MY LAST BOOZY LUNCH WITH FRIENDS
The first thing I did when I heard that we were going into another lockdown was to plan where to go for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Restaurants are the glue that hold my life together, a huge part of my life as a food writer and restaurateur.
The time constraints meant I had to double up and visit two of my favourite restaurants on the same day, my last burst of extravagant eating out until early December.
It began with a civilised solo breakfast at The Wolseley, a regular ritual. There’s always a skip in my step as I walk there from Green Park past The Ritz. As always I ordered an Omelette Arnold Bennett, brown toast, a large pot of
coffee and a grapefruit juice. The buzz of that beautiful room never fails to make me smile.
I then headed off into Soho, wasting a couple of hours until lunch, where I met an old friend at Richard Corrigan’s Bentley’s on the edge of Mayfair. We sat at the bar and shared a platter of oysters, each of us with a glass of Guinness and soda bread with lots of seaweed-laced butter, followed by Dover Sole Meunière with brown butter, lemon and capers. It needed a white Burgundy, so we ordered Chablis. We probably didn’t need the Craquelin Choux bun with hazelnut praline for dessert but we finished it anyway, with a couple of Irish coffees.
“That was perfect,” my friend said as we left. It was, I agreed. I may try to make my own Arnold Bennett in lockdown, shuck some oysters and master a Dover sole. I’ll definitely drink a lot of Burgundy and make Irish coffees but, no matter how hard I try, it just won’t be the same.