IT'S 1.30pm on Jermyn Street and lunch service at Wiltons (No 55) is in full swing. Over on the oyster bar, plump Pembrokeshire beauties recline on ice, as trays of lobster cocktail and sole meunière weave their way through the main dining room to velvet booths and the domed carving trolley glides between them, bearing salmon coulibiac. Every table is full. It's a scene that plays out every day at London's second-oldest restaurant (Wiltons defers to Rules, which got its licence 42 years earlier, in 1798), in spite of the dozens of newer, flashier options on its doorstep. At a time when so many restaurants are facing an existential struggle to fill seats, how has Wiltons managed to stay relevant?
The answer, according to director Jason Phillips, is never to chase relevance. 'We avoid following fads and there's no fanfare,' he says. 'We're simply unwaveringly focused on the quality of the ingredients.' If something is out of season-asparagus, for example-you won't find it on the menu and, although the kitchen is a fuss-free zone (no tweezering of micro-herbs), it prides itself on forensic attention to detail. 'For our Dover sole, we work with a supplier who we know will only sell us fish that weigh exactly 400g, so everyone knows exactly what they're getting.'
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 06, 2023-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 06, 2023-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
