two great restaurants

We’ve been tak­ing a cou­ple of breaks from the end­less list of details that is The Mov­ing Process (why are activ­i­ties called “process­es” always unpleas­ant: “recov­ery,” “griev­ing,” “heal­ing”… no one real­ly wants to do any of them). But between buy­ing a new laun­dry bas­ket, decid­ing where the lit­ter box­es will go, giv­ing away yet more cloth­ing, toys and elec­tron­ic items, and pret­ty much con­stant wran­gling over which sofa we like, we’ve had a cou­ple of amaz­ing restau­rant expe­ri­ences that I want to tell you about.

Our good friends and neigh­bors Andrew and Lau­ra have been try­ing to get us to go out to eat ever since we had them here for Thanks­giv­ing in Novem­ber, so I sup­pose it’s slight­ly pathet­ic that it’s tak­en until May to find an evening! But Wednes­day saw us troop­ing togeth­er in the rain toward La Petite Mai­son here in May­fair, in Brooks Mews behind Clar­idge’s, and boy was it worth the wait. The place opened in July to much fan­fare, but such is my expe­ri­ence of the big city that I have nev­er even heard of it, and it’s right around the cor­ner from my house! I am such a stick in the mud. Thank good­ness for friends, to get you out of the kitchen. The sig­na­ture dish must be ordered UPON your arrival, as it takes upwards of an hour to cook and they don’t start till you order it. French black leg chick­en, whole, cooked with an enor­mous knob of… wait for it… foie gras, along with some crusty crou­tons of baguette in the roast­ing pan, soak­ing up the but­ter and chick­en juices. Now, as divine as this was, and it was, I am going to be brave and say that I think my method of slow brais­ing chick­en in a tight­ly sealed con­tain­er might be the bet­ter way to go, rather than roast­ing, as the chick­en was slight­ly dry, although very flavour­some. The ques­tion would be: how to pre­pare the foie gras in that case, as I’m sure what made it so won­der­ful was its prox­im­i­ty to the juices that emanate from a roast­ing chick­en, as opposed to the more liq­uidy envi­ron­ment of braising.

I plan to exper­i­ment at some point and I will report on the results. Maybe it’s a mat­ter of tak­ing the lid off the brais­ing casse­role a half hour or so from the end and let­ting things siz­zle, also maybe rais­ing the cook­ing temp at the end? I don’t know exact­ly, but I fear copi­ous amounts of but­ter are involved. We had such a good time. It’s rare for us to hang out with peo­ple who don’t have small chil­dren (theirs are long grown and pro­duc­ing grand­chil­dren by now), and let me tell you, it rais­es the con­ver­sa­tion lev­el some! Our friend Vin­cent is always moan­ing at his din­ner par­ties. “Here I have a fore­most expert on 19th cen­tu­ry French art, sev­er­al of the best archi­tects in Lon­don, a for­mer suc­cess­ful invest­ment banker, a famous entre­pre­neur, and you’re talk­ing about… SCHOOL UNI­FORMS!” True enough, we do. Or how high is too high for a fever, or what school our chil­dren aspire to attend. Boring!

So the four of us tucked into first our starters (divine tem­pu­ra cour­gette flow­ers, and my per­son­al favorite, thin­ly sliced raw scal­lops sprin­kled with snipped chives, chili pep­pers and flaked almonds, driz­zled with olive oil and lime juice), and we talked.. pol­i­tics. They had been with John at an Oba­ma fundrais­er last week and so we had a very ener­getic (if some­what depress­ing) dis­cus­sion of the future of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. It was won­der­ful to stretch my brain, remem­ber things I had read in the paper that had noth­ing to do with beet­root or pesto or the best books on explain­ing puber­ty to one’s child. Hon­est­ly, my mind is about as flex­i­ble as a ruler these days. But we had a won­der­ful, won­der­ful time. I envi­sion a reunion of this apart­ment build­ing in our new kitchen, about five min­utes after we move in. “Foie gras three ways?” John joked. Maybe!

Then today we repaired for lunch to the ven­er­a­ble J. Sheekeys just off Char­ing Cross Road, near St Mar­tin in the Fields, which has under­gone an enor­mous­ly expen­sive ren­o­va­tion late­ly. We picked Avery up from Anna’s where she had spent the night (with poor Becky slav­ing over the dirty clothes of Avery’s brought back from Nor­mandy and mys­te­ri­ous­ly stuck in Anna’s lug­gage!). I must digress and say that this batch of dirty clothes emerg­ing from Avery’s bags is sim­ply the most dis­gust­ing chore I have ever tak­en on. Worse than a child with stom­ach flu, because it goes on for days, not just 24 hours. The smell? I can’t describe it: well, I’ll try. There are notes of sewage, with an after­taste of dog poo, and over­tones of box­wood, or some­thing oth­er nox­ious plant. “What on earth did you DO, Avery?” I asked in some mys­ti­fi­ca­tion. “We rolled in mud. Smelly, smelly mud.” It is not for me to ask why.

But any­way, we arrived at J. Sheekeys and were greet­ed, seat­ed and tend­ed to by an end­less parade of def­er­en­tial, love­ly men who treat­ed Avery quite as anoth­er adult, which I love. We made the mis­take we near­ly always make of hav­ing Avery and me each order the same thing, when in the back of my mind I knew we should share. Sure enough, minor con­ster­na­tion when it was evi­dent that she would eat… half of her fried had­dock and chips, and so did I. But John knows what he’s hav­ing for lunch tomor­row, any­way! The fish was incred­i­bly fresh and the bat­ter light and delec­table, but I must take issue with the chips which were com­plete­ly for­get­table. Rather limp, not hot, not charm­ing. But the first help­ing of so-called “mushy peas” that has ever tempt­ed me to lift my fork and try some, and they were love­ly! I don’t love the flavr of peas, but I was hap­py to see that “mushy peas” means just that: no scary ingre­di­ents, not a bad pea to begin with, just love­ly new sweet peas that have been… mushed up. Why this is a cher­ished Eng­lish tra­di­tion I do not know, why they don’t mere­ly serve them whole? But it proves that tra­di­tions are good when they are good. We’ll be back, and for some­thing more adven­tur­ous than fish and chips. My starter was incred­i­ble: crab pate, with a slick of pot­ting but­ter on top and a very nice kick of chill­ies in there some­where. Lovely.

This has all been gor­geous, but it’s basi­cal­ly a dis­trac­tion from try­ing to fur­nish the house and yet leave some mon­ey for Avery to go to school. After much wran­gling on both our sides, and vis­it­ing a (to me) end­less array of antique shops and auc­tion hous­es (John would not say it took very long, but then he loves fur­ni­ture), we have cho­sen a won­der­ful 1940s French leather sofa with two not-quite-match­ing chairs! And to go under­neath, yes­ter­day we got a very impres­sive (but not expen­sive!) HUGE Per­sian antique rug, at Lots Road Auc­tion House. And a sweet lit­tle red, blue and green real­ly worn-out run­ner for the entry hall. When we picked them up today, the auc­tion­eer assured John, about the big rug, “You got the bar­gain of the day, sir. There are only about 10 looms in the world that can pro­duce a rug this size, you could eas­i­ly have paid 10 times what you did.” As John was gloat­ing over his incred­i­ble per­spi­cac­i­ty when it comes to rug bar­gains, the auc­tion­eer con­tin­ued, “And you also got the biggest ripoff of the day. That run­ner is crap.”

Ah well. You can’t win them all. So we strug­gled up the steps to the recep­tion room with the rug and it fits… just bare­ly! Lit­er­al­ly an inch on either side to spare. But it just glows, with appre­ci­a­tion more than any­thing, at hav­ing been res­cued from the auc­tion house where it suf­fered in silence being trod­den on, picked at, fur­ni­ture dragged over it. Poor thing. Now it resides in soli­tary glo­ry in our house, ready to spend its life being scratched at by cats, probably.

We still are in des­per­ate need of a wardrobe for Avery, and not quite so des­per­ate need for a rug for her. I think tomor­row we’ll go pick up a set of bean bag chairs for her.

Avery’s form teacher called me up in dis­tress this morn­ing, say­ing she had com­plete­ly for­got­ten to get par­ent chap­er­ones for tomor­row’s field trip and could I help? Nat­u­ral­ly, so I’m leav­ing John to super­vise the book­shelf peo­ple as they mea­sure at the new house to make sure (just make sure! we’re near­ly sure) the unit from here will fit the kitchen wall. Becky and her fam­i­ly had a piz­za lunch with us yes­ter­day, sit­ting on the floor of the new kitchen, imag­in­ing where every­thing will go. And we met our new neigh­bor to the right, who is real­ly real­ly sweet. Good thing too, because I had to beg her for a piz­za cut­ter! Might as well begin as we mean to go on. How nice it will be to have a prop­er neighborhood.

Right. Noth­ing much else to say except that Avery’s on pins and nee­dles for tomor­row’s expect­ed announce­ment of the parts in “Alice in Won­der­land,” the school play. Maybe Wednes­day, though, with the field trip? I’ll let you know…