20th September 2008
Easy-going or elegant - something for everyone
The Salt House is easy to find, just beyond the corner. Two areas outside, the busy benches where young people are having drinks, even on a cool september evening. My fellow diner pointed out that customers brave the winter chill because you can smoke outdoors - but I was not disturbed by any smoke as I passed. Hidden behind a hedge or similar is an outdoor area of tables with white tablecloths, as if this is a secret exotic hideaway.
The old red phone box outside suggests that this place has some unique character. Step inside and on your left is a steep staircase and a sign to an upstairs room. Downstairs at the front is a jolly gastropub, the usual central London pub with dark wood. But at the back, down a few steps, surprise, surprise, is a really elegant upmarket dining room with white walls and paintings.
Best of all, for a special date, is a teeny alcove with a round table for two. You are within sight of everybody else so it's not claustrophobic. Yet it feels totally private for conversation with nobody overhearing you. Nothing distracts you from your tete a tete with your partner in cream. (In case anybody has missed this, it's a joke punning on the popular phrase, 'partner in crime'.)
Drinks
No problem ordering a kir or kir royale.
Lovely house wine, a rose, not too sweet, not too dry.
Starters
Sounded good. Humous was one of my possible choices. Or duck in pancakes with sauce.
We went without starters, and the main courses were filling enough. We were not hungry.
Main courses
I was torn between the duck and the lamb. I opted for the duck. Very good duck texture, crispy outside. Spinach was not quite warm enough. The potatoes were rosti. Can't remember them. Must have been okay.
I also liked the sound of rack of lamb with sweet potatoes.
My host, my date, was a 'fishetarian'. He eats fish and vegetables. I said, 'There's no word for that - there ought to be!' So he made up the word. I claim half or co-ownership of the word since I inspired it.
He ordered the ratatouille. I tasted it. It was good. The yellow bell pepper was a pleasing contrasting colour.
Oddly, the coffee and tea came up before my dessert. I imagine the server wrote down the coffee and the dessert orders and the person or people doing the drinks finished first. My friend had ordered mint tea. It came in a glass with visible mint at the top. Visually very attractive. I took a sip. It didn't taste much of mint.
My coffee was double espresso, Italian, with hot milk and brown sugar crystals wrapped in paper. Elegantly served. Went down okay.
The server was from Hungary, chatty and happy. I asked where she was from. Szeged. I asked what were the major landmarks. She told me Szeged has a synagogue. Although she had never visited it, I thought that was very interesting and useful information.
I forgave her for putting down the coffee cup with the handle in the wrong direction, not right, not left (my date was left-handed) but backwards so you had to stop talking and look for the handle and reach behind the cup for it.
I also forgave her for giving me a soup spoon for dessert. I recently learned Now that people in other parts of Europe don't know about soup spoons. They must assume that a soup spoon is just a funny shaped dessert spoon. I must say we were most taken aback at being given soup spoons for dessert.
I had ordered creme brulee. I might have expected a large teaspoon. Or a small dessert spoon. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined eating creme brulee from a small ramekin with a soupspoon. There is a first time for everything. And this was it.
The creme brulee was good. Crisp and thin brittle sugar topping which you could bash up. Perfect texture of creme brulee. Just vanished into my mouth leaving the grin which had been there since the kir.
A perfect evening.
Multi-cultural - nowadays in London we have restaurants serving one style of cuisine but multi-cultural service. Yes, I am being ironic.
Loading...
Add your comment
Post to facebook
Share with friends
(0 found this review helpful)
