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The Country Mouse visits LondonBy Janice Rossen
It is, roughly speaking, a businessman’s hotel, which means that the service is utterly extraordinary. The staff must cope with short-tempered, briefcase-carrying Men in Suits all day long, and if you simply turn up as a tourist, they know exactly what to do for you, and—now this is the key point—they have a lot of panache, too. As it happened, my mother arrived to join me on Shrove Tuesday, which means Pancakes in the traditional feast before Lent. The chef set up a long table in the lobby and made us all scrumptious crepes with flambéed fruit and fresh berries. We sat in the bar, drinking tea, and tucking into freshly made crepes; it was a delightful welcome. I can also highly commend the restaurant, which offered specially cured smoked salmon, (carved tableside), and a delicious Caesar salad with huge chunks of lobster on it. The Chesterfield is an excellent base for setting out to tackle London’s museums, not least because it is in one of the quietest and most central locations. An especially nice feature of the hotel is a monthly summary—on one page—by Ian, the head concierge, of his favorite sights and theatre events in London at the moment. The Chesterfield has my deep respect for making a welcoming atmosphere for travelers, in the midst of the city. There is a pianist in the bar nearly every evening, which makes for a cozy spot in which to settle into those huge leather armchairs and have a long chat with a friend over a cognac at midnight.
Italian food can be marvelous in London, and I must also mention Paradiso E Inferno, which is located on the Strand (roughly across the street from the Savoy), and where I had a fabulous birthday luncheon with my very dashing friend Pami, who lives in SW1, London. She booked a table in advance, stressing that we wished to sit in the ‘paradise’ section of the restaurant, rather than the ‘inferno,’ (which does indeed mean ground level as opposed to downstairs!) and we smashed out on Dover sole and a Fettuccini Alfredo that had us sighing with pleasure.
As for the River Café in Hammersmith, it is a well-worn cliché, to say that it is . . . . well, I can’t even think of the best cliché to express the passionate zeal with which I have admired this restaurant. As everyone who loves it will readily caution you, it is A Very Long Way from central London, and while the directions for walking there from the tube station are clearly explained on the café’s answering machine, they seem formidable. In the end, nothing is simpler. You can take the Piccadilly underground line from anywhere in the center of London out to the Hammersmith stop, and march authoritatively to the taxi rank just outside the station. From there it is a short and zippy ride (not even very expensive) to the café. And here you are . . .
The River Café deserves, I think, its status as Mecca. And this in itself is the flip side of feeling Country Mouse-ish: if you come to London to find the best of the very best, you will feel certain that the journey has been worth it when you have discovered and partaken of it. So artful and complex an institution would really not be possible in the provinces. This holds true, for me, with a few other indispensable Must See places and Must Dine spots, that have drawn me through the years. I almost never miss the National Portrait Gallery, where you can stroll around and gaze at celebrities from the age of the Tudor kings (there is a fearsome Henry VIII portrait) up to the very latest and most trendy media stars, including a wonderfully weird portrait of J.K. Rowling. A favorite corner of the museum for me is the downstairs café (my view of it is pictured above), where you can look up through the glass ceiling to the elegant façade of the building, and, if you are lucky with the weather, watch a rainbow come and go with the clouds.
If you want to dine in someplace a bit more trendy, nothing can beat Quod, right in the center of town on High Street, which has an Italian flavour to it (roasted vegetables and goat cheese with arugula). The art work on the walls is abominable, the food exquisite, and the view out the huge windows of Oxford honey-coloured stone facades is fabulous. Portobello, a bit north of the center, has marvelous food (again, it is owned privately by a restaurateur who is there looking after things). My friend Helen and I dashed in for a quick lunch, recently, and ordered all starters to share: crispy calamari and smoked duck breast salad and risotto of Roquefort and leaf spinach. Portobello has the virtue of being a neighbourhood restaurant—it even boasts a Children’s Menu—and seemed to be full of local regulars tucking into British with side splash of Italian cuisine. I don’t think I ever miss dining at Fishers, which serves the freshest of seafood in the sunniest of venues. My other favorite Oxford haunt is the Old Parsonage Hotel, which is in a sixteenth century building with a beautiful stone-flagged outside patio, for dining al fresco in summer. In winter, there is a wood fire burning all day, than which nothing is more welcoming or cheerful. Whether you are essentially a Town Mouse or a Country Mouse, London exerts an undeniable fascination. Somehow, I am always drawn back to it. I don’t think I will ever feel comfortable, there—though that is not what it is for, as a traveler. For me, it is for settling in for an evening of passionate conversation at Diverso, with my husband, Bill, or for rushing up to Trafalgar Square on the 24 bus with my Woman of the World chum, Pami, or for sinking into those Chesterfield arm chairs with the incomparable Thys, swirling brandy around in balloon glass until the hotel staff start diplomatically lowering the lights in the bar. Photographs by Janice Rossen Contact numbers and further information: The Chesterfield Mayfair, 35 Charles Street, Mayfair, London W1J 5EB, tel. (0207) 491-2622, www.chesterfieldmayfair.com The Chocolate Society, 32-34 Shepherd Market, London, W1J 7QN, tel. (0207) 495-0302, www.chocolate.co.uk Diverso, 85 Piccadilly, Mayfair, London, W1J 7BN, tel. (0171) 491-2222, www.diverso-restaurant.co.uk Paradiso E Inferno: 389 Strand, London WC2R 0LT, tel. (0207) 836-7491 The River Café, Thames Wharf, Rainville Road, London W6 9HA, tel. (0207) 386-4200, www.rivercafe.co.uk (I must add, reservations are imperative, to dine here, and the staff will ring you back to confirm your booking, the day before) Royal Shakespeare Company, www.rsc.org.uk Mon Plaisir, 21 Monmouth Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9DD, tel. (0207) 836-7243, www.monplaisir.co.uk For anyone wishing to see ‘The Mousetrap’—an Agatha Christie classic (‘now in its 54th year’)—it plays endlessly at St Martin’s Theatre, West Street, London WC2, tel. (0870) 162-8787. Perhaps next trip . . . . Quod Restaurant and Bar, 92-94 High Street, Oxford, tel. (01865) 202505 Portabello Restaurant and Bar, 7 South Parade, Summertown, Oxford OX2 7LJ, tel. (01865) 559653, www.portabellorestaurant.co.uk Fishers, Oxford’s Fish and Seafood Restaurant, 36/37 St. Clements Street, Oxford OX4 1AB, tel. (01865) 243003, www.fishers-restaurant.com Old Parsonage Hotel, 1 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN, tel. (01865) 310210, www.oldparsonage-hotel.co.uk Sydney Hotel, 68-76 Belgrave Road, Victoria, London SW1V 2BP, tel. (0207) 834-2738, www.sidneyhotel.com is also a very nice place to stay, and excellent value |
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The excitements of London are dizzying, and if you are
already a Town Mouse instead of a Country Mouse, you will feel right at home. I
am always a little overwhelmed by it, myself, so I have concocted a few tried
and true ways for dealing with this feeling. The most direct way to escape
traffic and crowds is to walk in St James’ Park, where noble trees tower over
you and crocuses and daffodils grow in patches in early spring.
Perhaps the most direct infusion of calm is to
find a really fabulous hotel and head there immediately. (By the way, I can
highly recommend a transportation company called ‘Just Airports’, and you can
ring them up a few days before your trip to collect you from wherever you are
flying into.) On my latest trip, I rushed from Heathrow to the Chesterfield
Hotel in Mayfair, and was instantly swept into a cheerful ambiance. The porters
spring forward with such alacrity to seize your luggage that you will be left
looking around you on the empty pavement, wondering where they have gone? The
Chesterfield presents itself as a kind of Victorian gentleman’s club, with
leather sofas (Chesterfield, of course) in the lobby, strewn with elegant
needlepoint pillows. A feature I have always loved there are the two silver
bowls with green apples in one and red apples in the other. If you like symmetry
and open-handed generosity, the Chesterfield is for you.
The next cure and solace for Traveler’s Angst in
the Big City is to find the trendy and distinctive café nearby, in which you can
sit down for an hour or so, and think about what you have just seen or plan what
you are going to do that evening. I was lucky enough to discover the Chocolate
Society, in a small enclosure called Shepherd’s Market (about two blocks from
the hotel, and very near Green Park tube station). You can buy, here, the most
incredible chocolate truffles (handmade every day), to eat there or take away,
and sip an espresso, looking out into the courtyard. Nothing really will prepare
you for the amazement of an oil painting echoing Holbein’s portrait of Sir
Thomas More, but presenting the president of the Chocolate Society in fur-lined
cloak and slashed green velvet sleeves . . . . 
Mayfair also has the advantage of being very
quiet at night (this makes it a Country Mouse haven), yet also of having some
superb restaurants, since it is refinedly upper crust. Another antidote to
feeling stressed by Big City Bustle is to find a favorite restaurant. I have
been dining for years at Diverso (almost across the street from Green Park
station), and always feel (now, this is a bit complicated to express) as though
I am both in California and in Italy at the same time, while sitting firmly in
London, reaping the benefits of superbly metropolitan professional cooking and
service. The compelling beauty of Diverso, among all these other benefits, is
that the tables are spaced far apart. The usual London drill is to be shoved two
feet away from the diners at the next table on an uncomfortable banquette seat,
having to overhear their conversation. Dinner is for conversation—that is its
raison d’etre. Otherwise, we would be out at the theatre. But at Diverso, you
can sit and talk for hours, waiters whisking away plates like magic. It is a
lovely space, with a light and airy feel to it—they achieve Mediterranean grace
in a cold and rainy city. And you can dine on elegant fish dishes or a divine
risotto with black truffles, with a huge bowl of strawberries for dessert.
I have also dined at Diverso several times alone (they
always bring me extra biscotti—homemade—with my espresso), and a London
restaurant that will treat a solo diner with exquisite courtesy (and extra
biscotti) is a treasure.
If you look closely at the Paradiso E Inferno bar, pictured
above, you will see all the signs of a great Italian restaurant: excellent
Grappa, serious black pepper mill, oil and vinegar at the ready, and a
formidable espresso machine.
As in any exemplary restaurant, The Owners (in this case,
there are two in a partnership) will usually be there. Both Rose Grey and Ruth
Rogers must be committed to this enterprise. You will see Rose Grey in the
photograph below, (who kindly posed for me on earnest request) next to the
café’s signature wood-burning oven, and this on the occasion of some eighteen
years of ownership. (The taxi driver told me that Ruth Rogers arrived later that
afternoon.) The two of them gained their original inspiration from living and
cooking in Italy, and as such have mastered the art of sourcing ingredients.
‘The simplest things done well’ is the best recipe for any dining establishment,
says my friend Steve, who runs a restaurant himself. This is certainly the case
at the River Café, although their real glory, I think, is that they not only
prepare food with reverence, but they put interesting ingredients together.
Consider the poetry of ‘wood roasted turbot tranche with marjoram and lemon,
braised swiss chard and their stalks, salsa verde,’ or ‘seared scallops with
chilli, cannelloni beans, grilled fennel and winter leaves . . . .’
The menu changes daily, to reflect what is best and
freshest in the market. On the memorable occasion of my first meal at the River
Café, I splurged on a plate of homemade pasta prepared with only butter and
shavings of fresh white truffles, tout simple. Dining there another time with my
mother, we shared a plate of grilled artichokes, and, later, a sensational
dessert called ‘Chocolate Nemesis,’ which sent us flying to the first of the
chefs’ many cookbooks. (Again, a few choice ingredients prepared with utmost
skill).
I am also a huge fan of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s
productions, and saw a recent As You Like It twice over. As for the best of the
best in a certain genre, Fortnum & Mason offers the most lavish selection of
food imaginable—you can find everything from tins of foie gras to delectable
Fortnum & Mason tea (the Royal Blend is particularly fine) to Aunt Jemima’s
pancake mix (for expatriate Americans?). If you want to send a thank-you present
to anyone, this is the place to go: after you wander among the offerings
downstairs, you take the basket up to the next floor, and it will be packaged
and sent for you with minimum of fuss. My other must-dine spot is Mon Plaisir,
an enchanting French bistro near Covent Garden, and someday I am actually going
to see ‘The Mousetrap,’ that London theatre museum piece that everyone I know
has seen except for me. I always walk right past it, on the way to Mon Plaisir,
but the Country Mouse grip gets hold of me, and leads me straight to fromage,
which this restaurant does better than anywhere in the metropolis.
The final antidote to London Frenzy is to get right away
from there and go to . . . the possibilities are endless, but my long-time
favorite is Oxford, which is only an hour’s train ride away. You can be a Day
Tripper and come back the same evening, or reverse this, by staying in Oxford
and dipping cautiously into London (although train fares are hideously expensive
at peak hours, so check in advance). Simply walking around and looking at the
colleges is magical—Somerville is pictured above, the more or less setting for
Dorothy L. Sayers’ novel Gaudy Night (for which, I have heard, the dons at this
college have still not forgiven her). In Oxford, you can visit the Ashmolean
Museum, which has the distinction of being the first and oldest museum in all of
England, and have a drink in the lobby of the Randolph Hotel, opposite to it.