The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Table talk
Michael Deacon at Restaurant 22 in Cambridge
YOU KNOW YOU’RE getting old when policemen start looking younger. Or so they say. For me, though, it’s waiters. Since reaching the grand old age of 37, I find myself startled by their everincreasing youthfulness. I try not to stare, but it’s hard to help. Is that poor boy really old enough to serve alcohol? Do his parents know he’s out? Isn’t this a school night?
In reality, of course, he’s probably about 25. But this is the peculiar thing. As you approach 40, pretty much all people under 30 start to look like children. Children, with their big round pudgy gawping faces. So innocent. So sweet. So gormless.
It’s weird. When you think about it, though, it’s like that all your life. Whatever age you are, everybody younger than you basically just merges into one – as, indeed, does everybody older than you. Think back to when you were, say, five years old, in your first year of primary school. In your eyes, children of 12 looked like adults. Well, they were all so much taller than you – how could you tell the difference? You could barely see their faces. You spent your life tiptoeing through a forest of legs. As far as you were concerned, there were only three types of people: children (everyone between birth and, say, eight years old); grown-ups (everyone aged between eight and 40); and the very, very old (everyone over 40).
Then you became a teenager. Now you could see that children of 12 were, indeed, children. How on earth could you ever have thought differently? People in their 20s, however, looked intimidatingly mature. You could hardly imagine being that old. Some of them even had beards. Beards! People in their 30s, though, were just worn and haggard. You could see no difference between them and people in their 40s. Or, to be honest, people in their 50s.
But now, here I am at 37, glaring coldly at 30-year-old barmen while thinking, ‘EXCUSE me. Did you just address me as “mate”, young man? I’m old enough to be your father, you know!’ And so, no doubt, it goes on. Presumably when I’m 80, 65-year-olds will look like toddlers.
I was thinking about this while at Restaurant 22, in Cambridge. Our waiter looked so young. He could have been 16. Then again, he could just as easily have been 30. Or, indeed, 22. I honestly didn’t know. What I did know, however, was that I suddenly felt very, very old.
The restaurant is small (it was converted from a house – you eat in the living room) but pretty: so bright and white and airy, with light summery music fluttering like a butterfly in the background. It originally opened in 1982, but was relaunched this spring by new owners: Samuel Carter, a chef who’s worked with Gordon Ramsay, and his fiancée Alexandra Olivier. They’re both under 30. I feel old again.
I went with my wife, son and fatherin-law. The three grown-ups had the five-course tasting menu, which is £35 a head (a vegetarian version is available for the same price). First, a couple of snacks: salmon rillette with gooseberry and kaffir lime, cool and juicy, plus a titchy hot croquette of macaroni cheese. Then some beautiful freshly baked bread: shallot and thyme brioche, as light and flaky as a croissant; then a mini-loaf each of Guinness bread, dark and cakey, served with delicious pre-melted Guinness butter.
The next couple of dishes were the least exciting. A starter of Isle of Wight tomatoes, pecorino sardo (a Sardinian sheep’s milk cheese) and beef fat, then a fish course of wild turbot, pink grapefruit, celeriac and sea herbs. Both fine, but neither scorched themselves on to my memory – unlike the next course: Blythburgh pork, black pudding, wild garlic and onion. I know I’m a pork bore (boar?), but this really was terrific: sumptuously tender, sizzlingly intense.
For an extra £12 a head, you can add a very fine cheese course. We went for it. There were five cheeses: robiola di bufala (soft and gooey); vintage Lincolnshire Poacher (hard and faintly sweet); Bosworth Ash (soft and mild); Cropwell Bishop Stilton (blue and tangy); and Sparkenhoe Vintage Red Leicester (hard and nutty).
They don’t do any dishes specifically for children, but my son had the chicken from the set menu, served with creamy risotto and squishy little mushrooms, and he was perfectly happy with that. Pudding was great: a hockey puck of velvety-smooth dark chocolate with a crunchy base that tasted vaguely like a posher Ferrero Rocher.
I liked Restaurant 22 a lot. Quality cooking in a beautiful setting – by which, of course, I mean not just the pretty dining room, but Cambridge itself. We went on a glorious sunny Saturday and followed our lunch with a stroll through nearby Jesus Green. It was wonderful: the punts, the swans, the sun-dappled trees, the willows drooping into the Cam. Students, hundreds of students, lazed on the grass.
Well, I assume they were students. To my rheumy old eyes, they looked about 14. Either way, they were disgustingly young. But the weather was so lovely, I didn’t hold it against them.
I know I’m a pork bore (boar?), but this was terrific: sumptuously tender, sizzlingly intense