Food

I’m currently at a French campsite in the Languedoc, having been persuaded by my wife that it would be a good place to spend our summer holiday. She described the campsite as ‘a French Butlins’, which she knew would appeal to me. If I can’t afford to stay at the Hotel du Cap, which I can’t, I’d prefer to be at the bottom of the social pyramid rather than somewhere in the middle. But her main argument was that it would be incredibly cheap —cheaper, even, than renting a house in Cornwall. We’re paying about £100 a day for a ‘chalet’ that sleeps six. There was simply no way we could be disappointed. Well, yes and no. I’ll start with the positive. The staff are remarkably well-mannered.

We were eating tapas and talking about Spain. Leaving caviar on one side, when jamón ibérico is at its best, there is nothing better to eat. In the Hispania restaurant, it is always at its best. Nothing could match it, although Hispania’s cured leg of beef, the anchovies, the black pudding and the blood pudding all gave their uttermost. But there was one marginal disappointment. Gazpacho is one of the world’s great dishes, and like several others — haggis is the obvious comparison — it began as a food for the poor, only using cheap and readily available ingredients. Early recipes call for only stale bread, water, olive oil — and garlic. Most modern gazpachos would include tomato, peppers and onion, but the garlic is essential.

The Gatto Nero — or ‘Black Cat’ — is in Burano, a tiny island in the Venetian lagoon. It is close to ‘haunted’ Torcello, with its ancient campanile and its branch of the Cipriani restaurant. (The only equivalent thing I can imagine is a branch of Soho House at Dracula’s castle, or possibly Chernobyl.) I like the name Black Cat; it reminds me of the Blue Parrot in Casablanca. I like that you must leave San Marco, with its tat and wonders combining queasily, to get here; I like the brightly coloured houses like Bratz dolls fighting; it looks, to me, like Notting Hill with fish, lace and a soul. I like that the Black Cat has a black cat; or at least it used to. I do not see it today. Perhaps it left suddenly, or died?

The Maze Grill is on a sinister street in Chelsea, between a small Tesco — a boutique Tesco? — and a shop selling ugly sculptures of cats. The Chelsea Physic Garden, with its poisoned plants and amazingly posh Sunday walkers, is nearby. I cannot walk in the Physic Garden without hearing the howls of property developers from the skies, longing to destroy it, because what is it for, this garden and its small carnivorous plants, these tiny, dangerous Chelsea-ites? The Maze Grill is the fifth restaurant of that brand from Gordon Ramsay, who operates 25 restaurants globally from Las Vegas to Raqqa, alongside his more important sideline of shouting at people as they chop fish on television.

Strange, isn’t it, that despite having such famously terrible weather, we Brits are so fond of a picnic. It’s something to do with making the most of what sunshine we get — but if you ever plan to eat outdoors, it will almost invariably end up raining. Never mind. There’s very little that we’re better at than embracing our terrible weather, and keeping buggering on. This year’s Ascot was, for me, a case in point. Every day of the meet was blessed with excellent weather — except, of course, the one day I went. A person more sensible than I might have looked at the forecast and planned accordingly. I checked, saw that it was going to rain — and just got on with my picnic preparations as usual. So come 11 a.m.

The Ivy is a Playmobil-style faux-medieval restaurant in a triangular building opposite The Mousetrap; of the two, The Ivy is more ancient and threatening. It has mullioned windows, a photogenic lamp post and a parking space for paparazzi to shoot people who want to be shot, as in early Martin Amis novels. It has been refurbished for its 100th birthday, in the manner of an ancient dowager empress seeking new fingers. Of the ‘celebrities’ or ‘notables’ or ‘people who are better than you’ who used to dine here I cannot speak; but apparently it was a live-action re-enactment of a Nigel Dempster diary. Christopher Biggins blah. The pig from Babe blah. It is, you must understand, a ‘legendary restaurant’.

The Beaumont Hotel is a bright white cake in the silent part of Mayfair, where the only sound is Patek Philippe watches, tick-tocking. We are in the eye of the storm, where it should be quiet; of the cacophony of Selfridges, just to the north, we hear nothing. It is the first hotel from Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, creators of the Delaunay, the Wolseley, Brasserie Zédel and Fischer’s. The façade is so languid, pristine and self-satisfied that it could — no, should — be Swiss, even if it was once an Avis garage wrought in Art Deco. It reminds me of the Beau-Rivage Palace on Lake Geneva, a hotel which likes itself so much it built another just the same, and will spend eternity admiring itself in both its double and the lake.

Fenchurch is a restaurant that is scared of terrorists. It cowers at the top of 20 Fenchurch Street, a skyscraper which looks like an enormous and unfashionable Nokia 3120 mobile telephone; has it been designed explicitly to telephone for assistance? But who would it telephone? The Shard? I cannot imagine the Shard doing anything for anyone. It is 525 foot high blah and replaces a building that was only 299 foot high blah and so deserved to fail, being so mean and little; I never tire of the rampant Freudian anxiety of property developers and their architect slaves, because, like the phenomenon of the competitive super-yacht, it tells me they, too, are frightened; isn’t everyone?

Why is it that whenever anyone proposes a tax on the wealthy all hell breaks loose, but when someone proposes a tax on the poor there is no more than a faint whimper of protest? Yesterday, life sciences minister George Freeman, speaking at the Hay Festival, floated the idea of a sugar tax. In contrast to Labour’s mansion tax or the removal of tax privileges for non-doms, my email inbox was not immediately jammed with statements from upmarket estate agents, accountants and others representing the interests of the rich warning of how it would ruin the economy. It is fairly obvious who will pay the sugar tax: it would be paid for hugely disproportionately by the poor.

Ed is a plank. He was always a plank — and now he is in Ibiza being a plank. Plankety--plankety-plank: goodbye to our most recent terrible leader — and who will be the next? I, meanwhile, am in the Gay Hussar, choking on my own grief, hearing ‘Crying in the Rain’, weirdly, in my head, trying to forget the images that flicker mercilessly across my eyes, disrupting my view of a book that says, in capital letters, for emphasis — tony blair (now that’s a leader, eh!) — Clegg, dry-eyed with realisation at the breadth of his failure, Ed Balls hauled down like an -Easter Island statue, Samantha Cameron’s victory dress, which was a bullet-proof vest on the front and a high-vis jacket at the back. Well, it was a long -campaign.

There are those who claim that this column is idiosyncratic. They have seen nothing yet. I am about to mention a subject which has never previously appeared in any drink column, ever. Tapioca. That must be the acme of idiosyncrasy. I was staying with my friends Eyzie and Ro in Somerset. Especially if you have no weight issues, they are the perfect hosts, for they both love cooking. My duties are limited to bottle--opening, saucisson-slicing and, of course, supervision. They also have an abundant kitchen garden, a deep freeze full of the trophies of the game season and excellent local suppliers for all the victuals they themselves cannot provide. A long room connects the kitchen and the dining table, with a constant traffic of boys, dogs and bottles.

The Portrait Restaurant lives at the top of the National Portrait Gallery, London. It is fiercely modern, but likeable. You ride an escalator into a void, glimpse the raging faces of the Plantagenets and take a lift upwards, away from dead kings and film characters walking the streets. (Downstairs, by the entrance to the National Gallery, two competing Yodas from Star Wars are posing for photographs. One is too tall to be a convincing Yoda. Tourists inhabit a different city.) In this long bright room there is no such anxiety; only clean windows to Trafalgar Square and happy women having lunch in a secret glade of stone and brick.