We were arranging to meet up with M&L in central London, but were met with a challenge - M wanted somewhere where they served draught lager. This turned out to be harder to find than I expected. Most places do bottled lager, but those that serve draught tend to call themselves "gastropubs" and have very limited and uninteresting menus. Something of a class thing going on here perhaps.
Eventually, I found Tutton's, the well-known brasserie in Covent Garden, who offer a Staropramen, Czech lager. It's a lovely sunny day, so there are many people sitting out on the terrace, but we have a table inside, in a corner near open windows, which was good. Less good was the time it took them to come across to take drinks orders. (Admittedly, after the first time, they got better). As well as M's lager, we ordered a Cape Heights SA Sauvignon Blanc at £33.
For starter's, both M and B had the crispy poached egg with mushrooms and peas. It's quite an impressive dish, runny inside but with a well-coloured batter outside. My beef carpaccio was OK, a little small, while L's warm beetroot salad was multi-coloured, but apparently not that special.
As we start the second course, we order another round of drinks. M's lager comes all fizzy and strange. It turns out it was the end of the barrel, so they do offer to change it, and it comes back later much better. The menu for mains was not extensive, but we each found something of interest. M had fish and chips (could have gone to a gastropub) and L had what she felt to be a disappointing pork belly, which had no crispy crackling. But B's seafood risotto was a full dish and my salmon trout nicely roasted.
Ordering more drinks, the draught lager is now "off", so M resorts to bottled lager after all. We had told them that it was M's birthday so he got a free dessert, choosing salted caramel and dark chocolate tart. I keep him company with a mango and vanilla creme brulee.
M generously offered to pay, so I don't know the exact bill, but I would imagine it would have been around £250. For really very central London, not bad really, if hardly ground-breaking. There were a lot of Americans in, with their cruise ships numbers on their chests, so it's obviously on the well-known beaten track. After the initial lapse, the waitress was very smiley and helpful, and the atmosphere welcoming. A good place to take undemanding out-of-towners.
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There are some places which are just "institutions", having been around for so long. The India Club in Aldwych is one such. But sadly it closed its doors for the final time today, with re-development of the block finally having been approved. Apparently, early versions of the place have been going for 70 years as an outpost of the Indian High Commission and - it is claimed - hosting important visitors such as Nehru. Our ex-Home Office group used to make it a regular venue for a meal after the Varsity Match and we calculated that we must first have visited some 46 years ago.
It's not what you would call salubrious or Michelin-quality. Its claim to fame was its authentic home-cooked Indian classics. The restaurant is up a winding old staircase on the second floor, and features formica tables. It must have had an update over the years, because these are no longer screwed to the floor. The bar is one floor down (it used to be that you had to go down to order all your drinks, but now they do have drinks service at the table too). This has some lovely old prints and photos, but little in the way of plush furnishings.
We visit in its final week, and the queue is amazing. You could only book for 6 or more, and sadly we are just 5, so we have to put our name on the list, notify them when we had all assembled, and just wait in the bar, drinking Cobra and Kingfisher.
After about an hour and a half, we are finally summoned upstairs, to quite a good table by the window. Understandably, they are only doing the set menus, though we do manage to order extra chilli bhajis, one of our traditional favourites that blow your head off. Otherwise it's standard fare of poppadums and pickles, onion bhaji, samosa, butter chicken, chana masala, dhal and mounds of rice. All for £22 including service - the beers were probably about the same. Pretty slick service meant that we were through our meal in an hour.
It is sad to see it go, though we were pleased to have stuck it out and managed to get in before the final close. You can't recreate history like this.
