TOM JACKSON, STEVEN JOYCE66 The Times Magazine
they started being openly dismissive of their
club’s food and saying, “It’s all about the wine,
really,” and getting their revenge, when invited
to restaurants, by howling about the price
of the wine list and telling you how much
cheaper it was at their club.
But then what happened is that people
began to tire of new restaurants, with their
remorseless neophilia, egregious matiness
and ridiculous prices, and to hanker after
plain food, modest service and a glass of
claret for a price their father wouldn’t have
laughed at. And so suddenly the calf’s liver,
bendy carrots and savouries seemed to club
members “actually rather good now”. And to
guests, like me, the requirement for a jacket
and tie and the oil paintings on the wall
created a marvellous sense of hipsterishness
by the back door.
I do not mind saying that I love the old
clubs and always have. And not just because
they are the only places I can eat without
being expected to pay. Because, you see, I am
not allowed to review them, so cannot put
them on expenses. “You must promise not
to write about this or I’ll be blackballed,” my
friends always say, and then spend the next
six weeks eagerly asking when it’s coming out.
I had lunch at the Garrick again just
yesterday and it was positively historic:
potted shrimps with a 1er Cru Meursault Les
Charmes-Dessus 2015 from Vincent Girardin.
Then sautéed sweetbreads in the stickiest
of reduced stock sauces with a 2010 Nuits-
Saint-Georges Clos de la Maréchale byEating out Giles Coren
keep eating in gentlemen’s clubs at the
moment. I do not mean to, but I do.
The other week, for example, I ate at
the Garrick, the Reform and Boodle’s
in the space of three days. Like some
sort of turbocharged Bertie Wooster/
Morgan Spurlock mash-up. (Result
of extreme Super Posh Me exercise?
I didn’t noticeably put on weight or get ill,
but I became drunker and older and got a
terrible neck rash from all that tie wearing.)
The three aforementioned, like all London’s
old gentlemen’s clubs, have terrific wine lists
and unremarkable but by no means awful food
(which is the opposite of the situation in most
new London restaurants), and they always
have had. But for the past, ooh, 150 years or
so, their members have been going around
saying, “Actually, the food at my club has
rather improved recently,” which it hasn’t.
Because it was always fine. It was just
that restaurants got invented somewhere
around 1967 and club food began to look a bit
old-fashioned by comparison, and gradually
members grew embarrassed of the devilled
kidneys and beef pies and Welsh rarebits they
had formerly loved – which were coming in
for a hard time from the new-fangled, open-
to-the-public eateries with their fancy foreign
recipes, fresh vegetables, salads and ladies. SoI
‘Like a turbocharged Bertie
Wooster, I’ve eaten at three
gentlemen’s clubs in a week
and have a neck rash from
all that tie wearing’
Carmel