I spent most of today being a lady who lunches, at the Connaught for a wonderful - and reasonable - lunch. A friend of mine is expecting her second baby, and has just gone on maternity leave but she has a few weeks to go and her son is in nursery a couple of days a week. She wanted us to go somewhere nice: "the kind of place that won't let me in when I have two children'. I presume she meant 'with her'.
The food, the service, it was all just sublime. I have to confess, the atmosphere felt a little too buttoned-down when I was waiting for my lunch date, but I happily gazed at the intricacies of the cornicing and the ceiling, and let the waiting staff flutter by me. When my friend arrived and we got talking, the sommelier could have caught fire and we wouldn't have noticed, so engrossed were we. Also the dining room filled considerably and it was as if the party was given leave to begin.
The menu consisted of:
* Atkins-antithesis breads - grissini, focaccia, carta musica, sourdough with xv olive oil and tapenade.
* Amuse-bouche of melon and parma (I polished all of this off while I was waiting - but if it was for two of us, why was there only one fork?)
* with the compliments of the chef, a teensy-weensy bowl of langoustine jelly (the only slightly off-key note in the entire meal, for me. Fishy jelly. Just say no, kids.)
*Spaghetti with broadbeans, pancetta and courgettes [her]; tuna nicoise - delicate slivers of melt in the mouth sush-quality tuna, on a parmesan crisp with a jewel like poached quail's egg on top, accompanied by fine beans and olives, decorated with courgette flowers [me]
*lamb with aubergine, red wine jus [her]; risotto with asparagus, courgette and garden peas [me]
*chocolate sabayon on a white chocolate disc, berry sorbet [her, me and most of the rest of the restaurant, from what we could see]
* Coffee came with five divinely perfect miniature macaroons, like the ones that Paul make, but roughly the diameter of a pound coin - in vanilla, pistachio, strawberry, orange and chocolate. There was also a complimentary basket of cherries. I started to wonder if in fact a member of my family was in the kitchen saying 'Go on, give them some of this stuff too! Feed them up a little' - despite the fact that an outsider would be hard pressed to decide from a distance which one of us was the pregnant one.
All in all, very elegant, very luxurious, almost a little decadent. Sometimes it's really nice to play at being a grown-up.
I've decided to listen to my husband (he should take note, it's not that frequent an occurence...) and I'm now offering my iPod covers as the first item in my little blog shop. This is the precursor to doing some of the London markets, the next big step!
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