The Long Good Friday/Underneath the Arches

The trouble with Easter arriving so early this year is that it just doesn't feel Easterish. But hey, it's a Bank Holiday - and I don't care what the weatherman says, when the weatherman says it's raining, etc. But then again, what am I to do, exactly, with the official no-work day that stretches behind and before me? I've already broken the Great British (don't work to) Rule by getting up with the lark and rattling through a review of a very mediocre TRB play that I saw last night (details next week, after publication, etc) and a review of the non-surgical facelift that I underwent on behalf of Folio readers yesterday afternoon (it's a tough job, but hey - I'm tough). And I keep persisting with that dreadfully annoying habit of italicising a lot, which suggests that I'm looking forward and over-emphasising everything excitedly. Except I'm not. I'm just fiddling around with fonts in the hope of making these words leap off the page and talk to you - which of course they can't. Oh, ho hum indeed!

I should be biding my time off by cooking something long'n'slow in the oven, but I'll be doing plenty of that on Sunday (big traditional roast dinner planned, guest list TBC) and again on Tuesday evening, when mummy will be a guest at the table, hoorah! And anyway, what with it being Good Friday, we're obliged to have fish this evening, and I ain't slow-cooking a cod. I could embark on the overdue housework, but that feels too much like bad use of time (days off have been few and far between lately as it is, and anyway, pre-mum's-visit is the best time for that sort of lark). I ought to invite my dad over, because he's probably getting a bit stir crazy (as opposed to just plain bit crazy), what with the weather hemming him in - but I'm feeling too selfish to entertain according to his whim (even the very thought of it has reduced me to using cumbersome, archaic words like 'ought'). And lordy, I know I'm not doing a very good job of entertaining you lot, either!

So, I'm now going to drag myself from my torpor and go to the great trouble of cutting and pasting a recent Venue review, not just to fill a gap but because you might genuinely find it (a) informative, (b) entertaining, and/or (c) a good way to fill up your own spare time while you're wondering what to do with a long Good Friday.

Hoppety-hop, Easter Bunnies! I'm sure I'll be on far less dreary form soon.

Restaurant de l’Arche, Bath

My boss isn’t very bossy. In fact, he vehemently denies that he’s my boss at all; he’s always pointing out that actually, I'm freelance, and therefore accountable only to myself. “Come to work with me, then”, I said; “I might be able to offset you against tax … or something…”.

So after a quickie (drink, that is; he’ll always be a boss to me) at my favourite watering hole on the corner, we headed off under the arch that straddles a very pretty cobbled street, our path illuminated by sparkly lights from frippery shop windows, me ranting on about the ‘context’ of the restaurant we were heading for (“the manager used to be at blah blah, the food is blah blah blah”) in a vain attempt to prove my non-credentials as MD of Animal Disco Publishing Ltd (sole trader) while my non-boss doubtless wordlessly pleaded “please shut up, I'm starving and running out of patience”. And as that patience was soon richly rewarded, you’re not getting off the history lecture either:

Restaurant de l’Arche has magpied into the space left behind by Blackstones Restaurant (RIP). While this gorgeous, five-storey former Georgian townhouse is a very charming building indeed, it doesn’t lend itself easily to an eatery. In an attempt to open up the available space in the narrow dining areas, Blackstones’ bright’n’breezy, contemporary tactics made it a bit too canteenish. But by taking the obvious snug’n’cosy approach instead, the new kids on the block have revamped the building’s limitations to their full advantage - it’s now a smart, upmarket French bistro affair, with invitingly well-dressed tables (sparkling glassware, candles, single-stemmed roses, etc) and the kind of plush, dark red paintwork that adds a touch of classy bordello to proceedings.

Pre-scoff, we climbed a narrow, winding staircase to the restaurant’s champagne and oyster bar on the top floor, where we sipped a glass of something elegant while a silent Marilyn Monroe undulated and simpered on a rather incongruous plasma screen behind us. Such kitschery did wonders for my imagination; suddenly, I was a dark haired Pola Debevoise and the non-boss was Freddie Denmark. Fashioned thus (if only in my pitiful fantasies) we headed back down to the very posh version of the café all the wannabe millionaire wives end up fainting in at the end of the film.

Freddie – enthralled by the prospect of tea-marinated prunes – went for warm duck breast salad to start, which came with walnuts that added crunch to both melting breast and prunes (two words you don’t often see in the same sentence), while I, in a distinctly unladylike fashion, gobbled up two sturdy cubes of goats cheese tightly parcelled up with very tasty cured ham: a rich, salty-sweet collaboration that did wonders for the tastebuds. After that, my sea bass fillets came melting on a neat little tangle of black linguini with a very nicely balanced orange and vanilla beurre blanc frothing joyfully at the edges. He, meanwhile, declared his rack of lamb with cherry tomatoes, dauphinois potato, garlic crisp and red wine sauce to be “like, dead good”. And while I’m sure covert millionaires don’t usually talk like ‘Skins’ characters, I have to agree with him (after all, I was still in ditzy Pola mode, and the food was turning me even ditzier). But hang on: the real me was having a déjà vu moment as a familiar figure in chef whites approached us – blimey, it if it isn’t that clever young fella who used to be at the glorious Fig Tree in Monkton Combe! That explains it, then. Yum.

All this glamorous excitement, coupled with the fact that his crepe Suzette oozed orange caramel and was flambéed in Cointreau at the table (wheee, pyrotechnics!), meant that I couldn’t manage all of my crisp white chocolate basket, which came extravagantly filled with three creamy, dreamy ice cream boules (including a lush Baileys version). But I had, I think, managed to convince my non-boss that working on his non-behalf can be a very definitely positive thing. Presumably, my non-cheque is in the post …