A theme of the Lyttelton/Hart-Davis letters is R H-D’s prodigious appetite for reading and eating. Not surprisingly, he is writing around 1960, the best meals are abroad.
I often ask for a Pink Gin in other people’s houses. Recently my host instantly flourished a new bottle of Angostura bitters but more often there is faffing around.
At lunch on Sunday my host made a rather unusual starter. I am sorry that I didn’t think to take a picture as he served it in a big sapphire blue glass bowl and it looked spectacular.
Malta has two main indigenous grape varieties: Gellewza (red) and Ghirgentina (white). Not as catchy or easy to pronounce as chardonnay – remember that Oz ad campaign, “say g’day to a chardonnay” that implied Australians at the very least cleaned their teeth in the morning with the stuff.
The St Pancras Renaissance Hotel was originally the Midland Grand Hotel designed by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1865. Did Sir Gilbert think he’d done enough that year?
You cannot buy a MacDonald’s all-day breakfast in the UK – not yet. There are lots of London cafes that will oblige but let me point you in the direction of the best all-day brekker in the solar system, probably.
I went to lunch and ordered a Panang (sic) Curry. It was, no doubt about it, road-kill. I didn’t need to be a mortician to recognise those little squirrel bones – well maybe it was something else …