479. The New Tiger Bites Pig And French Onion Soup Returns In Stratford.

 

  Once more I was paying a visit to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford upon Avon accompanied by one of my regular lunching companions, this time to see Much Ado About Nothing, so beautifully presented in the fabulous and memorable 2014 production as Love’s Labours Won, starring Edward Bennett as Benedick and the sublime Michelle Terry as Beatrice, and sunk below the water line most recently in the deplorable production at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane where Tom Hiddleston looked permanently bemused and embarrassed in the presence of the wrecking ball that Jamie Lloyd had taken to the Bard (see Blog 468). But of this, more later.

  We started off our foray into Stratford via Snow Hill station with what we decided what be a ‘light lunch’ at the recently opened new home of Tiger Bites Pig. The restaurant is spread over the two floors of what used to be Church Street cafe where I remember dining at two or three Ben Tesh pop ups in 2016 prior to his opening of Folium in 2017. Some of his dishes really were quite experimental then but very interesting and served as an exciting introduction to his cuisine then. 

  On the ground floor of Tiger Bites Pig is a counter from which, I assume, takeaways are served, while upstairs is a good sized space for dining. The menu is no more complicated than it was previously and I chose an old favourite - the appealingly, but not unrestrained, spicy Sichuan style roasted lamb bao flavoured with chilli oil, sesame and cooled and refreshed with tangy but soothing strips of cucumber. The bun itself was soft and light and the dish of spicy prawn crackers we ordered had us slyly competing with each other to grab as many of the crackers as we could without appearing greedy. My lunch companion was very pleased with his white cut chicken bao which brought together chicken, sesame, pickled cabbage, green Sichuan peppercorn, spring onions and ‘Mandarin hot sauce. 

Rating;- 🌛🌛🌛🌛

  We thought that this lunch was just the ticket and things went well as we were in time to get to Snow Hill, hop on the Stratford- bound train, head for the Hotel Du Vin where we settled in before going for a pleasant stroll along the bank of the Avon on this warm, sunny spring afternoon and in doing so spot the first black swan to have been seen in Stratford for fifty years, or so we were told. On days like this England looks as grand a place on this Earth as exists, a blessed plot indeed.

All the luxury you need when you get a roll topped bath in your bedroom - Hotel du Vin, Stratford.

Stratford’s first black swan “in fifty years”.

 Things got even better when it emerged that the French onion soup was back on the menu in the bistro of the Hotel du Vin. A meal in itself; dizzyingly sweet, soft onion wallowing in a rather hot broth like a subterranean sea waiting to be uncovered from its location under a gooey, cheesy crouton lid. There are few pleasures more enjoyable than this. And then, an interesting and punchily sea-flavoured main of pâtes tagliolini noires au Crabe - nicely cooked squid ink blackened pasta with a strongly maritime hit of crab (though to be honest the crab did seem a little sparsely spread around the dish, at least to the naked eye) with more flavour from sun blushed cherry tomato and basil and a truly satisfying texture from good scattering of pine nuts. This was a very enjoyable dish though a little too generously portioned for me to be able to fully clear my plate and no room left for pudding.

  My dining companion paired a scallop dish with some very fine frites and was pleased with his meal.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛.

  And shortly we were off to the theatre, replete and content. The play was, as I recall mentioning above about as dire as you might expect it to be when it is set in a mid-2020s milieu populated by aggressive young men and badly but expensively dressed wags, all of whom speak with an Essex accent à la Reform. 

  The characters of Benedick and Beatrice are subordinated to the dark and vaguely incomprehensible tale of Hero and Claudio and the machinations of Don John with the aim of projecting the subject of  misogynism as the big liberal political theme the RSC wished to rail against on this occasion. It may not have been too much of a loss as the performance of Freema Agyeman as Beatrice was desperately unconvincing and Nick Blood’s underwhelming delivery of Benedick suggested that he should have been left on the benches for this production.

   I thought as the end of the play drew near that the director, with the elitist middle class snootiness of the artist that we witness endlessly in this era of the divided society, was probably directing an attack on the working classes wrapped up in socialist themes of equality and diversity and nothing more. In the past, there have been more gentle but equally patronising depictions of the working class by the middle class for the middle class as we hear everyday in the BBC’s  radio programme The Archers where very nice, gentle middle class village residents are honest and decent while the working class are salt of the earth but comedic and dishonest. But this RSC attack on the working class was much more savage than poking a bit of fun at Eddie Grundy. 

  This ill-judged production would have been better left unmade save that the audience around me found it to be hilarious. As, given the nature of the audience, you might have expected. But it had been the day when sweet French onion soup had returned to the Stratford Hotel du Vin and when a Black swan was swimming on the Avon - emphasising diversity I suppose - so on the whole things weren’t looking so bad.