Sloane Square beckons

You would think, wouldn’t you, that a day in antic­i­pa­tion of see­ing “Ivanov” with the divine Ken­neth Branagh would be a day out of the kitchen? Not in my house. Avery is going swim­ming with­out me this evening.  So I have a chicken roast­ing, boiled Char­lotte pota­toes in a skil­let await­ing being sauteed before I go, another skil­let­ful of hari­cots verts in olive oil. And since Sat­ur­day is the Christ­mas Fair at school, a banana and apple cake reposes in the oven to be donated to the cake and cook­ies stall which is receiv­ing every­thing today at school pickup. So even though I have no child to pick up, she being occu­pied at after-school Gym­nas­tics Club, I will still be at pickup, donat­ing a cake. Life does get com­pli­cated some­times. Some­where in there, I must fit in a ten­nis les­son with the always-entertaining Rocco. Then race home to get pre­sentable for the play, which has got rave reviews and should be amazing.

Yes­ter­day, how­ever, I was out of the kitchen, in fact out of the house and the post­code, with my friend Gigi on a Chelsea adven­ture. Have you heard the term “Sloane Ranger”? It’s meant to des­ig­nate a sort of super-spoilt, rich as any­thing Princess Diana sort of socialite, liv­ing in an upscale flat with her equally rich and spoilt mates, dat­ing every­one in sight and spend­ing money. Sloane Square is the nat­ural habi­tat for these crea­tures, and it was here that Gigi and met up for a dose of cul­ture, believe it or not. Because just steps from the Sloa­ni­ness of Sloane Square is the unmatched grandeur of the new Chelsea Saatchi Gallery, housed in the for­mer Duke of York’s mil­i­tary man­age­ment HQ, believe it or not. Pil­lared glory it is, sev­eral old and lovely build­ings stripped of all their admin­is­tra­tive clab­ber, emp­tied of their civil ser­vant dull­ness, and painted white, stream­lined, con­nected by ele­gant min­i­mal­ist stair­cases. And filled with Chi­nese art, at the moment. Most of which we found stun­ningly unap­peal­ing if not down­right dis­turb­ing: bod­ies marked with iden­ti­fy­ing sort of tatooes, hang­ing from the ceil­ing by ropes around their ankles, giant instal­la­tions of black rub­bery rock called “Indi­ges­tion,” mas­sive cartoon-like por­traits. But among all this stood out one piece that made the entire exhi­bi­tion worth a visit.

Called “Love it! Bite it!”, it is an enor­mous instal­la­tion of architectural-model ren­der­ings of famous build­ings around the world: St Paul’s Cathe­dral, the Guggen­heim Muse­ums in both New York and Venice, the Roman Col­i­seum, Les Invalides in Paris, the UN in New York… all sculpted out of… edi­ble dog treats. Of course this des­ig­na­tion of the mate­r­ial implies that there might be a dog treat that was NOT edi­ble, but no mat­ter: it’s rawhide. Gigi and I just looked at each other and burst out laugh­ing. A mar­vel­lous, won­der­ful thing stretch­ing right the length and width of the enor­mous room. “What if you brought your dog?” Gigi whis­pered. There were lovely young scratchy look­ing stu­dents with wonky hair and skin-tight jeans lying on the ground all around it, tak­ing pic­tures. And old ele­gant Euro­pean gen­tle­men walk­ing its cir­cum­fer­ence, look­ing gravely ana­lyt­i­cal. The piece reminded me very much of my favorite New York show almost of any­thing I’ve ever seen: Tara Dono­van at the old and grandil­o­quent Ace Gallery on Hud­son Street. In that show, she filled the entire back wall of a whole room with drink­ing straws point­ing out­ward (you’ve got to click on the thumb­nails on her hotlink to appre­ci­ate what I mean), the entire floor of another room with pen­cils of vary­ing heights look­ing for all the world like a tiny Liliput­ian city, filled a whole room with lay­ers of tar paper, like the lunar sur­face. Mag­nif­i­cent! By an artist called Liu Wei.

You’ll love it. Take the kids. But not the dog.

From there we headed to a fab­u­lous new-ish restau­rant called The Botanist, in Sloane Square itself. Filled to brim with Sloane Rangers in all their high­lighted, blingish glory, the restau­rant was like a sin­gle bea­con of afflu­ence in a sea of credit crunch. There wasn’t a sign of aus­ter­ity as far as the eye could see, and far from tight­en­ing belts, there must have been quite a bit of loos­en­ing of them to accom­mo­date the mar­vel­lous food. I had, as is my wont lately, two starters and no main. It’s per­fect for me: two dif­fer­ent lovely dishes but not too much of any one thing. I started with a quite per­fect and very sim­ple creamy cau­li­flower soup that would be an absolute dod­dle to make, stud­ded with diced seared scal­lops and topped with a driz­zle of truf­fle oil and tiny lit­tle cau­li­flower beignets, or dough­nuts. Really! Then it was onto one sin­gle and very rich lob­ster and salmon ravi­oli, the thinnest pasta I have ever eaten and so ten­der, rest­ing on a bed of pea puree and float­ing in a tomato crus­tacean “dress­ing,” accord­ing to the menu, but I would sooner call it a broth. Fla­vored very sub­tly with lob­ster shells, no doubt, very delicate.

Gigi had what she described as the per­fect rocket salad: absurdly fresh greens, shaved parme­san and a bal­samic glaze, and then a pan-fried sea bream with mus­sels in a saf­fron broth, and some­thing called a crab and pep­per escabeche, which was a new word for me. It turns out to be noth­ing more or less than a seviche, a mar­i­nated dish of fish and other ingre­di­ents that has cooked in its acid. Gigi was very pleased. Our only com­plaints were tri­fling ones: the rather pre­ten­tious front of house fel­low told us that while he could give us a table (this uttered in tones that indi­cated a mild reluc­tance on his part), we would have to vacate it in an hour. I sim­ply hate that. Either the restau­rant wants you, or it doesn’t. Time lim­its are not on. And then, after we rather rushed our­selves out of a cup of tea or even a glance at the dessert menu, we could not get our bill for love or money. Honestly.

And the waiter kept want­ing to take our bread and but­ter away! Why? Why was it all right to have it on the table for the starter, but not for the sec­ond dish? I love bread with soup. We per­se­vered and kept it, but I was reminded of the insanely clever Jef­frey Steingarten’s edict in his “The Man Who Ate Every­thing” that you can judge a restau­rant entirely by its bread. I think not only by its qual­ity, but by the very sim­ple act of offer­ing it up, and let­ting you eat it.

These are carp­ings of very lit­tle sig­nif­i­cance. We had a glo­ri­ous time and felt quite, quite self-indulgent. It’s one of my favorite things: lunch with a girl­friend, and they don’t get any bet­ter than time with Gigi. It’s amaz­ing to me what sheer intel­li­gence can bring to a friend­ship: you laugh more, you say more, you lis­ten bet­ter. Thanks for a great day, Gigi.