Hugh Johnson: dining out is a distant memory
You need a microscope to find a single bright spot in being locked down. Yes, it’s your chance to reread War and Peace, but any personal satisfaction is clouded, if not cancelled, by the Spectre of Opportunities Lost, and most of all for conversations not conversed, rellies not hugged (and drinks not drunk). I think of the restaurants I most enjoy, think of their ingenious chefs, friendly waiters and hair-tearing proprietors, and see disappointment on every side.
So, a ray of light? Takeaways are becoming almost a new art form. Chinese and Indian restaurants are old hands at it, but some of the new recruits have polished their acts to give you as near an in-therestaurant experience as they can. The Garrick Club is a prime example. It distributes its meals on wheels to members within a five-mile radius of London’s Covent Garden. The chefs cook favourite dishes as brilliantly as ever and whizz the results out via motorbike for lunch or dinner. (Menus and napkins come in the club colours of pink and green.)
Often the courier is a familiar member of staff; the sommelier came calling one summer’s day in a club t-shirt. Nearer home, our local Elystan Street distributes its regular dishes. Lots do. Il Portico in Kensington, claiming the title of London’s oldest family-run Italian restaurant, operates Home James, its local free delivery service. We feel beholden to people like them to order.
There is an upside to home delivery I feel almost guilty to mention: the BYO aspect. You drink your own wine with no corkage to pay; better wine, in our case, than we could afford in the restaurants.
But here comes what, to me, is the worst part of this forced change in our drinking habits. Where are the friends to enjoy and discuss the wine with? Each of my most treasured bottles has a virtual guest list attached. I look forward to sharing this Chablis with X, who has a particular penchant for Montée de Tonnerre, and asking Y if they think the Château Cantemerle 2010 is up to the 2009. Impossible to do without the right friends at the table. Sharing, of bottles and opinions, is the absolute essence of enjoying – and indeed of understanding – wine.
I had never used the faintly pompous word ‘conviviality’ before we were all forbidden it nearly a year ago. Suddenly an abstract idea has become all too actual. It’s what I miss most.