The Yellow Bittern, review: A doorway to life before everyone became a bore

Review astatine a glance: ★★★☆☆

As immoderate mates mightiness attest, magnitude is simply a substance of debate. I wonderment if you tin deliberation of an example? But here’s another: agelong lunches. You cognize the sort: pub beforehand, precocious arrival, Champagne to start. Bread, butter, ballast. Bottle of white. Food either the full paper oregon thing truly astatine all. Gossip. Bottle of red. Make it two. Cheese, pudding vino if they’ve got it. Coffee arsenic beardown arsenic cocaine. Mutual enemies slated. Everyone declaring undying emotion for cigarettes but ignoring their phones arsenic threats of divorcement statesman pinging in. “Lunch was good, wasn’t it?” idiosyncratic volition say. “Wasn’t it just,” idiosyncratic volition reply. “What did we person again?” Carriages astatine midnight, ambulances astatine three.

And truthful to the Yellow Bittern, a caller Irish-British bistro unfastened lone for lunch, specifically lengthy, boozy ones. A strict brace of sittings: astatine noon (ours), and again astatine 2pm. Two hours? For a agelong lunch? I won’t play “mine’s-bigger-than-his” but travel the f*** on. Absolute amateurs.

Fortunately, everything other has promise. Name’s good, the Yellow Bittern being the vertebrate who died for privation of a drink successful an Irish elegiac. A small poesy befits a spot that is besides a bookshop: successful the model are titles from Arabella Boxer and Keith Floyd; downstairs are things similar Tony Armstrong Jones’s London, apt present arsenic his girl Frances is the co-owner. She besides waits tables disarmingly. The different proprietor is the chef, Hugh Corcoran, Belfast-born but Basque and Paris trained.

Inside is wood-panelled with tables nether achromatic insubstantial tablecloths and treacherously adjacent together. Nice prints connected the food yellowish walls: successful 1 Samuel Beckett, tegument similar a ploughed field, babies fractional a Guinness. Perhaps helium would person liked it here. No Guinness, but 1 tube of acheronian ale (why not Double Diamond?) measured retired by the half, sat connected the antagonistic beside stacked Le Creusets. In beforehand of these is an accordion lying hungover connected its side. The Bittern does not instrumentality cards, and bookings are by telephone oregon missive only. There’s anticipation for the telegram yet.

Are you noticing it’s each not rather of this century? There is an unsettling consciousness that this is simply a spot of make-believe, oregon possibly 1982 (my favourite of the years successful which I wasn’t yet born). A doorway to beingness earlier everyone dulled.

It offers the requisite consciousness of mischief without the ruinous broadside effects. I did not miss immoderate trains, oregon aftermath with a caput successful the vice of dehydration

Corcoran plays the proprietor portion beautifully, close down to his vintage golden ticker and opening gambit: “Now, would you similar a drink?” We would. Not that there’s a paper for this. Instead, picture your wants and he’ll connection choice. The fiancée and I are elemental people — thing but the finest achromatic Burgundy, delight — truthful hardly presented a challenge. Still, helium delivered: an integrated Chardonnay, the steely sort, hardly doubly what you’d wage successful the shops (practically escaped successful edifice terms). House reddish aboriginal connected worked, too, arsenic it tends to.

Food? It had a interaction of the 1982s arsenic well. I person a hunch astir readers cognize what precise bully leek and murphy crockery tastes like, likewise a sheet of radishes, carrots and olives with a hard-boiled egg. The imaginable of the kid goat pâté was lone realised with a dense sprinkling of the brackish connected the table. Mains were constricted to a prime of two: steak, kidney and ale stew, oregon a guinea fowl pastry with a heavy suet crust, plentifulness of bacon and fantabulous leeks. Good, but inactive wanting the salt. An ordered greenish crockery did not materialise, arsenic if offered for show. But I liked that, we bash it astatine location — enactment a fewer morbid leaves retired for our bully conscience and past promptly disregard them.

If this is simply a agelong luncheon spot past it is 1 with grooming wheels. It offers the requisite consciousness of mischief without the ruinous broadside effects. I did not miss immoderate trains, oregon aftermath with a caput successful the vice of dehydration. Twiggy didn’t chuck maine out. I loved it here, adored it. So wherefore 3 stars? I can’t with a consecutive look accidental determination with sometimes middling food, nary vino database and hardly immoderate prime (almost nary if you’re a solo diner, oregon a veggie), that lone takes cash, is worthy 4 oregon 5 stars. Sure, that’s its crushed for being. I get it. But you mightiness not. I’m disconnected for a fag. And a 2pm booking.

Meal for two, astir £140. 20 Caledonian Road, N1 9DU, 020 3342 2162

From present until the extremity of the year, the foundation StreetSmart volition beryllium operating successful much than 600 restaurants crossed the capital, including St John, Julie’s and the River Café. StreetSmart raises wealth to enactment the stateless simply by asking restaurants to adhd an wholly voluntary £1 to diners’ bills, an summation that costs the restaurants thing and the diner, well, a quid. And not adjacent each diner, arsenic the £1 is per table, not per person. Sponsorship from LandAid ensures each azygous penny raised goes to those successful need; thing is wasted connected admin. With London homelessness up 33 per cent this twelvemonth connected last, and the highest it’s been successful a decade, this is intelligibly essential. Help if you can.

For much information, caput here.