[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: November 17, 2008]
Randall & Aubin was a thing of beauty. A real food store. I was lucky enough to know it during its final flourishing in the 1990s.
Oh yes, it's still very much with us. Indeed, it occurs to me that it deserves some credit for being a London pioneer the trend of casual-clever bar dining which threatens to take over Manhattan entirely in 2009. But I am talking about the old Randall & Aubin.
On Brewer Street Soho, near the bottom of the alley which was once straddled by Raymond's Revue Bar, one of the district's few legit strip clubs, Randall & Aubin was one of London's oldest specialty food stores. Primarily a delicatessen in the "continental" (rather than New York) style, it sold everything from bacon and eggs and bread to imported charcuterie and cheeses. The tiled interior centered around a cash register, and for many years the owner, Roma Galer, sat there like the Queen in her counting house.
By the time I settled in Soho, the legendary Ms Galer had passed on, but Randall & Aubin's was enjoying a new lease of life under the management of an enthusiastic young woman, assisted by two veteran butchers of infinite knowledge, skill and patience. The owner abolished basic groceries, but created a splendid cheese counter in the center of the store, imported French charcuterie (Italian cold cuts being readilly available elsewhere), and allowed the two great meat-masters to run one of the finest butcher counters I have ever seen.
And so, for several years, R&A had been almost one-stop shopping for me. Pounds of andouillette, serious game in season - snipe and woodcock as well as grouse - and cuts of meat sliced from the whole beast at my request. It couldn't last.
The business failed, and the restaurateurs moved in - the owners, in fact, of the fashionable Chelsea destination, Daphne's. Preserving the tiled interior, and stacking seafood in the windows, they transformed the splendid old store into a pricey seafood bar. And there I was, with four (it seems) beautiful women of my acquaintance, one November evening in 1998.
We started with oysters, whelks and ("awful") clams, then moved on to langoustines and shrimp. I can only assume that the woman I recall as a vegetarian found something else to eat. Then after-dinner drinks, dreadful cocktails, at a bar on Wardour Street called Mezzo which was all the rage at the time.
The next day was chilly, but sunny, and I paid my first ever visit to the Botanical Gardens at Kew. Overwhelmed by nature, I spent the afternoon in Harrod's looking at ties. The evening's entertainment was theater - a short-lived West End revival of West Side Story with some improbable Puerto Rican accents.
I must have been staying upstairs at Manzi's, off Leicester Square. I took supper in the restaurant, a setting straight out of the 1930s, with a style of seafood cuisine to match. Fritto misto with tartare sauce, then a grilled Dover sole - on the bone, of course - and some bits of cheese with crackers; a bottle of Chablis.
The next couple of days, I continued to mark time. British Museum visits, more time spent in the King's Head in Chinatown. The Lord Mayor's parade. Suppers at China China, and at a quirky little South American joint in Islington called La Piragua.
Run by a moustachioed Marxist character, La Piragua offered surprisingly inexpensive (mainly) Argentinian cooking. I started with plantains smothered in melted cheese, then tried one of the specialties - pastel de choclo - a kind of South American shepherd's pie. Ground beef is flavored with cumin, olives, and onions. Chicken or egg can be added. It's covered with a sort of corn pudding mixture, baked, and sprinkled with sugar. I think my dining companion ate sancocho, the Dominican chicken stew. A Chilean red helped it down.
And then I got to go on a trip to the country. Next week.
