[title type="h5"]
Day 3. Tuesday, May 26, 2015.
Shopping For Two Bags Of Cookies. Indian Dinner @ Gaylord's.[/title]
I get nine and a half hours of lovely sleep, despite Mary Ann's knocking around the room. She is eager to get out into London and start shopping, and doesn't bother waiting for the rest of us.
Our daughter--still not feeling well--is still abed when I get back from breakfast in the Palm Court, the all-day restaurant of the Langham Hotel. (Strange coincidence: the Hassler Hotel in Rome, which will be the final hotel on this trip, also calls its restaurant the Palm Court.) The restaurant is busy all the time. Even the break between lunch and dinner is a long afternoon tea, accompanied by a good pianist. I considered having dinner there last night, but MA talked me out of it. She says that it would be a disservice to you, dear subscriber, for me to waste a dinner opportunity on a hotel restaurant.
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BBC headquarters.[/caption]
We finally begin our walkabout. First we pass in front of the world headquarters of the BBC. I wish I had known. I would have asked whether they'd be interested in interviewing a guy who was on the radio during the approach of hurricane Katrina ten years ago, and who can talk cogently about the food of the affected area. We almost go in there to offer this opportunity in person, before it hits me how many kooks wander in with what they consider a good story.
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Carnaby Street, a blast from the past. [/caption]
Our wanderings take us into a very touristy part of town, centered on Carnaby Street--the center of style during the hegemony of the Beatles. Mary Ann tells me to take note of the many hamburger specialists we come across, each of which claims to make the best hamburgers in the world.
We slowly make our way to Piccadilly Avenue, where a great deal of really serious shopping is found. The Marys enter just about all of them, inspecting everything from fabrics to dresses to shoes. The latter market seems to be dominated by rubber boots. Do they go crawfishing around here?
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Kobe beef sirloins at Fortnum & Mason. Check out the marbling. [/caption]
The girls buy nothing even as they proclaim London to be the most interesting city in the world. But they are saving their main effort for a store called Fortnum and Mason. F&M, as their bags call the place, occupies some seven stories with more or less traditional department store merchandise. But my antennae tuned the way they are, I find myself spending most of my time on the three floors where fine foods are found.
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Very fresh fish and octopus at Fortnum & Mason.[/caption]
We are talking here about a serious emporium for gourmets. It starts with a full-fledged butcher shop, a charcuterie, a fish monger, and a cheese shop. All of these are as comprehensive as can be imagined. Not beef wrapped in vacuum packs, but actually cut to order from primal roasts. Whole fish and shellfish on ice.
Lots of rare goods, too. Beluga caviar comes from Iran, where roe from this nearly-extinct sturgeon is continually taken despite the effort to close that market. (It's illegal to sell it in the United States). Real Kobe beef sirloins, so heavily marbled that there is more fat than steak visible. This is something else that the governments involved keep out of the U.S. Here is goose foie gras in a can at £75. (I am tempted.) There's a big wine and liquor section, in which the F&M house brand of wines like Margaux are found. Lots of Bordeaux, enough to demonstrate that the Brits still have a preference for claret.
I discover a menu's room on the fifth floor, where also are men's furnishings. I consider buying a tie, but I am deterred by the £130 price. I find something more amenable to my budget: a straw hat that comes close to matching the one MA is wearing. This hat--amazingly, it fits me perfectly, although it's the last one they have--is £70. Okay. That's it for my shopping on this trip.
When I rejoin the Marys, they tell me that my hat makes me look like a rube. Which should make it perfect for me.
They are each carrying a basket of F&M goods. They will soon find a small grocery cart, whose capacity will be strained by the volume of their selections. These are mostly cookies, with a good bit of chocolate. When they check out, the clerk says that they may want to have all this stuff shipped back home. But when they go to the shipping window, they are told that the many items in glass jars can't be shipped. We will be lugging this hoard around not only London but the ship, the hotel in Rome, and the airplanes bringing us home. It's $131 worth of cookies and chocolate. How can these women not love me?
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The Marys find a chocolate store. [/caption]
We head back for the hotel. I am pleased that I have done more than my quota of walking for the day, with one of the bags of cookies and chocolate serving as my weight-lifting exercise. It's so much that it requires being packed in double bags. However, the Marys were not done yet. They find a shop full of nuts and chocolates. I am happy to find espresso in this same shop. It's the only thing I have ingested since breakfast. My hunger starts straining in the direction of the likely suspects for dinner tonight. One of the restaurants we pass is Veeraswamy, a famous old Indian place. I remember a 1970s French Quarter restaurant whose manager--a Brit--added shimp curry to the menu and the surname "Veeraswamy." Maybe we should return here for dinner tonight. Eating Indian food in London is a popular habit. I remember that on the back of the Beatles' second album in 1963, in a Q&A the Fab Four said that they liked to eat curry.
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Gaylord's, a long-running Indian restaurant in London.[/caption]
When we get back to the hotel, I stop at the concierge's desk and ask what he might recommend for Indian dining nearby. He is enthusiastic about Gaylord's, a name I have heard in connection with Indian food for a long time. (It has nothing in common with the long-extinct discount store on the corner of Airline Highway and Labarre Road in Metairie, but that's the first thing I think of.) The concierge says that the food is spicy (no problem there), and that it is very popular among the locals.
I interpret that last comment as meaning that the food is great but the premises are less than glitzy. And I make the mistake of passing along that idea to Mary Ann, who cares more about what a restaurant looks like than she does about the excellence of the cooking. She tells me that she wants to take a look inside before committing her supper to Gaylord's. Mary Leigh, who is shy about trying any new cuisine, adds to the dubiousness.
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An assortment of tandoori meats at Gaylord's. [/caption]
But when we approach Gaylord's door four blocks from the hotel, we find a handsome restaurant and a wide-ranging menu. Indeed, they sell me right off the bat with a three-course table d'hote menu that starts with three kinds of tandoori-roasted meats, followed by lamb rogan josh (a spicy stew) with lentils, then Indian rice pudding. The girls take a bit longer and require more explanation of the menu. (I try to explain it all, but they don't believe a word I say.)
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Two very different curries.[/caption]
A stack of light, very thin poppadums comes out with some chopped onions and peppers and three chutneys. Mary Ann surprises me by finding the chutneys--particularly some very hot pickles--delicious. And they are indeed.
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Biryani, the Indian equivalent of jambalaya. [/caption]
We get some garlic naan from the sides of the tandoor, and some vegetables with an extremely hot red sauce. The girls have butter chicken, with its different tomato-based sauce, and lamb korma--yet another variation on curry sauce with a large tomato component). Until they are quite full, the Marys dine enjoyably. So do I, with the added pleasures of a Bombay martini and a pint of Kingfisher beer from India. A copious cold beverage is essential with these pepper levels.
I will have to cross the concierge's palm with silver for this fine recommendation.
Back at the hotel, the girls take themselves to bed at around ten. I want to slide my sleep period a bit later, and I stay awake watching the BBC on the telly. One show is a game whose rules I can't quite figure. The feature is a competition called "Pointless," but the contestants indeed get 1250 points by figuring out something that makes no sense to me. (It has to do with soccer somehow.)
Then a news program with a feature on Bulgaria's new iron curtain. The Brits take more interest in world affairs than we do. A talking-head interview show has a member of the House of Lords engaging a member of the House of Commons, both egged on by the moderator. None of these people have television good looks. Their teeth, for example, are gappy and dull, instead of the perfect white choppers comparable Americans would have. It is refreshing for me to see this, given my own looks, which are made for radio.
Written by Tom Fitzmorris June 10, 2015 12:01 in
