Words by Peter James
Lunch. It’s an emotive word. Lunch with relatives. Lunch with friends. Business lunch. Sandwich lunch. Skipping lunch. Leaf through the pages of that venerable tome Who’s Who, and you’ll encounter quite a few times, under the listings of various eminent people’s hobbies, the word lunch. There can’t be many words in the English language with more meanings. Out to lunch. Eating someone else’s lunch. Liquid lunch. Sunday lunch. Literary lunch. Picnic lunch. And in motor racing parlance, lunching a gearbox or a clutch.
In today’s time-poor business world, long, boozy lunches are rare, although fortunately not totally extinct – the publishing world still flies their flag, but only on occasions. Back in the 1980s, as a young author trying to get known, my publicists would set me up with endless lunches with Fleet Street journalists. And never was a truer depiction of that mythical character in Private Eye, Lunchtime O’Booze on one particular occasion. Lunch with a journalist back in the 1980s meant that you could forget the rest of the day – and sometimes the following day too. I remember one such, with the then literary editor of one daily tabloid, in the legendary Fleet Street hostellery, El Vino. We met there for our supposed interview at midday, and consumed three gin and tonics in the following hour whilst talking about everything but literature and my book, in particular. The rotund editor then proposed lunch. It began with one bottle of claret and was followed by five more during the course of the afternoon. Around 6pm we moved onto Kümmel, a sickly sweet Dutch digestif, much favoured by elderly men in golf clubs, that is flavoured with caraway and kumin. I don’t remember how many we drank of these. I don’t remember what we ate. All I can really remember is that we got on famously, but that by 8pm he had still not yet pulled out his shorthand pad to begin the interview. ‘Sorry, old boy,’ he slurred. ‘We seem to have run out of time. I’ll bell you, fix up another time soon for the interview, eh?’ But he never did bell me, to my liver’s eternal relief.
I can also remember the last time I was offered alcohol at lunch in Los Angeles. It was 1991 and my host was, unsurprisingly, an English writer! We were in Musso and Frank, an old Hollywood establishment, where the average age of waiters, back then, was about 80. We had martinis served in a glass pitcher, which means about three full glasses. We fell out of the place at dusk. These days if you get taken to lunch in LA the first and only question regarding drink you will be asked is, Still or sparkling?
The one lunch tradition that has survived and is really prospering today is the Sunday lunch. There are few greater pleasures, especially on a wintry Sunday, than to sit around a table with family or good friends, a nice glass of something and the prospect of a scrummy meal. I’ve had a particularly fine one just recently. We went to celebrity chef Tony Tobin’s modestly titled Dining Room, a pleasant Sunday whizz up the M23 to Reigate. The former star of Ready Steady Cook, trained by Nico Ladenis, Tobin began here as the head chef, before eventually buying the place.
It is a wonderful space, on the first floor of a busy high street, a total oasis of calm, and understated sumptuous elegance. Six of us ordering enabled me to sample a great variety of the menu. I started with a sensational Smoked Salmon and Quail “Scotch Egg” and then had roasted filet of pork with black pudding, and the most perfectly judged crackling I’ve eaten in a long while. Other starters that were equally brilliant were a crispy fried courgette flower, and seared sea scallops (for which he is rightly famous). One main that was particularly inventive was Parma Ham Roasted Tuna, and the filet of beef was, according to one companion, superb. Dangerously good puddings included an Apple and Frangipan tart, and an iced chocolate soufflé.
Vegetarians are supremely well catered for here, with a separate £28.50 two-course menu. As you’d expect from Tobin’s television provenance, presentation of all dishes is food artistry at its very best – sheer elegance with no fussiness. Mondays to Fridays there is a set two-course lunch for a really bargain price of £16.95 or three for £24.95, and three-course dinner for £24.95.
The wine list is very, very good and astonishingly reasonably priced, with a fine range of Champagnes at very fair mark-ups, and a lot to choose from a wonderful range of quality whites, including a stunning Italian Gavi, at £23.00 and a gloriously rich Premier Cru Rully at £49. As with the whites, there is a quality entry level red at £17.50 – a Chilean Merlot, rising to a relatively bargain-priced Gevrey Chambertin, one of my favourite wines, at £63.00 (I’ve seen this same wine on some London restaurant lists at over double this) and if you are in a really expansive mood, there are some very high end reds, including a 96 Latour and a 2001 Chateau Talbot.
The service was a delight. Attentive, friendly and utterly professional. Tobin knows how to deliver at all levels. I was very impressed.