Hot dinners - various restaurants - How To Forget The Election - Cover Story

National Review, Nov 25, 1996 by John O'Sullivan

I began fleeing the election very early -- in the middle of the campaign, in fact. It was the vice-presidential debate on television that drove me out. I was listening to Jack Kemp explaining supply-side economics when I thought I remembered the point put better and, consulting the works of the Victorian poet A. H. Clough, came across:

So pray pass the bottle and damn the expense;

I've seen it observed by a writer of sense

That the laboring classes could live scarce a day

If people like us didn't eat, drink, and pay.

Thus inspired, I went out to dinner.

To be specific, I joined fellow refugees at Bobby Flay's restaurant, Bolo, in New York City. Mr. Flay is a Latin from Manhattan, a genius who took the spices and other ingredients of the Southwest and transformed them into a new American cuisine at the Mesa Grill. His second restaurant, Bolo, gives a similar inventive twist to the familiar dishes of Spain. I sat down, ordered a rabbit risotto and a Rioja, and let a sense of well-being flow over me.

It is customary for the bon vivant to deny that the food itself is the main point of dining out. No, no, we protest, it's the conversation, friendship, intellectual exchange, even dating. And this is true to the extent that these aspects of dining out have the potential to ruin a good dinner. How often has one seen a neighboring table, serene after the chef's finest tarte Tatin, suddenly thrown into chaos by a question like, "What do you mean you only went to the opera with him?" Is there an experience more disappointing than watching someone dig into a wonderful cassoulet (to which you have been looking forward for days), remain silent, and when invited to comment, say, "Oh, it's fine," immediately going on to pronounce on entitlement reform?

The plain truth is that we go to good restaurants for what is on the plate. If I had the skills of Jean-Michel Diot of New York's superb Provencal colony, the Park Bistro, I would never leave home. But my two culinary accomplishments -- scrambled eggs and oxtail jardinicre (it's simpler than it sounds) -- are not various enough to please the crowd, or indeed myself. So out I go in search of grilled pompano, Chinese tea-smoked duck, venison stew with polenta, etc.

And when the final bonbon has been popped into the mouth, I feel the better for it. No longer hasty, irritable, or rash in my judgments, I can take the long view, weigh all the relevant considerations, balance the various factors, see the forest and the trees. Elections? Congresses? Parliaments? The fate of nations? The crash of empires? In the immortal words of Scarlett O'Hara: Fiddle-de-dee.

It is probably a good thing, therefore, that I live where I do. It would be possible to make a gastronomic world tour without leaving the island of Manhattan. It has, for instance, at least two Tibetan restaurants, which travelers confirm is two more than exist in Tibet. Paris may retain its lead in French cuisine, but no other city can match New York in the range and variety of cooking, both established national and regional styles (Provencal, Basque, Northern Italian, Szechuan) and innovative cuisines like that of chef Douglas Martinez of the eclectic Nuevo Latino restaurant Patria, brilliant blends and variations on the traditional.

But let us not shortchange the rest of the world -- even the most primitive places, Britain for instance. It used to be said that the only way to ensure getting a decent meal in Britain was to eat breakfast three times a day. And when during the Falklands War a captured Argentinian naval officer was treated to dinner on a British ship, the editor of the London Spectator, Frank Johnson, saw the apparent chivalry as black propaganda: "He'll think twice about taking us on when he's had six inches of cold British food inside him." But that kind of slur has not really been true for twenty years. London can now offer superb eating in almost every style from modern French (Bibendum) to sophisticated-peasant Italian (L'Altro) and even "modern British" (Clarke's). Chefs like Marco Pierre-White of The Criterion are well-known public figures who appear on television with rock stars. But what of England's traditional cuisines, namely Indian food, fish and chips, and -- okay --breakfast?

If you want a decent breakfast while escaping, Britain's Intercity trains can meet both needs at once -- bacon, eggs, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, fried bread, orange juice, toast, and coffee, in ample portions and well cooked, if somewhat expensive. Take the second sitting, since that can mean a second helping too.

London's many excellent, reasonably priced Indian restaurants, a heritage of empire, are a blind spot with me. But knowledgeable friends recommend either "anywhere in Southall," where there is a large Indian population, or the Great Nepalese near Euston Station (you can go there directly after breakfast).

That leaves fish and chips. For those who want the genuine article, flavored with salt and vinegar and wrapped in newspaper, the place to go is the Sea Shell, Lisson Grove, NW1, modestly priced and, if you have children in tow, conveniently near Madame Tussaud's and the Chamber of Horrors. Going upscale, at Sweetings in the financial district, white-aproned cockney waiters serve delicious fish of all kinds, including the underrated mackerel, in a Dickensian atmosphere of early capitalist bustle. And when the children are asleep, Downstairs at 190 offers fried fish and chips against a background of cocktail piano and a decor of British country-house untidiness. (Oysters, lobster, moules, fish pie, and steamed, grilled, and raw fish are also on the menu.)