TWO FAT GENTLEMEN

Plus one thin politician. Bruce Anderson and Alan Watkins on the food, and more especially

the drink, at a famous London restaurant

Bruce Anderson writes: MIDWINTER is the bleakest season for the political eater. It presages the fat point of the turning world; that dread moment, after the festivities are over, when the spread stomach repels while the weighing scales revolt. No further procrastination is possible; dieting must commence on the 13th day (or soon thereafter). To distract my attention from this unap- petising prospect, the editor of The Specta- tor proposed an amuse-gueule to precede the indulgences of December. Mr Watkins and I should dine with an interesting politician — we chose David Willetts — at a good restaurant where fine vintages were to be found.

That was an easier condition to meet than the editor may have realised. Most good restaurants have good wine, general- ly at a goodly price. The question is whether the price could be justified, in relation to wine merchants' lists, or indeed auctioneers'. In a fallen world, the answer tends to vary according to who is paying. There are always bargains on any list, to those on expenses.

One of the hazards of contemporary journalistic life is the number of girls who are entering the trade. None of them knows anything about wine. They often work for television companies and wish to consult The Spectator's political columnist. They have developed the idea — goodness knows why — that one will be more amenable over lunch. Frequent- ly, they start by complaining that they are never allowed to see wine lists — the age of chivalry is not dead — then, their igno- rance excused, proffer the list and invite one to choose.

At which point, vulgarity becomes inevitable. I am always happy to choose, I announce, as long as I am given a budget. The face opposite then falls. Evidently, I was expected to conjure Montrachet and Latour for the price of the house carafe. Half flattered, half exasperated, I then explain the facts of oenophile life; it post- pones the moment when I will have to explain the difference between the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary. The first such fact is that you get what you pay for.

Fortunately, for our dinner, money was not much of an object. I therefore chose the Connaught. In a discreet, understated way, the Connaught is one of the most opulent of London restaurants: the wood panelling, the well-spaced tables, the silver domes flitting across the room under the guidance of expert waiters. Some monasteries and churches have a numinous quality, as if the architecture had been infused by centuries of prayer. The Connaught dining-room has a similar atmosphere; one can sense the con- tented spirits of long-departed gourmets.

We started with some champagne. It was perfectly pleasant — as it ought to be, at £7.75 a glass. I then ordered a '94 Montag- ny from Louis Latour, a useful wine with no pretensions to greatness. At lesser establishments, however, the £34.50 it cost would have bought a good Chablis or even a Meursault. The main wine, we decided, should be claret. An '88 Calon Segur sug- gested itself: a serious wine from a reason- able vintage. It also caught one's eye because by Connaught standards it was competitively priced: a mere £55 a bottle. We drank two, but David had only half a glass. Alan and I saluted his abstemious- ness and made up for it.

Then food. I started with a salade caprice: langoustine and crab on some interesting leaves with truffles and a good vinaigrette. It was no more than adequate, lacking the panache of a salade gour- mande at a great French restaurant: 6/10.

The set menu then included a consom- mé Prince de Galles: a hot chicken con- sommé with more truffles, topped with a pastry crust. The pastry was admirably suc- culent, but the soup was disappointing. Despite the truffles, it was bland. Edward Prince of Wales might have eaten it, but only if his tummy was playing up.

For the main course, I departed from the set menu in favour of a woodcock. I 71/ asked for my woodcock to be rare and well-hung, with the guts on crunchy toast. The guts were there and the bird was bloody, but it tasted as if it had been shot earlier that day. I would have thought that the Connaught's kitchens should have had a range of woodcock hung to suit all palates. Equally, I think I should have been informed that there was no long- hung bird available. Still, it was my first woodcock of the season, and it was good — though not as good as it would have been a week later.

With it, I ordered green cabbage, which the Connaught does magnificently. Their Savoy cabbage comes in an al dente wedge with melted butter. That is as fine a veg- etable as any London restaurant can offer: 10/10, easily.

I was tempted to depart still further from the set menu and have some Stilton to help finish up the claret. But I was also drawn by the Connaught trifle: I had not had trifle for ages. Cheese and pudding would have been excessively gluttonous, so I made do with the trifle.

I suspect the Connaught trifle is about as good as the dish can be; not as good as a proper tiramisu. With it, Alan and I had some pudding wine: a glass each of Château de Cerons, which I had never heard of --. pleasant, honeyed, but unsubtle. We also had a drop of Rieussec '86. It came at £10.20 a shot to the Cerons' £6: the gap in class was greater.

With coffee, a little armagnac. The Con- naught has a chariot of armagnacs, some of considerable antiquity at an even more considerable price. We made do with a Gelas VSOP, which I thought was about as good as a VSOP could be. So it should be, at £12.90 a nip.

By this stage, one felt mellowed in bon- homie. The meal had not been a great one: no memorable dishes or bottles. But the Connaught dining experience was more than the sum of its parts, as it ought to be, when the bill came to a shade over £500; unjustifiable, but most enjoyable.

It is possible to dine at the Connaught for less, but there would be little point in doing so. No one ever eats at the Con- naught in search of value for money. It is a restaurant designed for plutocrats, or for special occasions. As they ought to at these prices, the staff also ensure that every meal taken there becomes a special occasion.

Alan Watkins writes: THERE ARE only a few restaurants in London that I will go to if I am spending my own money: Sweetings in the City, Au Bon Accueil in Chelsea, the Gay Hussar in Soho, one or two others. The Connaught is not among them not because it is no good but because it is ruinously expensive. If I want to eat at that level, as I do about twice a year, I find it cheaper to go to France and have several meals at, say, Greuze in Tournus or the Metropole in Beaulieu. These restaurants are not only less costly than the Connaught, even allowing for the not-so-strong franc: they are better as well. This is, I realise, a deeply unfashionable point of view at the moment, when we are told virtually daily that London is the first city of the universe and that you can eat better there than anywhere else. It is sheer propaganda put out by the restaurant trade and their lackeys in the capitalist press, of whom only three — one of whom writes for The Spectator — know the first thing about food. Nevertheless I would not wish to appear churlish. I am grateful to the editor for giv- ing me the opportunity to have dinner at the Connaught with Bruce Anderson and David Willetts. I was first taken there, for lunch, by the late Sir Edward Boyle. I was due to meet his latter-day equivalent, in a manner of speaking, at eight. I was ten minutes late. The dining-room of the Con- naught has heavy, dark-brown panelling which reminds me of the council chamber of a Victorian town hail. Willetts, whom I like, was already hard at it, having some engagement or other which made it neces- sary for him to finish early. Politicians are often like this these days. He apologised several times. Bruce had waited for me.

I started with a glass of champagne and then went on to a cold terrine of turbot and lobster with black truffles. This was an expensive fishy version of the vegetable terrine which the Troisgros brothers invented at their restaurant in Roanne 20 years ago. The whole performance depends on arranging already cooked foods in layers (which produce a pretty effect when the terrine is sliced vertically) and on a binding agent, usually gelatine combined with some of the ingredients that have been milled in a Magimix. The invention of the Magimix has been a cru- cial element in the — at any rate, domestic — popularity of this kind of dish. On this occasion the effect, though pleasant enough, was curiously bland, as if too much bread, flour, cornflour or some- thing of that nature had been used in putting the dish together. There was also a certain staleness about it, as if it had been taken in and out of the fridge too often. If this was so I do not blame the restaurant but our crazed environmental health offi- cers (formerly called public health inspec- tors), who insist on the refrigeration of foods, notably cheese, when the process does positive harm rather than any good. We had a Montagny 1994 from the reliable Burgundian concern Louis Latour: nice but unremarkable.

I should explain that Bruce and I were on the set menu, though at £55 it was a pretty costly one. The second course, where no choice was offered, was a hot chicken consomme. I did not think I could manage that too. When I saw Bruce's arrive, with the pastry hat popularised by Paul Bocuse, I changed my mind. One of the waiters — the Connaught has so many about the place that you do not know which is yours — said it would take time. I told him in that case not to bother. He nonetheless turned up with it, and very good it was, particularly the pastry top.

For my main course I had pheasant. Bruce deserted his principles and asked for the woodcock from the a la carte menu. He also asked for it to be 'well hung and bloody'. I could see that the kitchen could control the bloodiness but not how, at that stage of the proceedings, it could ensure that the bird had been well hung. My tastes are the opposite. I asked for my pheasant to be well cooked. The waiter, yet another one (they came and went with the confusing rapidity of nation- al editors), assured me it would be. So it was: a whole one, a hen, too much really for one, though there appeared to be less of it once it had been carved.

The watercress was good and seemed to have been washed. It is surprising how many expensive restaurants leave bits of grit in raspberries, strawberries, mesclun, rocket, watercress or what have you. There was a small sweetcorn galette which I had not asked for and which was not very nice. The clear gravy, I guessed — I may have been wrong — bore little relationship to the pheasant, which was excellent. The breadcrumbs and the streaky bacon were all right. Not so the bread sauce, from which the texture and the taste of bread had been ingeniously removed, Heaven forbid: I am not accusing the Con- naught of using a packet mixture — though it tasted as if they had — but of being over- enthusiastic with the Magimix or whatever form of grater the kitchen employs. The best bread sauce is made by decrusting and cub- ing some slices of stalish bread and allowing the milk and butter to do the rest. I think, so anyway. The sprouts were of high quality but a little too al dente for my taste. The roast potatoes, always tricky in restaurants, were on the soggy side and, I suspect, of the dreaded Mans Piper variety. They were cer- tainly not Kerr's Pink, which produces the best roast potatoes.

Everything could be forgiven for the bottle of CaIon Segur (St Estephe) 1988, a superb claret from an underestimated year and bet- ter than anything I have at home. At £55 a bottle, it ought to be. We had some sauternes with our trifle and two cups each of excellent espresso. Bruce proposed some armagnac.. It is my favourite strong spirit but on this occasion I hesitated, both because I thought I had drunk quite enough already and because glasses from the liqueur trolley are always ridiculously expensive. Bruce managed to persuade me. I slept well that night but awoke feeling the worse for wear, which was not surprising really.