It didn’t occur to me, when I booked Spring Restaurant, that Bobbie and I were meeting on the eve of the start of meteorological spring…
…but with the benefit of hindsight and subsequent thought processes, what a timely and apt choice that was:
Talking of timely, I thought I had allowed plenty of time to get from the office to Somerset House, where Spring is located, which indeed I had. I arrived at the South-Eastern entrance of that enormous building complex a good few minutes ahead of our 19:30 booking – only to realise that I needed to be several levels up and across to the North-Western side, where the New Wing and Spring are located.
I was still at the restaurant itself within 5 minutes of the appointed time, but, hell’s bells, Bobbie was already there.
Bobbie, she whose idea of timeliness is based on leaving home at the appointed hour, not getting to the venue at the appointed hour, was some minutes ahead of me, looking smug.
Under interrogation, Bobbie broke down and confessed that her plan had been to see the Charlie Brown exhibition ahead of meeting me, but had been too late for that and so was a little early for the dinner. Hence, both early and Bobbie-style late in the one fell swoop. This at least made more sense to me than the alternative hypothesis – that Bobbie is now better at time keeping than me.
Spring Restaurant is a good place – you can read what it has to say about itself here.
The food, under the supervision of Skye Gyngell, who is apparently a big name chef, was excellent. Unfussy, good ingredients cooked, presented and served very well in a charming setting.
Here’s what the TripAdvisor community thinks of it.
Bobbie went for the beef that evening, whereas I felt fishy and had a very tasty wild hake fillet. We shared some cheese after the main meal, which was an excellent selection.
Bobbie and I once again failed to put the world to rights despite agreeing how dreadful it all is and how much better it could be.
We also reminisced some more about evenings gone by – mostly very good ones – we agreed that many of our theatre visits 30 or so years ago, such as this one…
…were top notch. Although Bobbie is still hyper-ventilating a bit about The Long Way Round, which she rates as possibly her worst experience ever at the theatre:
I wanted to pick Bobbie’s brains about a weekend a few week’s earlier in 1989, when we went to see Don Giovanni and Ashley Fletcher came to stay, which I remembered as being somewhat of a low point for several reasons, more my own issues than those of the opera which I did not enjoy. I need to do some additional unpicking with Ashley on that one, but suffice it to say here that Bobbie and I had a good laugh about our slightly different but clearly linked remembrances of that June 1989 weekend.
But back to Spring on the eve of spring 2019 – the evening flew by and in fact it very nearly was meteorological spring when we realised that it was really quite late and that we should head home.
A few minutes earlier, we had debated the placement of lemons on about a third of the tables and I had concluded that they must denote reservations, but the waiter assured us that they were for decorative purposes only and that the choice of tables was random. He offered us a lemon on our table if we therefore felt bereft…which we agreed we didn’t.
I’m rambling. It was a very enjoyable evening and I hope we don’t leave it another year or so before we regroup.