Happiness at the Magdalen Arms

A few (ahem) years ago my school careers adviser asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. To which I replied 'restaurant critic in the Sunday Times'. Which, seeing as I haven't really grown up yet, would still stand as my answer.

I am therefore taking it as a fateful sign that a career change could be impending as AA Gill's visit to the Magdelen Arms - chronicled in the wonderful Table Talk - happened to fall on the day after the boat race, just like ours did nearly six years later.

Possibly one reason I don't already write for the ST relates to what my adviser termed my 'energy efficiency', an epithet I was secretly rather proud of; everyone knows that procrastination and productivity are secretly bedfellows.  As a case in point, and to save my self some time thinking of my own words, here are a few from the master's visit, that I found when aimlessly Googling, to set the scene.

Oxford, the day after the Boat Race, was humming with young people in all their messy, bright, sloppy, gabby, gaudy fecundity, like streets of blown tulips.

Nobody mentioned the Boat Race, nor that little man who leapt into the river to protest at, what? Elitism? Which was funny, as rowers are, in many ways, the bottom of the food chain, damp and muscly, mocked for their bookshelf shoulders and bullock’s thighs.

This is a big pub, with a restaurant set behind screens at one end of a barn-like room. It’s more pubby than gastro. The Blonde and I took Jemima Khan, the film producer John Batsek and Annabel Rivkin. A lot of big tables of cluster dates. This kitchen was recommended to me by one of the best cooks I know. It is the gustatory outreach of the Anchor & Hope in Lambeth, where I recently had some exceptional ducks’ hearts on toast after The Duchess of Malfi. It has done a great deal of epicurean proselytising and is the best template I know for pub food.

At the risk of sending my last remaining readers off to The Times bookshop, to read some proper food criticism (and also to avoid being sued for copyright) I'll give the ctrl alt v keys a long enough rest to say that my company on the day was the, no less exciting, Ewing. And while there were no blown tulips, there was a jaunty vase of daffs to provide a backdrop to my fino sherry aperitif.

The menu is a roll call of big, butch things you want to eat that changes on a a daily basis, sometimes twice daily, so it doesn't matter too much when you drip trails of olive oil, from heels of homemade bread you've dragged through a golden puddle of the stuff, all over it as you're trying to make up your mind.

Actually, that's a bit of a fib, as they also update the menu online, meaning I had already been perusing it on the train that morning, desperately crossing all fingers and toes that the Hereford steak and ale suet crust pie with buttered greens was on the menu. I wasn't disappointed, although the Ewing may have been a little, as she had seen the braised lamb neck for two with dauphinoise spuds and pickled red cabbage.

As you can see, she was excited after it arrived, and frankly, with such a bronzed and burnish sight, not glimpsed since we walked along the beach in Fano one summer in the height of August, who wouldn't be?

It was equally inviting down below, huge chunks of melting beef in a deep, glossy gravy with the odd tangle of sweet onion and, unusually, a chunk of red pepper or two that wasn't amiss in the richly beery morass. The dish of perfectly crisp buttered greens served alongside was a joyous tribute to the wonder of cruciferous veg. A truly first rate Sunday lunch.

As there's never too much of a good thing, the Ewing went for a pastry-based finale as well. A generous wodge of crisp-bottomed pear and almond tart with a pillowy frangipane centre, accompanied by a ball of good vanilla ice cream.

If I was really getting into the spirit, I'd probably have described my buttermilk pudding with poached rhubarb as wobbling like a stroke's pectoral as they pass under Barnes Bridge, but, thankfully, I'm not.

The Blonde had also ordered it, and said it had too much gelatine; perhaps they had heeded the write-up, as mine was near on perfect and, as a unwanted consequence, under near constant attack from the Ewing across the table.

Obviously Adrian gets the last word; the Magdalen has a lot to smile about. A smile, as opposed to its burlesque sister, the laugh, doesn’t necessarily imply humour, or comedy, rather a general happiness, wellbeing, a shared conviviality, and it doesn’t have to be out loud.