November 26, 2024
Lazy Sunday lunch
(This mostly comes from the movies). Or Italian lunches — overlooking the Mediterranean sea, next to an outdoor oven from which has emerged a tenderly cooked local lamb, a table under a vine — groaning with home made pasta and good food gathered from the gardens and fields, flavoured with fresh herbs from the neighbouring hillside, accompanied by lots of wine and laughter. (This is the Sunday lunch of my dreams).
Sunday is a leisure day and a time for gathering family and friends. Glamourous TV cook Nigella Lawson advocates a healthy dose of outsiders — by which she means friends, not total strangers — to counteract the bad behaviour that can overtake a family when several generations are confined around a table.
Whatever the configuration I do love Sunday lunch. Usually we cook at home, and take pleasure in putting together the food and the company, and spend a leisurely morning picking what’s fresh in the garden, preparing a pudding, setting the table. It’s usually a good reason to spruce up the house too, pick fresh flowers, brush away the spider webs (which in our old house breed overnight) and give a shine to the table.
Last Sunday felt like a good idea to go out. I didn’t have the leisure or the inclination to cook and in any case the guineafowl have decimated the vegetable garden, removing that pleasure of picking fresh produce. It will soon be their turn to become Sunday lunch — but currently some are too old and tough and others still too small!
It isn’t that easy to know which restaurants are open on a Sunday and we phoned a couple of places trying to establish who is open for Sunday Lunch. I admit to referring to a rival newspaper’s ‘What’s On’ column for ideas — and noticed Theo’s House of Coffee at 167 Enterprise Road advertising Sunday lunch. So we went there.
We were just four — two generations and no arguments. 167 is a welcoming, family venue. There are other shops too — a nursery and a craft shop — not open on Sunday. I had been before to a birthday party — a friend’s ten year old had chosen the place for the water slide and pool and the kids had a great time. It is a popular choice for such parties and one was going on in the garden. So the lawn and pool were full of kids having fun but it wasn’t disruptive to those having lunch on the verandah and added to the relaxed and friendly atmosphere.
Bantams are also completely at home — and not only strut about the lawn but also perch under the dining chairs.
One can choose from the menu or opt for the buffet special — roast beef, roast pork, chicken, mini Yorkshire puddings, vegetables and potatoes.
The buffet is a help yourself affiar laid out on a table on the verandah, kept warm by burners. We didn’t even look at the menu. I’ll leave that for another time.
The meat was nicely cooked — roast beef still a bit pink, and the vegetables of the day were creamy cauliflower and golden butternut. The only disappointment was that the potatoes were boiled rather than roasted.
Desserts were either crepes suzette in a lemony sauce, apple cake or ice cream with chocolate sauce.
It wasn’t my Italian dream but it was good value at US$12 per person and lovely to have no washing up to do afterwards.
