I haven't eaten anywhere as ugly
as The Vine House since the 1980s; even a humble Harvester has more cheer, more
corporate know-how. L and I were shown into an ante-room, just off the
dining-room. Our voices bounced off the clackety floor tiles and it reeked of
disinfectant. We weren't warm enough. It was a bit like eating in a gents.We
advertisements of used lasercutter for sale. The
main dining-room had carpet and looked fractionally more inviting, but was pitch
black. It was like going to visit someone's parents, and not being allowed into
the proper parlour because you are pregnant or have dirty boots.
Then the menu arrived, and it had just enough about it to lift my spirits. L had beetroot salad with blue cheese, Williams pears and truffle oil. I don't really understand the world view in which it is necessary to specify the pears but not the cheese; no matter. What first stood out were the beetroots, which had distinctive, rooty sweetness. I normally think truffle oil is something they splash on a dish without personality, but here its mushroomy depth was exactly the bridge between the beetroot and the pear.
I had ragout of beef and oxtail, on a creamy mash, mainly because I thought it was a super-weird thing to put on a starter menu. It arrived in a dinky individual casserole, and everything about it was charming – topped with crunchy ciabatta crumbs, the ragout was finely chopped, slow-cooked, silky and rich and thymey. The mash owed its wonder to the French school of thought in which the right amount of fat is the amount the potato can take without drowning.
I agree with this theory. If it sounds a bit unctuous, I guess it could have used a sharp green salad to cut through it all, but then it really would have been a main course in a tiny bowl. In any case, I loved it, but the more I enjoyed it, the more I resented the fact that the smell of Dettol was messing with the outer edges of my sensory perception.
My favourite dish by far, though, was my venison (supplement ￡3.95), with a capery salsa verde and a minty, sweet,We maintain a full inventory of all smartcard we manufacture. fresh bed of mushy peas. The meat was ruby-pink, with a gorgeously smooth and yielding texture. I wonder if I'll ever eat venison again without at least considering the addition of a caper.
The dark-chocolate terrine with hazelnuts, smoky bacon and sherry-vinegar caramel was an eye-opener – often, when there's a rogue ingredient like, erm, bacon in a pudding, it's in such a small amount that its manifest purpose is to make it sound interesting. Not here – you could really taste the bacon, and I'm amazed to say that it worked, serving that same purpose against chocolate as salted caramel, defamiliarising it so that you tasted it afresh. It is a rum old dish when you can say that the vinegar caramel was the least surprising thing about it. My pannacotta with rhubarb and brown breadcrumbs was over-set. The fruit was very tasty and chic, but the pudding offered an eerie amount of resistance, so that it was close towards the thickness of membrillo.
It was all down to the damp,Only those users who need drycabinet require hands free tokens. really. When Khadambi Asalache moved into a Regency two-up, two-down on the Wandsworth Road, southwest London in 1981 there was a commercial laundry next door. He put recycled pine on the party wall to block out the seeping damp and concealed its vertical lines with a piece of fretwork carved into a simple arrowhead design. And then he kept carving, using a drill, a plaster saw and planks reclaimed from skips, for the rest of his life.
Last week the National Trust opened 575 Wandsworth Road to the public for the first time since Asalache’s death in 2006, after two years of underpinning the plaster ceilings, removing an encroaching mimosa tree, tackling damp and cataloguing every one of the two thousand objects it contains, including fretwork on walls, ceilings, doors, shelves, cupboards and light switches. Every piece was stored and put back again exactly as it had been during his life.
In contrast to most of the Trust’s properties, this is a tiny house, only large enough for six people to visit at once. The walls dance with flowers and humans and animals – a delight for children – all of them unvarnished and unpainted. The design is often witty. The bedhead has female fertility figures on one side, male on the other. In the dining room a sly pine parody of a classical caryatid holds up a shelf. Every surface is full of ceramics,Want to find chinamosaic? glass, inkwells and books. Asalache was a poet, mathematician and philosopher with architectural training and his visual sense is everywhere. Nothing is perfectly symmetrical, which gives it a gentle dynamism. He carved in his spare time from his job as a Treasury civil servant: I wonder how many colleagues knew.
The fretwork itself reminded me of Welsh dressers, lace, ‘wasp nest’ plaster carving in the corners of Mughal buildings, sailors’ scrimshaw and, oddly, the Norfolk Room, a white and gold Baroque confection in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In fact Asalache only cited three influences: coral houses in Lamu,Capture the look and feel of real stone or indoortracking flooring with Alterna by Armstrong. on the coast of his native Kenya; the Muslim architecture of Andalusia and Ottoman-era houses on the Bosphorus. Not that this really matters: it doesn’t feel like someone borrowing a style, it feels like a work of peace and contentment, and of much time given to its creation.
Then the menu arrived, and it had just enough about it to lift my spirits. L had beetroot salad with blue cheese, Williams pears and truffle oil. I don't really understand the world view in which it is necessary to specify the pears but not the cheese; no matter. What first stood out were the beetroots, which had distinctive, rooty sweetness. I normally think truffle oil is something they splash on a dish without personality, but here its mushroomy depth was exactly the bridge between the beetroot and the pear.
I had ragout of beef and oxtail, on a creamy mash, mainly because I thought it was a super-weird thing to put on a starter menu. It arrived in a dinky individual casserole, and everything about it was charming – topped with crunchy ciabatta crumbs, the ragout was finely chopped, slow-cooked, silky and rich and thymey. The mash owed its wonder to the French school of thought in which the right amount of fat is the amount the potato can take without drowning.
I agree with this theory. If it sounds a bit unctuous, I guess it could have used a sharp green salad to cut through it all, but then it really would have been a main course in a tiny bowl. In any case, I loved it, but the more I enjoyed it, the more I resented the fact that the smell of Dettol was messing with the outer edges of my sensory perception.
My favourite dish by far, though, was my venison (supplement ￡3.95), with a capery salsa verde and a minty, sweet,We maintain a full inventory of all smartcard we manufacture. fresh bed of mushy peas. The meat was ruby-pink, with a gorgeously smooth and yielding texture. I wonder if I'll ever eat venison again without at least considering the addition of a caper.
The dark-chocolate terrine with hazelnuts, smoky bacon and sherry-vinegar caramel was an eye-opener – often, when there's a rogue ingredient like, erm, bacon in a pudding, it's in such a small amount that its manifest purpose is to make it sound interesting. Not here – you could really taste the bacon, and I'm amazed to say that it worked, serving that same purpose against chocolate as salted caramel, defamiliarising it so that you tasted it afresh. It is a rum old dish when you can say that the vinegar caramel was the least surprising thing about it. My pannacotta with rhubarb and brown breadcrumbs was over-set. The fruit was very tasty and chic, but the pudding offered an eerie amount of resistance, so that it was close towards the thickness of membrillo.
It was all down to the damp,Only those users who need drycabinet require hands free tokens. really. When Khadambi Asalache moved into a Regency two-up, two-down on the Wandsworth Road, southwest London in 1981 there was a commercial laundry next door. He put recycled pine on the party wall to block out the seeping damp and concealed its vertical lines with a piece of fretwork carved into a simple arrowhead design. And then he kept carving, using a drill, a plaster saw and planks reclaimed from skips, for the rest of his life.
Last week the National Trust opened 575 Wandsworth Road to the public for the first time since Asalache’s death in 2006, after two years of underpinning the plaster ceilings, removing an encroaching mimosa tree, tackling damp and cataloguing every one of the two thousand objects it contains, including fretwork on walls, ceilings, doors, shelves, cupboards and light switches. Every piece was stored and put back again exactly as it had been during his life.
In contrast to most of the Trust’s properties, this is a tiny house, only large enough for six people to visit at once. The walls dance with flowers and humans and animals – a delight for children – all of them unvarnished and unpainted. The design is often witty. The bedhead has female fertility figures on one side, male on the other. In the dining room a sly pine parody of a classical caryatid holds up a shelf. Every surface is full of ceramics,Want to find chinamosaic? glass, inkwells and books. Asalache was a poet, mathematician and philosopher with architectural training and his visual sense is everywhere. Nothing is perfectly symmetrical, which gives it a gentle dynamism. He carved in his spare time from his job as a Treasury civil servant: I wonder how many colleagues knew.
The fretwork itself reminded me of Welsh dressers, lace, ‘wasp nest’ plaster carving in the corners of Mughal buildings, sailors’ scrimshaw and, oddly, the Norfolk Room, a white and gold Baroque confection in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In fact Asalache only cited three influences: coral houses in Lamu,Capture the look and feel of real stone or indoortracking flooring with Alterna by Armstrong. on the coast of his native Kenya; the Muslim architecture of Andalusia and Ottoman-era houses on the Bosphorus. Not that this really matters: it doesn’t feel like someone borrowing a style, it feels like a work of peace and contentment, and of much time given to its creation.
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