Feld’s borscht looked absolutely nothing like this
Sunday 14 December. Went to Feld’s ->…
Strangely, I had a memory flash about Feld’s restaurant the other day (December 2020), when Kay Scorah kindly sent over some soup recipes from her Essex Road Recipes collection, including one for beetroot soup (at the time of writing, not yet published on-line)…
(21 December 2020 Update! Kay has kindly uploaded her Aphrodite beetroot soup recipe and other beety things to her website – click here.)
…which reminded me of Grandma Anne and the palaver we went through whenever we went to Feld’s eaterie in Mortimer Street in the hope of getting her a decent plate of borscht. I quote myself:
My Grandma Anne was an addict, but even 50 years ago it was hard to find a reliable source of beetroot soup in a hostelry. “Mr Feld – your borscht tastes like vorter today”, she would holler at the top of her voice in that strange eponymous eatery on Mortimer Street, if the beetroot soup was not up to snuff on that occasion. “Shake the jar!!” Dad, Mum and I would yell in unison when Grandma ordered the borscht, imploring Mr Feld to action, in the hope of staving off the voluble accusation of “vorteriness”…
Let’s be honest about this – Feld’s was not a great place. The salt beef was fine and frankly that’s why we were there. The latke was a sort of lottery, where you might get a clump of pepperiness or an unexpectedly chunky bit of potato. The matzo balls were similarly random. I recall he added almond essence to those, but sometimes you’d get a seriously almondy shot and sometimes the almond essence would be undetectable. I was partial to his tomato soup, which for some reason had a consistent quality to it (it probably came out of a Heinz catering tin), with the unusual addition of a matzo ball for good measure. Don’t ask about the lockshen pudding.
…SR Pressies -> dinner & drinks with Caroline .
SR Pressies would be a meeting of BBYO chapter presidents from across the Southern Region. I clearly went to one such meeting in the South that weekend and something similar in the North the following weekend.
Hence Keele to Manchester via London. I was never THAT geographically challenged.
Caroline would be Caroline Freeman (now Curtis).
Monday 15 December 1980 – Went to Hillel all day. YC meeting. “Return to sanity”.
I have no idea what the insanity was and what the “return to sanity” meant. My guess is that this was all connected with pulling together a National Convention in an environment where the National Exec was much depleted and somewhat in disarray.
My 1980 diary falls silent at that point but have no fear – my 1981 diary started in December 1980.
Tuesday 16 December 1980 – Anil came round for day. Busyish evening.
17 December 1980. Went to Hillel. Grandma Jenny came around in the evening.
18 December 1980. Easyish day at home. Easyish evening.
19 December 1980. Stayed at home again. Did little in evening.
Given the high activity level of most of my time during that first vacation of my University life, I suspect I spent much of that two day break making up cassettes and mix tapes to take up to Keele with me. I recall feeling very short of music compared with most and compared with my usual experience at home with records and reel-to-reels to play with. I’ll revisit the music aspect when I write up the festive season.