A la Colthard; Memories Of China
These days I seem to be spending half my life in restaurants who had their zenith 20 years ago. Yesterday I met some close friends of my late parents Bill and Sylvette Davis at Memories of China. This was once Ken Lo’s Memories of China, which says it all. Ken played tennis and ran his restaurant well into his eighties. I have said before that high-end Chinese and Indian dining is defined more by decor and location than food. Memories of China uses the space well to provide privacy and atmosphere. Off my head I cannot think of a better configured restaurant. We chose starters of one dim sum, prawn toast and spare ribs. All tasty enough if traditional fare. For our mains we had beef in black bean sauce, mixed shitake mushrooms. All devoured. Bill ordered an excellent bottle of Sicilian Red. The bill came to £118 and I thought these days not bad value.
Bill came to England aged 16. He was city editor of the Evening Standard 9 years later and in his time presented The World At One, edited Punch and founded High Life. I mentioned the Tickler test to him. He said that the problem with shares is there are 2 different performers: the market and the company and these two may not be linked.
Afterwards I met Alice Mansfield to see the Rembrandts, the problem was so did at least another 500 people. I was left with the feeling that brilliant as his later works undoubtedly are the discomfort level of standing and trying to gain a spot to appreciate in the scrum was so high that this outweighed everything but then I know as much about art as high finance !!!
