The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
‘At the age of four, my son has been to more restaurants than I had at the age of 21’
A varied menu and relaxed atmosphere gets the thumbs up from our critic, and his son
I’VE BEEN TRYING to think how old I was when I first went to a restaurant. But I’ve honestly got no idea. I definitely can’t have been to any before the age of four, because we were living in a remote village on the west coast of the Highlands. There were no restaurants there. God knows where the nearest one was, but it might as well have been on the moon.
When I was four we moved to the outskirts of Edinburgh, which does have restaurants, but even then, I don’t remember going to many. Then again, people didn’t, then. Or at least, the people I knew didn’t. Going to restaurants was rare. You might go to one on your mum’s birthday, or your dad’s. That was about it.
Still can’t think when I first went to one, though – probably because, in those days, a meal in a British restaurant wasn’t necessarily something you’d want to remember. What I do know, however, is this. At the age of four, my son has already been to more restaurants than I had at the age of 21. Probably even 25.
The main reason for that, obviously, is that by some inexplicable fluke his dad happens to be a restaurant reviewer. So he often gets dragged along with me, whether he wants to or not. I wonder whether he’ll remember it, though. That’s the thing about memory: beyond the odd random snippet
(your grandmother showing you a seashell, your little sister dropping a brick on her foot), it’s pretty much impossible to remember anything that happened in your life before you started primary school. At that age, your brain is too busy soaking up words and images and other essential factual information to bother with memories of your day-to-day life. It’s focusing all its energies on retaining the word for duck, and what a duck looks like. It hasn’t got the space to fritter away on the time your dad took you to this hot new meze bar in Marylebone.
In a way, then, my son is both lucky and unlucky. Lucky in that, before he’s even finished pre-school, he’s a regular in Michelin-starred restaurants all around the country, and has eaten caviar, and cod roe, and crispy pig’s head, and countless other extravagant delicacies. But unlucky, in the sense that he won’t remember a single mouthful. It’s already lost in the swirl of time’s fog. It might as well not have happened.
That’s why I wanted to write this all down: so that I can keep the cuttings, and show him when he’s older. Otherwise, he’ll never believe it.
He came to this week’s restaurant, too. The Parsons Table – named after the couple who run it, Liz and Lee Parsons – opened in Arundel, West Sussex, three years go, and has built a fine local reputation. The menu is more varied at dinner, but personally I would recommend going for lunch on a Saturday, which is what we did. On a sunny summer’s afternoon, when they throw open the windows and front doors, it’s just a lovely place to sit: a pretty little restaurant, tucked down a pretty little passage, away from the street – and out front, a tiny courtyard, aglow with greenery. Sunbeams bathing on the leaves. Music cooing softly in the background. So quiet and secluded and restful. Sitting and sipping your wine, as the hours drift dreamily by.
The food’s not bad, either. After some warm, freshly baked bread with an almost deafeningly crunchy crust, I started with a large slice of the Orchard Farm pork pie. In conventional pie form, pork pies are often disappointing – a dry, miserly clump of tasteless nothing, the ratio of pastry to filling far too high – but this slice was meat, meat, meat, and complemented nicely by a sweet-onion chutney. I also tried a special, the pressing of rabbit: cool, slim and lissom, with a fennel remoulade. My son placed a chunk of rabbit in his mouth, sucked on it thoughtfully, then put it back on my plate and returned to playing Angry Birds on his ipad.
My main was a pinkish rump of New Zealand lamb, full and hefty, with a creamy little turret of gratin potato, minted pea purée and broccoli. They do a good range of fish at Parsons Table: on the day I went, there was a choice of Sussex cod, Chalk Stream Farm trout, and Cornish hake. My son had a child-sized portion of the cod, light and bright, with smooth, pebbly little baby potatoes. The grown-ups’ portion comes with herb quinoa instead, but even a gourmet of my son’s standing has his limits.
For pudding I ordered the West Sussex strawberry sablé, gorgeously jammy, with basil and mint for added zing. My son swooped on it like a hungry seagull. His own pudding was the chocolate ice cream, darker and more intense than I think he’s used to. It tasted somehow… dirty. In a good way.
After the plates had been cleared away, I asked him what he thought of the restaurant. He pondered the matter deeply, before finally handing down his magisterial verdict.
‘Good,’ he said, and went back to his Angry Birds.
A very fair verdict, I think, although possibly requiring just a little more detail to bring it up to the word count. Never mind, though. He’ll learn.
His ice cream tasted somehow… dirty. In a good way