67 Pall Mall and a 40th Birthday celebration
16 October 2020
Many thanks to my eldest son Simon who furnished me with conveniently timed flights to and from Pisa and London Heathrow Terminal 5 during the middle of October. His family’s annual holiday for the whole of August in Lucca was cancelled as were most people’s holiday plans disrupted this year. The virus meant that I had not only not seen Jan but my three children’s families that now included seven grandchildren.
I managed to stay with Andrew’s family half the time in Sunbury-on-Thames where my normal desires for a good authentic Indian curry, pints of London Pride and Guinness were satisfied. Good home English cooking continued when I stayed with Simon and family in Bucks that also including some DIY, football, rugby training and tenpin bowling.
Prominent amongst these pursuits was a special event organised by Simon for Andrew’s belated (by one year) 40th birthday party. However, the party consisted of us three ‘lads’ for a day in London’s West End, in the famous, smart Club-land area of St James’s.
Simon spends a lot of his time in St James’s, sharing office space at the prestigious address 67 Pall Mall that is happily the home of the Private Member’s Wine Club. In conversation with talented sommeliers voted the best in London 2019, we toured the bar and wine-tasting area where uniquely you can sample from the world’s largest selection of wine by the glass, a choice of over 800 different wines recently awarded the best wine list in London 2018.
Left: In the wine cellar/vault right: Our private room for the day
Marco, a charming Italian from Puglia, who is responsible for the Club’s store of wine gave us a tour of the cellars that were literally stored in strong-rooms and bank vaults, since the building was once a private bank. Security is important as the members own stocks of wine (club rules allow for storing two cases per member) is valued around £25 million pounds.
Since the objective of the day was to celebrate Andrew’s 40th, Si had organised a private room for our arrival at 11am for as long as we wanted and to enjoy the food and wine of the club. The day was themed around the film trilogy The Godfather, a favourite we all shared. This was particularly poignant since Si had recently been part of a webinar with director of The Godfather Francis Ford Coppola. The interview centred around Coppola’s wine estate Inglenook in the Napa Valley that described as his paradise and passion for producing wine. For sure, one of the six bottles of wine we consumed that day was a bottle of Inglenook.
Dining doesn’t get much better than this!
67 Pall Mall’s passion for wine is matched equally by its passion for food as Head Chef Marcus Verberne explains,
“his team have created a ‘modern European’ menu featuring an ever-changing range of seasonal, locally sourced produce to complement our extensive wine list. Our menu changes with the seasons”.
Our dedicated waiter served us ‘nibbles’ with a bottle of Fleurie, described as a light, silky, supple red Cru Beaujolais produced from the Gamay grape variety. The ‘nibbles’ consisted of British artisan charcuterie with cornichons, pea and gorgonzola arancini, Cumberland sausage rolls, Scotch ‘Burford Brown’ egg covered with Macsween haggis
Whilst chatting and watching Godfather Part I, we were served a choice to share of 8oz Beefburgers with pancetta and onion rings and Penne pasta of venison haunch ragü with sour cherries and chocolate.
Strangely, we felt thirsty enough to visit the Club’s members lounge for a couple of beers before returning to our room for Godfather Part II. Here we sampled a bottle of Coppola’s red wine Inglenook 2011 and the Italian Primtivo Di Manduria that accompanied our main course.
The main course consisted of 45-day dry-aged White Park (an ancient rare British breed of cattle) porterhouse steak served with triple-cooked chips, a choice of chimichurri (an Argentinian accompaniment for grilled meat consisting of chopped parsley, minced garlic, olive oil, oregano and red wine vinegar) and bearnaise sauce and steamed tender-stem broccoli.
During Godfather Part III we sampled the Churros (a fried-dough choux pastry Spanish I origin) with poached Williams pear, hot chocolate sauce and crème Chantilly, together with sticky date pudding, salted toffee sauce and clotted cream. To accompany these two desserts, we had a bottle of Sauternes, the sweet French wine from the Graves region near Bordeaux.
By now we needed to stretch our legs a bit, so we wandered out into St James’s Park were by now it was dark and shared some Tuscan cigars from Lucca. Back in our room we ended the evening on a yet another Lucchese note, a bottle of Tenuta Di Valgiano and possibly a limoncello etc, although by now the memory becomes a little hazy. In the end we arrived promptly back in Sunbury-on-Thames via Uber around midnight. On reflection, it may seem we ate and drank an awful lot but in our ‘defence’ the whole amazing and unforgettable event lasted twelve hours from start to finish!
Many thanks Si and happy birthday Andrew!!