Old People Eating

This was part of a group trip to prematurely celebrate a good friend's 60th birthday. The evening previous has been excellent and this was the gentler second day. It began with boat trip from Chelsea Harbour to Greenwich, itself good fun. After a brief stop for coffee and an optional look around the market we had lunch booked in Goodard's at Greenwich. This is a traditional pie and mash shop, opened very early in the last century, which sells, er, pies and mash. Hot eels and jellied eels are also on offer and there is a choice of gravy or the more appropriate 'liqour' that is a curious shade of green. I believe it is parsley sauce. The menu is redolant of the famous Monty Python sketch set in a café that serves Spam, spam or spam. Customers may order pie, double pie, even triple pie with mash, or double mash. My advice is to have pie & mash. A real experience. Very busy, very good value. No table service and quite right, too.

Sometimes we enjoy a simple sandwich and sometimes something a little more. This outing was most definitely of the a little more variety. Recommended by our most regular dining, and indeed traveling, partners we booked an overnight stay with them at Gravetye Manor in West Sussex. Surrounded by impressive gardens and beautiful scenery this Elizabethan house is now a very well appointed hotel with a modern dining room that has been tastefully added to the original building, providing views over a small part of the extensive grounds. The bedrooms are spacious, well equipped and elegant. Much like their occupants on this occasion.   Gravetye offers a full tasting menu but we had chosen a three course seasonal dinner. Each of us chose the traditional starter, main course and dessert and found these were all enhanced with additional elements starting with the two item amuse-bouche of Parmesan and white truffle pastry and a lobster roe cone. Later came the spectacular tomato t...