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Legal pop up restaurant at Gray’s Inn

June 26, 2009 1 Comment Filed Under: Uncategorized

Serving a menu or a writ?

The gardens with the marquee of the restaurant on the left.

Al fresco tables.

Absolutely delicious toasted goats cheese with a wasabi salsa.

Grilled sardine. I seem to have forgotten to take pix of the mains. Probably a bit drunk.

Strawberries with a quenelle of fresh cream. The perfect summer’s day dessert.

Raspberry brulée

The delicious handmade chocolate truffles plus nougat.

Long tables like this are the source of phrases like ‘treading the boards’. In the old days, tables or boards like this were put together to make a stage.

The lady patron of the Inn-Elizabeth I

The stained glass windows, which were removed during World War II, fortunately, as the whole building was bombed.

The griffin, adding to the Harry Potter air of the dining rooms, the house of Gryffindor.

Part of the hall, these wooden pillars were filched from the Spanish Armada during Elizabethan Times.

The hall. Benchers are allowed to come through that door at the back. Nobody else.

A modern painting, every one of these men a Lord.

The red rose and crest of Lancaster adorning the ceiling.

Prince Charles is an honorary ‘bencher’.

A lady treasurer. This position changes annually. This painting reflects the era, the 1980s.

The Queen’s chair, reupholstered upon her coronation. The last chair, upholstered for her uncle, was never used by him as he reigned for such a short time.
There is a difference between pop up restaurants and home restaurants. (Press/TV take note). Pop up restaurants, meaning simply that the site is impermanent, have been sprouting up for years and are not necessarily illegal.

The Honorable Society of Gray’s Inn Banqueting is more legal than most, the majority of guests being barristers. For six weeks every summer, for the last decade, this restaurant renamed The Griffin, relocates outside when it opens to the public. The gardens, originally designed by Sir Francis Bacon, are a hidden and pollution-free haven behind the office blocks of Holborn. Local workers in the know, wend their way through the secret passageway (very Diagon Alley and the Harry Potter links don’t stop there), past the squares of law offices into the refreshing green lawns of Grays Inn.
The menus for this restaurant resemble legal documents, all Wimbledon green embossed covers and gold tassels. The prices are reasonable, especially considering the setting; £18.95 for two courses, £22.95 for three. And the food, as can be seen by the pictures, is extremely good.
Waiters are attentive, they have to be, normally they are performing silver service for ‘barrister’s dinners’, to Queens counsel, often peers of the realm. To become a barrister in the UK, after passing your exams, you have to attend, wearing a gown, 12 formal dinners (link to an account of this).
In the old days, all the surrounding buildings were lived in by students of the bar and every meal was eaten in the hall. Students were not allowed to eat in their rooms and female guests were banned, unless they were over 40 (good rule that!).
Nowadays Judges use some of the accommodation as pieds à terre in town. The Grays Inn restaurant does every so often get a judge in his dotage, having had a little too much to drink, having difficulty in making his way home, despite it’s nearness, because the housing looks alike.
The Griffin open from the 27th of June to the 23rd of July.
The Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn
8 South Square
London
WC1R 5ETTelephone: 020 7458 7960 / 7968
Email: banqueting.functions@graysinn.org.uk

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  1. Anonymous

    June 26, 2009 at 10:58 am

    I used to live a few doors away from this place! In a building straight out of The Shining called Trinity Court – I always wondered what went on inside this clearly much nicer building. Lovely write up – must give it a visit.

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MsMarmiteLover aka Kerstin Rodgers.

Chef, photographer, author, journalist, blogger. Pioneer of the supperclub movement.

This is my food and travel blog, with recipes, reviews and travel stories. I also stray into politics, feminism, gardening.

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Kerstin Rodgers/MsMarmiteLover
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Galette des Rois, made yesterday in 12th night. Mi Galette des Rois, made yesterday in 12th night. Minus Crown and king as I cannot find either. This one is made with Tonka bean. Plus homemade puff pastry (well worth the effort). According to ike delorenzo at The Atlantic:  The tonka bean, a flat, wrinkled legume from South America with an outsize flavor that the US government has declared illegal. Nonetheless, it proliferates on elite American menus. The tiniest shavings erupt in a Broceliande of transporting, mystical aromas.
The taste of the tonka bean is linked strongly to its scent. "Scents," I should say, as the tonka bean has many at once. I register the aromas of vanilla, cherry, almond, and something spicy—a bit like cinnamon. When served cold—say, in tonka bean ice cream—the taste is like a vanilla caramel with dark honey. When warm, perhaps shaved over scallops, it moves toward spiced vanilla. Additionally, the aroma of the tonka bean shavings (it's almost always shaved) is so affecting that it seems like an actual taste in the way that opium, which has no taste in the traditional sense, "tastes" like its rich, flowery smoke.  Here is the recipe: 

Tonka bean galette des rois

Serves 8
Ingredients
* 140 g caster sugar
* 125 g salted butter, softened
* 100 g ground almonds
* 2 eggs, medium
* 1 tonka bean, grated
* 2 packs ready made butter puff pastry on a roll
* 1 yolk for brushing the pastry
Instructions
* Preheat your oven to 200c.

* Blend the butter with the sugar then add the almonds. Make sure it’s well mixed. Add in the 2 eggs one at a time, then add the tonka bean.

* If using a block: divide the puff pastry into two and roll out to 5mm thick. 
* Make two circles about 15 cm’s each in diameter. Lay one circle on a silicone mat/parchment paper on a baking tray and fill with the almond cream leaving a 3 cm border around the edge. 
* Paint the border with the egg yolk. Then lay the other circle on top, sealing the edges with a fork. 
* You could then carve designs into the top. Make a little slit in the middle to let steam escape then brush the top with the egg yolk
Mapo tofu is probably my favourite Sichuan dish. T Mapo tofu is probably my favourite Sichuan dish. This is a vegan version. ***

Ingredients:
- 400 g box of soft tofu not silken
- 5 soaked dried shiitake mushrooms, diced, keep water
- 1 red bell pepper, finely sliced
- 400 g fresh shiitake mushroom, sliced thinly
- 400 ml vegetable stock
- 1 thumb fresh ginger, minced
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 4 tbsps groundnut or vegetable oil
- 3 tbsp fermented bean paste
- 1 or 2 small red chillies, minced or a spoonful of Chinese chilli paste
- 1 tsp heaped sichuan peppercorns, finely ground
- 2 tbsps soy or tamari sauce
- 2 tbsp cornflour in 3 tbsps water, mixed into a slurry
- 4 spring onions, finely sliced
- large pinch fresh coriander leaves

Prepare the tofu by cutting it into one inch cubes and soaking it in hot but not boiling salted water. Drain after 15 minutes.
Soak the dried shiitake mushrooms, covering them in boiling water. Leave until soft, then dice the mushrooms. Retain the mushroom soaking water and add to the vegetable stock water.
Prepare the other ingredients so they are ready to stir-fry: red bell pepper, fresh mushrooms, ginger, garlic.

Using a wok or deep frying pan, add the oil and heat to frying temperature. Add the bell peppers,fry for a couple of minutes, then add fermented bean paste, chilli paste or chillies, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sichuan pepper.
Add the mushroom/vegetable broth and simmer on high for a couple of minutes.
Carefully add the cubes of tofu, taking care not to break them too much.
Add the cornflour slurry, stirring for a couple of minutes.
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