On Friday I had another taste of my old life, but from the other side of the table; one in which I was the companion to another person who was writing about the meal. We went to a small Chinese restaurant in Soho, one of those places that you pass without giving it a second look, dark and a little murky, tucked into a side street with nothing to distinguish it from all the others. And it was so delicious.
Soho is one of those things that long-term Londoners take for granted, or at least I do. Until I'm walking through it on my way to my agent's or going to the Cinema on Shaftesbury Avenue - especially at this time of year when it gets dark early. Suddenly there's a whisper of foreign otherness in the air as the night fills with the smell of food drifting out of open doors. Bright lights and lanterns and neon and billboards blinkfrom all directions infecting me with the country girl in the big city excitement, reminding me just how great it is to be living in London and I wonder why it is that I come to Soho so rarely when it's all just there waiting for me.
We had dim sum, glistening prawn dumplings, and noodles, and squid, and chilli prawns, and aubergines: dish after dish, steamed basket after steamed basket, plate after plate, all arriving in the quantities that only a restaurant critic with a healthy expense account can order. The sheer scale dismayed me as an unfortunate side-effect of a Scottish mother is the inability to leave anything uneaten.
'Oh dear, I'm going to have to eat everything,' I said, giving him due warning.
'Well we were all told to clean our plate,' says my host gallantly, a former colleague who remarks on meeting me that I look well and have lost weight. It's true. When I ate for a living, I did it well, and wore my success on my hips. Another unfortunate side effect of that internal mother who will not let you waste food is that this philosophy, combined with a job as a restaurant critic, means you quickly start to look like you should yourself be served on a plate with an apple stuck in your mouth. He seems to be able to buck the trend and still looks as slim and untouched by the years as he did when we graced the same FT masthead (he towering about me in the kind of headlines that are currently reserved for the economic headlines, with me in the News in Brief section in italics).
I don't know how he does it.
I know how I do it - I just don't go out to eat in restaurants anymore that don't have a BYO policy; and take-aways of the sort we used to enjoy on a Friday night where we competively overate as a family, are lost in the mist of my ex husband's disappearing credit card. I don't much want to give a dinner party on my own, but even if I did I'd have to be a lot more creative than I could when I could throw money at Lyndon's for meat, S.Peck for Sardinian flatbread, and cheese from Jeroboam's. I need the wartime cook book that will remind me how to feed 50 on a pig's trotter and an allotment full of parsnips. It's not stress that has caused me to lose weight as much as lack of access to funds. Left to my own devices as I was on Friday with a free fullsome lunch and then dinner in the evening from Ottolenghi at my friend's Sarah's house which I picked up on the way on the basis that I wouldn't be eating anything (and then matched her fork for fork) I'd be the size of a house - a large detatched mock Tudor instead of a modest semi detached (with attic extension in heels).
However the beauty of never eating out is that when you do, you enjoy it so much more. I can hardly restrain myself from running straight back to the restaurant and ordering exactly the same meal all over again. I just want dumplings, plain and simple, even if it means I end up being one.
I do love Ottolenghi but their prices are geared at the people who must be most frightened off by the apocalyptic economic headlines given that their trust funds are failing (if there is a god), or those with tiny appetites for whom £2.95 for 100 grams of beetroot, figs and feta cheese (roughly a large tablespoon) constitutes lunch. Walking into their shop in Westbourne Grove is like being mugged, first by the senses because you just want to scoop up armfuls of their mutlicoloured healthy salads and fall face first into the cakes and brownies displayed in the window, and then when you get the till and they start adding up the little boxes and you discover that without even trying you've ripped up a £50 note for something that you could easily do at home for a fraction of the price. I think they should have catchers ready to stand behind you when you faint. Or a sign on the door saying: For people with normal incomes, Sainsbury's is down the road. I mean - one cup cake £2.30 - what the * is in it? Gold dust? So, just because I don't have enough to do, I put the cup cakes back, bought six eggs from the local Asian store and a bag of sugar and made merangues instead - cost under £2 for 24 - time taken including sweeping up crumbs after dropping them on the floor, looking for the baloon whisk, shouting at people about misplacing the balloon whisk, washing up, shouting at peole not to touch them, sweeping up crumbs when they ignore you, etc - 1 1/2 hours.
And then we forgot to eat them.
Oh and the bag from Ottolenghi broke just as I was about to get into the car and everything fell out meaning that our salads did not look as though they had been airbrushed at food porn central casting.
Dogs and dinner come to mind.
