Restaurants
Sam’s Riverside, London W6 The Swan, Bampton, Devon
Few plays are set in restaurants, and even fewer in a theatre with a wondrously raucous restaurant within the same building.
Love, Loss and Chianti was recently brought to the stage by Robert ‘ Cold Feet' Bathurst, and was an irrepressible double bill of two of the great Christopher Reid's prose poems: one, A Scattering, about the loss of his wife; the other, The Song of Lunch, a tribute to the ‘truancy' of a botched lunch with an old flame.
Our hero is a Grub Street irregular, hewn from the same Bloomsbury stone as The Oldie's patron saint, the late Jeremy Lewis. He's on a mission: ‘Sometimes, a man needs to go out on the rampage, throw conscientious timekeeping to the winds, help kill a few bottles – and bugger the consequences.'
He returns to his old haunt, Zanzotti's, after a long gap, only to find all its old charms have vanished, not least the padrone, Massimo. The crew of familiar Italian waiters have been replaced by a mixed (and cold-hearted) bag, and the menu, once the haven of pollo alla sorpresa and other AngloItalian masterpieces, is now ‘a twanging, laminated card, big as a riot policeman's shield'. Sadly, the show has just been cancelled but look out for it on its return after the church bells ring.
So there was double rejoicing as we strode into Sam's Riverside, feeling the mighty buzz that only 1980s emporia like Rowley Leigh's Kensington Place used to deliver unfailingly – no surprise, given that Rowley helped Sam Harrison launch the joint, and clearly sprinkled some fairy dust (and Parmesan churros) on the way out.
Every single dish was an unfussy winner: baked celeriac, grilled octopus, venison chop and duck. The waiter was completely engaged, albeit mostly with our Dorset friend Shanie, but he found time to pour us some Chianti, at just £28 a bottle.
There's lots of glass and mirrors through which to spy on handsome young oldies or the river behind. This summer, there will be 40 seats outside. So if you're smart, you'll book a table outside for their set lunch followed by a matinée of Love, Loss and Chianti, before 17th May.
The sign of a good country pub? They sell sweets. And champagne by the glass. The Swan at Bampton does both: a local boozer with a brilliant chef. We were staying with friends who had just moved from London to Exmoor, only to find God's own pub is on the doorstep. Our host made the classic DFL faux pas of greeting the landlord by his first name. Only to get it crashingly wrong. Fortunately, the Swan's regulars were too busy to notice, owing to a rammed funeral wake for the town's football coach.
In amongst the jolly mourners, the five of us shared starters brought to us by a fast and friendly waitress: crab, scallops and other local delights. Meanwhile, the misnamed landlord saw his target and offered us a delicious Barolo for just £35. And another with our steak, ale and kidney suet pudding. Yes, suet – not a microwaved bit of pastry on an ovenproof beige bowl of lumpy meat, but an impervious suet pudding whose supernaturally heartening powers will act as the local coronavirus vaccine for those Rhett Butlers among you who will break the blockade.