And so at last the era of not going out to dine draws to a close. The most recently introduced rules in the gradually decaying age of the ‘lockdown’ have eased once more to enable groups of six to gather outside to break bread with each other and resume where we all left off in our personal relationships. We may again see the faces of old friends up close (but of course not too close) and not via the always irritating (can you hear me? You need to unmute ...) Zoom virtual call, Thank The Wee Donkey.
The management of Craft Dining Rooms played a blinder those many months ago by introducing their outside dining pods which have enabled the COVIDly insecure to meet up in groups of four in the latter part of last year and again since the most recent rule changes and gone one step further by introducing a table for six sans murs with a little heater on it called rather exotically The Firepit around which six people may gather. With all the pods booked a friend summoned me a few weeks ago to meet with old acquaintances at Craft around the Firepit for our first post-lockdown meal together, all doubly vaccinated and brimming with happy anticipation. And so we did on a mistimed particularly cold evening in the dying embers of April. A bucket of embers, dying or not, would have been quite helpful on this particular evening given the bone-penetrating chilliness of the temperature as we sat on the cusp of May. But we were supplied with blankets with which to envelop ourselves should hypothermia set in and there was the tiny flame burning away on the table which put out more light than heat and which supplemented the warmth of the generally good spirits of my co-diners and myself. But I still wasn’t clear where a ‘Pit’ came into the equation.
Gin was welcome and the menu announced a three course meal (or two if one wished) with a reasonable number of choices (four for each course) and how wonderful it was not to be faced with a Tasting menu, a concept which really should have been the first fatal victim of that virus along with horrors such as sous vide food warming (one can hardly call it ‘cooking’ ) and other gastronomic perversions of recent decades. What we wanted and what we were expecting was good, beautifully cooked food in sensible amounts. And we were not disappointed.
No bread, no amuses bouches, no flim flam, just straight into a really rather delicious little starter of pea soup - not any pea soup I might say - with a good solid and tasty piece of haddock forming a central island crowned with my favourite greens pleasures, pea shoots, and with them some perfectly cooked peas. This was very good. A little cold perhaps but given the outdoor location and ambient temperature, a perfectly understandable and mild imperfection.
For the main course, I stuck with fish and was glad to have done so as a splendid dish of beautiful roast cod with wickedly enjoyably crispy cod croquettes and taste bud-delighting salt and vinegar potato ‘crisps’, a pea purée and a little blanket of crunchy pickles on top. This was a clever dish and the fish was cooked to perfection. It was one of those dishes you could feed me every day for a long time before I would feel it necessary to ask for a change of menu. What joy.
The dessert was fine, nothing mesmerising but pleasurable, rice pudding with well-flavoured hay ice cream. No complaints. The lot which made for a happy evening despite the chill air (though warmed by good company and delightful food) cost a very reasonable £40 plus drinks and service.
So as the pandemic seems to be dying away in this Blessed Plot of England set in the silver sea, which serves it in the office of a wall or as a moat defensive to a house, a fortress built by Nature for herself against infection .... I (brimming with antibodies) feel optimistic about that date, less than three weeks away when Craft and our other great restaurants can once more throw open their welcoming doors to this Happy breed of men and feed them the pleasures which they have in store. I’ve done it all over the past twelve months - isolated, distanced, ordered on line, mourned the sight of empty restaurants (some, but not so many round here, closed for good), had a Zoom birthday party, had cook-at-homes which proved I was never meant even to finish off fine dining dishes let alone cook them from scratch, and now eaten fine food in a sort of glorified if chilly picnic. This has been another era in the story of the food of this city and the region.
I suppose it is worth noting that although the City Council is generally supremely incompetent and lazy, it has girded its loins in a minor way to provide rather amateurish-looking pavement shelters near bars and restaurants in some roads around the city centre including Waterloo Street near Adam’s (though I don’t see its customers being provided with their Michelin-starred dinners under the roofs of these constructions). As the spring advances these shelters may come into their own though they do rather spoil the overall appearance of that particular street with its fine buildings which have managed to survive the ill-intentions and depredations of various and multiple councils and countless mad architects over the years.
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