Town mouse goes retro
A pop-up restaurant in Old Burlington Street is appealing to a sense of nostalgia


Do you secretly miss gherkins, fish-paste sandwiches and peardrops? Does your palate yearn for a menu of cream of tomato soup, fish in parsley sauce and rice pudding, washed down with a piña colada? If so, make your way to 29, Old Burlington Street, W1, home until November to Retro Feasts, ‘a food-and-drink concept inspired by our childhood favourites'. Its Wünderkind chef, Luke Thomas, is only 19-too young to remember the Berni Inns to which his creations pay homage-but there's prawn cocktail, steak with peppercorn sauce and Black Forest gâteau.
** Subscribe to Country Life; Country Life on Ipad
You half-expect Alison Steadman to appear bearing a tray of cheese-and-pineapple skewers. Interestingly, although the recipes are well into their fourth decade, the diners seemed to come from a much more recent vintage. We were the oldest things in the room-apart, perhaps, from the carpet on the stairs, which looked as if its origin had been a provincial bingo hall.
Two teenage girls in denim shorts cooed over every breaded, deep-fried mouthful. ‘Do you think they're tinned?' whispered one ecstatically when her peach Melba arrived. A line from Beckett's Murphy came to me: ‘The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.'
* Follow Country Life magazine on Twitter
Sign up for the Country Life Newsletter
Exquisite houses, the beauty of Nature, and how to get the most from your life, straight to your inbox.
Emma Hughes lives in London and has spent the past 15 years writing for publications including the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Evening Standard, Waitrose Food, British Vogue and Condé Nast Traveller. Currently Country Life's Acting Assistant Features Editor and its London Life restaurant columnist, if she isn't tapping away at a keyboard she's probably taking something out of the oven (or eating it).
-
‘It had the air of an ex-rental, and that’s putting it politely’: How an antique dealer transformed a run-down Georgian house in Chatham Dockyards
An antique dealer with an eye for colour has rescued an 18th-century house from years of neglect with the help of the team at Mylands.
By Arabella Youens
-
A home cinema, tasteful interiors and 65 acres of private parkland hidden in an unassuming lodge in Kent
North Lodge near Tonbridge may seem relatively simple, but there is a lot more than what meets the eye.
By James Fisher