A toast to the roast

The tables at The Goring Hotel are generously spaced

To master the craft of roasting a large joint of meat - whether it be beef, lamb, pork or perhaps the very finest of all, a loin of veal - is one of the many joys of good cookery.

All at once, it sorts out the men from the boys. Although there is nothing wrong with a best-end of lamb as a roast for just two people, it is almost a mimsy thing compared with the magisterial, dripping joint.

Artistically speaking, the former is akin to painting by numbers, whereas the latter will always be more the result of a successful morning's work in a life class.

There are some serious cooks who now consider the dining-room roast an anachronism. I suggest that they are misguided. Perhaps they can only cook small food?

So my first stop is the THE GORING HOTEL, in Victoria, for luncheon. "The Dining Room" (Mr Goring's preferred nomenclature) is as pleasing a hotel dining-room as one could imagine.

Within its cream-painted, panelled walls, occasional dividing screens separate some of the most widely spaced, dimensionally generous and pristine damask-dressed tables to be found anywhere in London.

Andrew Baker, the smoothest host, seems to purr his way around this convivial, almost club-like room. And to ask of him something slightly astray from the menu causes not the slightest raising of an eyebrow.

Typically, you see, I wished to eat a first-course-size serving of the maincourse, cold poached fillet of wild salmon with a pea-and-mint salad ... but without the new potatoes.

Although the fish was prettily wrapped in thin slices of overlapping, lightly vinegared cucumber "scales" in the quaintly oldfashioned, wedding-buffet style, it was, sadly, over-cooked.

By contrast my friend Michael Birkett's glazed lobster omelette was superb. Constructed in the same fashion as The Savoy Grill's Omelette Arnold Bennett, this small, mottled yellow cushion of a thing was nursery soft and altogether eggy, lobster-rich, imperceptibly cheesy and just-set. It was Michael who was purring now.

Graciously, I gave him the option of an early-season grouse (plus £2.50 on the set lunch), to follow. He, being the wellbroughtup tackler of such things, chose to eat it on the bone.

If not, however, our Mr Baker would have been there in a trice to remove all offending debris from its perfectly cooked, rosy-hued flesh. Bread sauce was particularly good. Delicious cabbage, too, in sweet, buttery furls.

I also had some of that cabbage with my roast loin of pork with sage-and-onion stuffing and apple sauce. It was thinly carved from the very final chump (rump) of the loin, and had remained a lightly blush-pink throughout the entire lunch service until about 2.15pm. And still the crackling crackled.

It just shows that if a kitchen is expert at roasting excellent meat and can deliver a good, hot gravy, together with diligent service, why remove such dishes from our eating pleasure?

And who peels celery any more? Well, they do at The Goring. All crisp and thin and cool and tender alongside a tray of British cheeses.

Although I am not the greatest fan of blue Stilton (Roquefort, for me, remains the finest blue cheese), the wedge offered here was uniformly blue-veined, deeply savoury and absolutely made by eating it with that perfect celery.

There is a very serious wine list (a truly lovely Chassagne Montrachet 2000 from Jean-Noel Gagnard seemed to be a relative bargain, at £48). The set lunch is something of a bargain and makes The Goring definitely a good thing.

The Goring Hotel, 15 Beeston Place, SW1 (020 7396 9000). £29.50 set lunch (plus coffee, £3.50, and an optional 12.5 per cent service charge). However, for this you may choose from a menu of 10 first courses, 18 main courses and two vegetarian options. Lunch for two, about £100.

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