Late to Baldessari

We liked the carrot game best. I’ll have to tell you how to play because there’s no point telling you to visit the John Baldessari at Tate Modern because you have one day left to do that. So, the Carrot Game. Get a load of carrots, like 30. Get three of them and put them in front of the participant asking him/her to choose one of the three. Place the rejected carrots to one side and replace them with two new carrots and again ask participant to choose one. Repeat until you get through the pile. What are you left with at the end?

After the Tate we travelled back to Forest Hill Road (my street), SE22, to dine at the Herne Tavern. We had been keen to try the Herne since receiving good reviews from our trusted neighbours. It’s owned by the same people who run The Palmerston in East Dulwich, where I once had a very boozy and expensive meal having waited in their bar until 9.45pm for a table with my good friend Anna. Anna later declared it to have been the poshest meal she’d ever had, but I’m not sure that she was in a state to make such a judgement by that time.

Just before Christmas Al and I had ventured down the hill for a pint at the Herne. Now, the reason we had not done this before now is that the Herne tavern is one of those pubs that does not make it easy for the pub-goer of today. It stands broodingly on a corner back from the road, behind a huge tree in fact, not bothering to make its presence known in any way, with stained-glass windows not giving anything away. But no. 7 had said it’s good, so in we went. Inside we found it to be friendly and inviting (bit late now) with its roaring open fire. But just as we were relaxing into a pint of Wherry and a wine, a fight broke out. Yes, a fight. This was more in keeping with our fears from its outside appearance. But seeing that it was a fight between drunk locals of a generation above us we decided we had nothing to fear, resuming our sipping and turning our gazes back to the friendly flames.

Last night was our first time in the restaurant. The food was of a high standard. The watercress soup outdid itself and was a creamy delight, better than the pondweed of my imaginings (but I still ordered it). The raddichio and blue cheese risotto was slightly disappointing after that because it was rather unrelenting: the flavour was so intense and there was nowhere for me to hide, I just had to go on eating it. Service was at times exaggerated: we were asked how everything was every three minutes by three separate staff members. My initial response had been ‘Amazing’, that was during the soup. I think that got reported to the chef who then came out to get a bit of the praise action; unfortunately by this time we were close to the responding: ‘Bloody awful’ just to get some peace. Mum had a caponata with cute little mozzarella balls, followed by linguine with Jerusalem artichoke puree, sage, rocket and parmesan (that puree gave it the mmm factor); Al had a Scotch duck egg, rocket, shallot and black pudding salad followed by a Pan-fried fillet of Cornish Pollack, boulangere potatoes and chantaney carrots. He said that despite sounding incredible his main was too salty and there wasn’t as much fish or vegetables as he would have liked. The carrots looked great in their natural form; it’s just we didn’t have enough to choose from. ‘That one,’ we said as we picked our favourites when the dish arrived. And then the game was over.