After ten years in Downing Street, our soon-to-be-ex PM will soon have the novel possibility of popping out to a local restaurant for dinner. If he puts his ear to the ground, he may well hear there’s a new Italian of some note, just round the corner from his new house.
The newcomer has just 15 seats. And especially if you know the site formerly housed Al San Vincenzo – once, arguably, the best Italian restaurant in London – it’s tempting to assume that it must offer something really special on the food front.
Perhaps our expectations were thus unduly raised, but we had a constant feeling that the place didn’t quite live up to them. As is so often the case, it was Mrs Harden who put her finger on it. “It’s all very nice”, she said, toying with her salad of asparagus, hard-boiled duck’s egg and parmesan, “but it just doesn’t come together”. This comment was intended literally – devoid of any apparent dressing, the salad was just an assemblage of ingredients – but it turned out to be more generally prophetic.
Almost everything we had was good, but nothing was ever more than the sum of its parts. Another starter, of Parma ham, salami and dough balls tasted like’ well, you can probably guess. A liver dish came in at precisely the mid-point on the Harden Scale of Excellence, and Mrs H ranked her scallops likewise. As it turned out, a fruit tart was the only thing approaching memorability.
So, perhaps – when the time of greater freedom comes – the dear (ex-)Leader should ignore the word on the street, and dare to form his own view. We know that – in his heart – he’ll come to the right decision.
