Tea at Trianon: Beyond Borscht

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Beyond Borscht

Russian cuisine in London. From The Spectator:

If the idea of Baltic herrings muffled in beetroot sounds a little too authentic, there are places which straddle the East-West divide. Bob Bob Ricard in Soho is one of them. Bob Bob Ricard rolls with a much loucher crowd than Stolle and on the inside looks a little like Baz Luhrmann’s Deco rendering of Gatsby Manor. The food, which seeks to find common ground between Russian and western European cooking, is nice if not spectacular. What you pay for is the trimmings, which include a personal champagne button at every table. You might say it’s gauche. In certain quarters of Moscow’s richest districts, it’s the new authentic. Across town, on the edge of London Fields, is Zakuski, which on Saturdays sells a range of flavoursome and reworked Russian salads from a stall in Broadway Market, as well as catering for events. The word zakuski is normally translated into English as ‘starter’, but for Russians it is something closer to the Swedish idea of a smorgasbord, whereby one takes a little from a range of hot and cold dishes. Salads play a starring role in many Russian smorgasbords and the stall serves the best of them, along with a few fusion variants. On a recent visit I had a salad with beetroot, walnut and prune and another with aubergine, tahini and garlic. (Read more.)