Club Gascon

Club Gascon is reputed to be one of the best "high French" restaurants in London. After having dined there last week, I think they have some case as a matter of food, but their service is diabolical, and I'm not sure about their gimmick either.

You see, Club Gascon purports to do something called "French tapas", trying desperately to hook itself into the all consuming bar snacks craze of the last few years. The chief problem, however, is that French food doesn't work very well as tapas - the whole idea of either Spanish tapas or Middle Eastern mezze is that the meal becomes a communual experience, where people are able to taste a wide range of easily seperable foods. But most high french cuisine isn't like that- and at Club Gascon, it shows. Cassoulet de Toulouse, for example, the famous pigeon, sausage, and bean stew of southwest France, can't be shared properly at all, even if the restaurant does remember (as they did not) to bring extra plates - the stew was well done, unsurprisingly, but what's the point? Similarly, the dish of buttered, truffled pasta was fragrant, rich, and delicious - but how are you supposed to portion it out? Frog's legs are much more easily shared, but I would have traded the decorous foam sauce for more of the tiny, delicate, appendages, while the delicous seared foie gras was much more generously prepared. The only thing that I thought was perfectly designed for sharing were the skewered duck hearts - small, rich, chewy bits of meat layered with a flavorful glaze. That, I think, is as close France, and certainly Club Gascon, gets to tapas.

There were some surprises as well, I'll admit. King scallops are usually served in france with their bright orange coral, it's true - but at Club Gascon you get a cracker flavoured strongly with coral instead. And I have to admit to be a little struck by bacon on top of beef carpaccio - that's not usually what I would expect, or like. But some of the preparations were a little too clever - dark chocolate "bar", for example, turned out to be an entirely unsatisfying centimeter wide strip of chocolate, while the chef tried to get incompetently exotic with a banana crumble obscured by "leaves" made of flour, sugar, and banana. Still, everything was tasty - I just can't say I was completely blown away by any of the cooking. Frankly, you could do a lot worse than ordering two bowls of the cassoulet and another two of their delicious olive oil French fries - tapas concept be damned.

The service, unfortunately, was remarkable - remarkably awful. Waitresses didn't know what either riesling or gewurztraminer was, and when the "sommelier" was called, he suggested a dessert wine. Dessert wine instead of a dry alsation white wine? That's what an expensive French restaurant recommends? Of course, you can't order even inappopropiate dessert wine if no one comes to your table, which was our experience for a half hour at the beginning, and you certainly don't need any wine if there are hour long waits between courses - another fascinating twist thrown into Club Gascon's diabolical efforts to make eating there impossible. The whole experience was summed up by one employee's response when we asked where our second course might be, in the middle of a second interminable wait - "Ah, monsieur", in the french accent of someone imported from France to trick you into thinking she might be a competent waitress, "your food is in the kitchen".

If it had been up to me, that's where it would have stayed.

Last week, I wrote a post about Melton Mowbray Pork Pies. As the intrepid half-dozens who read it will remember, the post discussed the battle between Northern Foods and Dickinson & Morris (or, indeed, Samworth Brothers, the parent) over European protection for "Melton Mowbray Pork Pies". If you want the full story, do read the article.
This morning, I received an email from Gary Johnston, Marketing Director at Pork Farms Bowyers (an affiliate of Northern Foods). He adds some fascinating information to my initial post, and corrects some errors as well.

First, Mr. Johnston notes, Melton Mowbrays (abbreviated MMPP! Don't you love jargon?) have historically been made outside the protected zone -

"Melton Mowbray Pork Pies are a style (premium quality to consumers) and have been produced outside of their "traditional" region for over 100 years. Indeed, during the majority of the last century the volume of the production of these pies was almost entirely made outside this zone. Northern Foods has two sites (in Wiltshire and Shropshire) with rich histories of MMPP production and this PGI application threatens these factories and the associated employment".

And as I guessed, the economic motivations for Dickinson are clear - of course, Mr. Johnston is biased, but I'm sure his figures are near right, and I doubt that D&M would dispute his claim in substance;

"If this application gains approval - and political momentum is driving this - then they will gain a monopoly in this 50 million GBP marketplace".

Finally, and most important, Mr. Johnston reports some good news. Northern Foods has not dropped its legal challenge. Rather, there's been some last minute negotiation in the back room, which I've checked through some news sources. The Government has now agreed to conduct a re-evaluation of its administrative decision.

"[T]he reason that the Judicial Review has been adjourned is not as a result of alterations to the region's boundaries (this ploy was attempted last year). Northern Foods object to the applicatrions whether we have factories within the boundaries or not. Instead, it is because Defra have settled with our lawyers, on the grounds that they will re-assess our objections and make a fresh decision on this application. While this represents a positive move, there remains concerns that the application will still be ratified by our friends in London - romanced by the tale of huntsmen and pig herds. I am glad that you for one have not been so deceived".
I'll keep you everyone updated on this critical (for those of us interested in eating pork pies) story.