Another COVID-19 wave, another lockdown. Restaurants close and open and close again and - hopefully - reopen, but not just yet. In the happy interval between closed shutters I went to Andrew Sheridan’s public opening night for About Eight, which had to start at 7 given the government restrictions that demanded the restaurant saw its eight customers off the premises by 10PM and which was an evening of socially distanced gastronomic brilliance. Of which more, I hope, in the near future.
Then a pre-lockdown evening in Stratford upon Avon, shockingly quiet, vaguely eerie and missing only Hamlet’s father’s ghost rearing his face over the closed and deserted Royal Shakespeare Theatre, but made delightful and cosy by an early evening saunter to the impeccable family-run restaurant Sorrento where I purred and whimpered with pleasure at a wonderful plate of lemon sole in an exquisite lemon butter sauce served with new potatoes plain and simple (chef had fought off the temptation to sauté them and cover them in rosemary and thyme and the rest as so many chefs would have felt obliged to do) and sensibly cooked broccoli. The sole was a far more enjoyable dish than I remember having in a once two star restaurant further southwest in the West Midlands which had served up 3 little pieces of the lovely fish in the most bitter and unpleasant beurre noisette and sprawled in a bowl of what seemed like thousands of exhausting broad beans which gave no pleasure whatsoever.
On Wave 2 Lockdown-eve, 4 November, I was once more at Opheem which was the last restaurant I visited before the previous lockdown and the first I visited after the first lockdown was ended. I like the symmetry of it. This is a wondrous Palace of Pleasures where it would not have been disrespectful of me to faint with delight at just about every first taste of the little appetisers and the magnificent and several courses including the turbot from paradise and the most perfectly flavoured bhuna. Are two stars possible in January?
And so here we are all vaguely isolated and unsociable. It’s quite relaxing really, well up to a point anyway. Meanwhile that evil entity, the BBC, has announced a Christmas Great British Menu Special, which will feature no fewer than twelve notable British chefs, one of them not so much notable as notorious, who will cook a “a six course boxed festive feast dedicated to the nation’s key workers”. Andi Oliver moves from acting as judge to becoming presenter (they seem to have dumped the dreadful Scottish comedienne seen in this summer’s series) though there must be some foreboding at the news that another comedienne will fill Ms Oliver’s judge’s seat. I have no idea what perceived expertise this newcomer has but these things must be borne. At least Waldorf and Statler are back (otherwise known as Peyton and Fort) to deliver once more their what seems like centuries worth of judging experience (Fort, I’m sure remembers when a young Frenchman called L’Escoffier was laughed out of the kitchen because of his outrageous sauces).
The competing chefs, no doubt having their period of lockdown loss of income compensated for by huge paycheques courtesy of the television licence payer via the ever generous BBC (including the over-75 year olds it is now bleeding money from) are Jason Atherton, Pip Lacey, Tom Barnes, Niall Keating, Tommy Banks, Alex Greene, Richard Bainbridge, Simon Rogan, Matt Gillan, James Cochran, Lisa Goodwin-Allen and Tom Aikens. I don’t see, as we might have expected, the names of any chefs representing West Midlands restaurants but plenty from London and the Home Counties and the BBC’s new happy hunting ground of the north-west within reach of the Manchester-based BBC luvvies. I’ll leave the reader to decide which of the above chefs may be described as “notorious”.
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