Restaurants
LET’S GO ALFRESCO
Moments of genuine euphoria in life are either rare, or forgotten because the vast majority occurred in one’s youth.
Release from incarceration must rank pretty high. Whereas few readers will have spent time in Sing Sing, some of you will have experienced that blinding-light moment of being released unexpectedly even for a few hours from the monotony of National Service or boarding school.
‘Unexpectedly’ is the all-important word. All of us know what it’s like to leave the exam room for the last of a series of O levels or A levels. Yet although that moment is tumultuous, its joy is severely shrunk both by its being an anticlimax after weeks of the build-up and by the fact that other mates are being greeted by the love of their young lives who’s waving a SnogathonBehind-the-bike-sheds voucher.
Ever since Boris announced the reopening of restaurant terraces and pub gardens on 12th April, I have enjoyed the same shudders of unadulterated rhapsody that I last felt at my ascetic Dorset prep school in 1975.
That year on a baking summer’s day, the Lord of Misrule, in the improbable shape of the headmaster, suddenly declared at breakfast that there would be no lessons and we were all going to the beach.
Why? To celebrate his nephew’s scholarship. Only on our third sticky bun did we discover his destination was not Winchester. It was Bryanston. Yet we were just as delirious at his achievement: that of mastering joined-up writing. And counting to 20.
Every time I successfully make a post-12th-april booking – no small feat – the sensation of that summer’s day rushes through my veins. I don’t even resent the early birds who have grabbed the prime sites and times.
Sam’s Brasserie, on the river in Hammersmith, announced they would be taking bookings from 0900 hours on Thursday 11th March. Sure enough, I was there at 0901 with my last available diary windows (breakfast on Monday 26th or late dinner on Sunday 25th), but I was pipped to the post. Within 24 hours, Sam
emailed his regulars, apologising for having only 32 chairs outside.
It’s a nationwide problem for town mice. Britain just doesn’t do alfresco to EU standards. From Bath to Edinburgh, councils don’t approve. And law-abiding as we Brits are, as proved by our wholesale submittal to lockdown, we don’t push the envelope.
Long ago, Italians (please excuse even positive racial generalisations in the Year of Meghan) mastered the art of claiming outdoor space without applying for planning permission.
First, they allow the mayor to have a table on the pavement; later that month, they plant a few large shrubs to shelter the judge (and his mistress) from prying eyes. The next season, they erect an awning to protect both dignitaries from the sun, followed by plastic walls against the rain. The following season, either those walls become brick or that terrace (seating up to 60 people) becomes a city fixture, as sacred as the war memorial.
Fear not: we Brits shall still find a table outdoors in London before 17th May when we can eat indoors. First, Westminster Council are repeating last year’s Open Streets scheme whereby 60 roads – including 17 in Soho alone – were closed to traffic and over 500 restaurants were granted pavement licences.
Secondly, I have drawn up a list on The Oldie’s website of 35 restaurants across the city with terraces and gardens. Check out www.theoldie.co.uk/blog and scroll down the blogs chronologically to mine on 10th March 2021.
Don’t get frustrated but be willing to have lunch at midday or mid-afternoon, and dinner at six o’clock – much as you have been doing at home for the past 12 months.