ‘I’d never seen anything like it. On the way in there was this crushed ice display with strawberries on it, and the strawberries were huge, the size of avocados. And the avocados? — the size of melons! And the steaks were fantastic. I’ve never, ever forgotten it.