The Last Supper...For Now 

BY NEAL MARTIN | APRIL 16, 2020

Amid tumultuous times, I reflect upon the two soirées that took place in the twilight days of the pre-coronavirus world, including a dinner with Vinous forum members, finishing with a shard of optimism for an unwritten future.

Like myself, you are reading this in self-isolation as Covid-19 inexorably sweeps across the world, dismantling the fragile framework of society and turning loss of life into mind-numbing statistics. Just a couple of weeks into lockdown, I find myself wistfully looking back upon the twilight days of my previous life, picking out mundane details of freedom now seen in a new light of appreciation: the morning walk to the shops, catching a crowded train, browsing a busy market, meals with friends. It is trivial in the scheme of things, but I already miss eating out, whether it is visiting the fish and chips shop around the corner or dining in top restaurants in order to write reviews. Events overtook my planned contributions to Vinous Table, made redundant as the hospitality industry teeters on the brink of a vast unknown, surviving from one day to the next. Of course, this predicament must be taken in context against a backdrop of exhibition centers transformed into makeshift hospitals and ice rinks into morgues. Yet it still represents countless livelihoods whose future is a question mark.

Avoiding infection and protecting our loved ones are at the forefront of our minds. There is also yearning for a return to the life snatched away by an invisible enemy. We could take some comfort if we had a date when everything will revert to normal, that light at the end of a tunnel, a point in time when we will be able see Covid-19 in the rearview mirror. We search for hope in experts’ predictions in an unprecedented and bewilderingly fluid landscape with so many unknowns that nobody can say for sure what and when the exit strategy is. So we revisit memories, especially those that are the freshest, just before our world changed.

This brings me to La Trompette. Even without a pandemic, there is no need to wax lyrical about one of London’s most consistently impressive restaurants, which has already been reviewed here. But I visited twice before everything changed, and even though this is not the right place or time to detail the menu in the normal fashion, I resolved to preserve the memory of those occasions. What I intended as a Vinous Table has been rewritten to capture other aspects of a special evening in January, when Vinous forum members congregated for no reason other than to celebrate food, wine, good company and life. I can almost taste that evening’s mouthwatering dishes, the combination of a skilled chef and the interplay of ingredients. I have not forgotten the attentive service of waiters and sommeliers, and I wonder how they’re doing now. I still hear the sound of clinking glasses and conversation prompted by shared bottles. I vividly remember the conviviality and bonhomie that night, the bacchanalia and communal enjoyment of wine and food that is part of human DNA. At this moment, when bad news follows bad news, forcing us to continually process upheaval and implications both personal and societal, we cling to such memories like life buoys in a roiling sea, lest we be swept away into despondent waters where we can no longer glimpse the coastline of normality.