NewsBiscuit

First impressions are everything in this business, so as I entered the Qumquat on Gresham Street, my senses were bristling. The decor is regency nouveau, the mood antediluvian checkmate, and the lighting almost parsifalian. My guest and I were whisked to our table by a gloved, almost unseen flunky. The menu – all 34 hand-embroidered pages – was a gastronographic Aeneid. I read the dedications while the in-house orchestra played a gaunt but strangely rousing “Deathmarch for Hunger”.

Wine? We were both steered by our consciences toward the Chateau Blaque ’92 with its Jack the Ripper nose and tainted harlequin notes. I chose the sword-parted lettuce bisque, while my partner had the deathwatch soup, a sumptuous melange of wartime forage. Both were excellent, and not at all demeaned by the waiter’s apparent rhinitis.

For mains, I went for the Gerund al Lethe, a minimalist side-swipe at excess: a single, small endive, swimming in an empty sea of pine-kernel quip. I was in heaven, but it was heaven with an edge: more Belsize than Hampstead. My friend had the Queen’s Trousers, (one boiled egg on a dried sheep’s caul) with four antique beans. Although risking an attack of Stendhal Syndrome (Jaded slum-dewellers pass-note: surfeit of cultural stimulus), I forced myself to finish with a fruity trompe-l’oeil de canard, a grande-guignol fruit salad, with squirty cream. I laughed at the reckless bravado! My friend refrained, just joining me for dried squares of coffee.

When the bill came, I mocked the chef for selling himself cheap: at GBP236 for the lot, I felt I had only snacked, but in the remaining emptiness of my stomach, there rumbled more than a few Beckettian hypotheticals, including “and now?…”.

ant (via submissions board)

Posted: Aug 1st, 2006 by NewsBiscuit