131. Waiting To Be Schmoozed Again.

 

 

 Time hangs heavy when you want to get out and about visiting the towns and restaurants of the west midlands and perhaps even further afield though our own west Mercia has enough to offer to keep one busy for a while, at least it would have if anywhere were open to enable one to sit down, relax and indulge oneself. Four+ weeks post-vaccination (first dose Pfizer) and I no longer have pre-vaccination angst, I’m raring to go (yes, I will still take all the precautions I’m meant to do) and take my seat at the table of good food and fine service. And the dog feels the same way; she wants to be away staying at her favourite dog-friendly hotels where, quite literally, everybody knows her name and have people praising her again and tidbits smuggled out from delightful restaurants where seven courses was just a little more than I could manage.

  It’s all very well having food boxes delivered to my home, the dishes often seem to be more bistro than fine dining, but I don’t really want to do even minimal preparation and plating up if I’m to be honest especially when there seems to be as much washing up to do after the meal as when I cook something from scratch myself. Of course the food boxes have brought some rather special dishes to my doorstep but it’s not the full experience by any means. In fact the dining at home phenomenon reminds one just how important the front of house staff are and it’s not all about what goes on in the kitchen. I like to be schmoozed by expert managers and charming receptionists and waiters whose manner is practiced and perfect. Being schmoozed is half the point of going for a fine meal, we all like people to recognise how special we are.

  Much insight on the subject can be gleaned from  Brillat-Savarin’s The Physiology Of Taste or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, published in 1825 in France by a life-long gourmand. B-S was a lawyer and mayor of the town of, fittingly, Belley (both occupations lending themselves very nicely to the pursuit of gastronomy) but was forced to flee from his native land as the Reign of Terror ran its course in 1793 as revolution gripped the country. He returned from exile in the newly founded United States to become a judge in Paris and led a peaceful life in that city devoting the last 25 years of his life to writing his masterwork.

  In the book he pronounces frequently on food and those who eat it. There’s a lovely meditation on gourmands - do we see ourselves in the words?, “... there is a privileged class of men whom a materialistic and organic predestination summons to the full enjoyment of taste. ....I believe in inborn tendencies...”

  He felt able to describe the gourmand, “People predestined to  gourmandism are in general of medium height, they have round or square faces, bright eyes, small foreheads, short noses, full lips and rounded chins. The women so predisposed are plump, more likely to be pretty than beautiful, and have a tendency toward corpulence....”.

  B-S identified those who were “Goumands by Profession” - bankers (“the real heroes of gourmandism”), doctors (“they have gourmandism thrust upon them”), writers (“the position of men of letters is very close to that of the doctors”), the Devout and “Chevaliers and Abbés (“...which the Revolution has wiped out”, “what gourmands were, those good old friends!”).

  He asserted that he was “able to give my readers a wonderful bit of news, which is that good living is far from being destructive to good health and that, all things being equal, gourmands live much longer than other folk....”. So that is altogether very reassuring.

 B-S felt the need to define Gourmandism - (it is) “an impassioned, considered and habitual preference for whatever pleases the taste. It is the enemy of overindulgence; any man who eats too much or grows drunk risks being expelled from its army of disciples. Gourmandism includes the love of delicacies, which is nothing more than the ramification of this passion for light elegant dishes of little real sustenance, such as jams, pastries and so on. This is a modification introduced into the scheme of the things for the benefit of the ladies, and such men as are like them”.

  “No matter how gourmandism is considered, it deserves praise and encouragement. Physically, it is the result as well as the proof of the perfect state of health of our digestive organs. Morally, it is an implicit obedience of the rules of the Creator, who, having ordered us to eat in order to live, invites us to do so with appetite, encourages us with flavour, and rewards us with pleasure”.

  His meditation 28 is on restauranteurs and recalls the origin of the restaurant. He reminded the reader that in the happy pre-Revolution days of Louis XIV, the Sun King, “visitors in Paris still had very few resources properly classified as conducive to good living. They were forced to depend on the cooking of their innkeepers, which was generally bad. There were some hotels serving a regular dinner which, with few exceptions only the strict necessities, and which moreover was available once at fixed times. .... At last an intelligent fellow came along, who decided for himself that an active cause could not but produce its effect .... hungry diners would flock to a place where they could be sure of satisfying such needs most agreeably ....”.

  “This intelligent fellow considered, as well, a great many other things which are easy to guess. He became the first restauranteur, and created a profession which is always successful if he who practices it possesses sincerity, order, and skill”.

Antoine Beauvilliers 1754-1817

  “This intelligent fellow” was Antoine Beauvilliers who opened La Grande Taverne de Londres in Paris in 1782. His restaurant was based on English taverns (hence the name he gave it) which catered to merchants and businessmen, writers and intellectuals of a range of viewpoints, all of whom were not quite the right sort to be able to use a London club, in which the higher echelons of English male society were able to feed to their contentment, Taverns were not places to stay like inns and hotels but offered a range of differently sized rooms where meetings, small and cosy or large and institutional dinners, could be held. An example of one such tavern in Birmingham was the Woodman Tavern in Easy Row which was frequented by local politicians such as Joseph Allday and his supporters, a Birmingham councillor whose wife, Ann Allday, ran a celebrated tripe restaurant in the town in the mid 19th century.

Grande Taverne de Londres Paris

  Beauvillier’s restaurant, though modelled on something English, became the first prominent restaurant in Paris. It had “an elegant dining room, handsome well-trained waiters, a fine cellar and a superior kitchen”. Beauvilliers’ success came in part from his ability to “cater to and flatter rich patrons” - as I write above - schmoozing, and doing it perfectly, is part of the art of the restauranteur. Be it 1782 or 2021, schmooze and we will come, at least we will when the government opens up the restaurants again.

  So there we have it, those who want to make it big in the restaurant world could do worse than read the ancient sagacity of Brillat-Savarin and learn the ways of Beauvilliers.and judging by what happens when I visit some of our great Birmingham and West Midlands restaurants, I think some of those who provide the service there have done just that.

130. Fine Dining At Home - The New Normal.

 

  There’s a lot said about the wonder of New Zealand and how because the country has locked out all infested foreigners the population there is able to lead enjoyable normal lives by attending in vast numbers such things as rugby matches (chaque à son gout) and theatre (which might be true if there was a theatre there worth mentioning) or dining out (I believe there is one restaurant there worth dining out at). Personally I’m happy here, in dear old Blighty, where at the time of writing approximately three times as many people as the whole population of New Zealand have received COVID-19 vaccinations and where our numerous remarkable restauranteurs have developed a system of getting their astonishingly good products out to their fans (what better word could be conscripted to describe the devoted food lovers who use the new home food services that have sprung up in a matter of a few weeks - fine dining does takeaway which is something you wouldn’t have predicted two years ago).

  So having thrice indulged myself with a Purnell’s meal box this weekend ‘tis the season to be romantic with Antona At Home, care of the godfather of Birmingham’s cuisine. Not too much romance as I was dining with Lucy the Labrador who despite her status as a dog could easily be described as a gourmand in her own right, as experienced, if not more so, as most humans in Birmingham. And what a nice At Home experience it was.

  The box very pleasingly contained a card signed “Andreas” with the immortal poem, “Roses are red, Violets are blue, Here’s a Valentine’s treat, prepared just for you” which I think does not scan quite perfectly but who’s complaining? Alongside this rather nice signed souvenir was a bejewelled real red rose. I don’t have enough fresh flowers in the house so, romance aside, this was very welcome and charming.

  

 

 The packaging was excellent with each course contained in its respective box. And with the box emptied preparation was pleasingly easy and lacking in risk of emotional trauma. Soup, what a good choice for the first cause, the enthusiastic amateur, charged only with warming everything up and plating up, can hardly do much harm. So within a very short time I was sitting down to a deeply luxurious and delicious lobster and red pepper soup poured over some little slices of red pepper which in honesty really didn’t do much to enhance the soup, all finished off with pleasingly crunchy croutons and Parmesan shavings. A course as good as one might expect and generously portioned (even if my plating up was, er, a little rustic). And accompanied by a pleasing little milk bun with some very fine Jersey butter.

  And so to the main course or Box no. 2 as you might like to call it - Corn-fed chicken, potato terrine, leeks and a cep cream. Preparation minimal apart from a little warming up and plating out. The chicken was excellent and delicious and the cep cream full of flavour. The potato terrine and leeks were pleasing accompaniments. As can be seen my plating up was far from elegant, but it still tasted pretty good to me.

 

 

On to dessert - what could be more Valentines than a dear old trifle? But not just any trifle. An Antona trifle or perhaps a Tipping trifle or a Bennett trifle or at any rate a trifle devised from someone at Simpsons or the Cross at Kenilworth. Yorkshire rhubarb and ginger trifle with toasted almonds. Just take it out of the fridge for 20 minutes and away you go. No plating up this time unless you feel you really must. This was indeed a very fine, and again generously portioned, English trifle. It reminded me of just how enormously enjoyable old English dishes can be though they be mocked  by those who judge themselves to have sophisticated tastes. The amount of ginger was sensitively judged so that one was aware of the flavour but not blasted by it but it lived at the back of the tongue for a while after finishing the dish giving a happy persistence to the joy of the trifle. This was a luxurious trifle fitting for the day of celebration. The rhubarb was perhaps more precisely correctly crunchy than a flavour hit but it played its part well enough. I’d eat this every day if I could. Mmm, yes the ginger is still there, perfect. And there was a gorgeous little treat at the end which I consumed gluttinously before I could photograph it - a happy little petit four made of fine white chocolate, shaped as, what else?, a heart and filled with gorgeous, mango-flavoured splendidly, gooey pleasure. Thank you Mr Antona.

 

 Despite the pleasure of these At Home meals it will be lovely to sit relaxed in a restaurant again, pampered and not even the slightest amount of washing up waiting to be done. I expect that we all hope that the new normal will give way to the old normal but for the moment we have the new normal to salvage our gastronomic spirits.