10

The Bit in Between

 

Dr. Johnson once said when a man is tired of London, he’s tired of life. Let me add a corollary: To appreciate London to the full, you have to over-indulge yourself. Which is why I call it the wicked city.

There’s much to recommend this most civilized of capitals and, odd though it may seem, food is one of them. I love eating out in London and last weekend, I did a lot of it.

Now as far as I’m concerned, there are two types of eating out that I enjoy. The first is junk food and London is the trash-meal capital of the world. My favourite is a place called Tootsies in Holland Park. Here the burgers come with thirty-two different toppings and the wine is so rough you could smoothen it with a carpenter’s plane.

I always have my burger well done with a double helping of blue cheese sauce. But the piece de resistance is the thick chocolate cake with hot fudge and shaving foam. Since it comes out of an aerosol and rises in concentric circles, a cow would have to contort its udders to produce the same effect.

It’s the sort of meal that produces ulcers and stomach-aches but that’s only afterwards. At the time, it sends pangs of envy through the diners on the next door table.

Odd isn’t it, but the sine qua non of progress is a fondness for fast food, served in noisy joints, by cheeky waitresses, amidst too many diners none of whom one would particularly care to meet again. Tootsies is just that but it’s also great fun. And if you think I’m spinning a fast one just listen to your young son. If he could find a Tootsies in Delhi, he’d never walk out of the place.

The other way of eating out is a proper dinner in a decent home. My friend the Countess of Keeling was kind enough to host one for me. Perhaps because her title is false, her hospitality is particularly lavish.

On the night in question I was fed and watered to distinction or do I mean extinction? Vichyssoise, roast lamb, cranberry jelly, duchesse potatoes, courgettes, broccolli and an old-fashioned creme brulee with a hard and difficult-to-crack top. Such cooking is the best foundation for post-prandial banter and this was no exception.

“What will you have next?” Gauri’s husband, David politely asked. “I can offer you a good cigar and an old brandy”.

“What more could I possibly want?”

It was meant to be a rhetorical question but it set us thinking. A man likes his food hot, his brandy old, his cigar moist, his wine dry and his women fresh. Going by that description, it’s heaven. But get the adjectives mixed-up and the result is disastrous.

“Ah.” said David, very much in the same mood as I was. “A drink before and a cigarette after are three of the best things in life. The question is what’s the bit in between?”