Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. William Morris said that.
Fittingly, the new gallery (http://www.qype.co.uk/place/197850-William-Morris-Gallery-London) that celebrates his life, and its associated Tea Room are indeed very beautiful. The Tea Room an extension, returning symmetry to the grand house Morris lived in is light, airy and well-designed. So far so good. And it's situated in a lovingly recently restored house that is full of his beautiful objects and designs, and is succeeding, rather wonderfully (particularly since not so long ago, the gallery was in danger of being shuttered), in drawing in punters from far and wide. But and you knew there was a but coming
While the space for the Tea Room is indeed beautiful, the food being served there on my recent visit was neither useful or beautiful. The catering has been contracted out to Just Hospitality (http://www.justhospitality.co.uk/) . Now, I know little about the firm and they might be all kinds of a wonderful social enterprise. But while service at the Tea Rooms was good, the entire thing had a very strong whiff of corporate catering.
William Morris, as the above quote implies, was against modern industrialisation yet here, in his former home, we have the kind of bland, corporate food that we find in staff canteens, airports and yes, far too many other museums and galleries. Industrialised food which, if it's been prepared by hand, it's certainly prepared without any sort of love or passion to it, somewhere on a conveyor line.
Our order:
Hot chocolate frothy, pretty, utterly devoid of taste
Goats cheese and roasted vegetable panini clearly, like the salad (see below), shipped in and then simply stuck under the sandwich press to serve cold, bland, oily vegetables that had been sitting for hours somewhere tasted of nothing
Pesto pasta salad with goats cheese, roasted peppers and rocket from a seriously uninspired vegetarian range of options (the only other option we could have gone for was a cheddar ploughmans), this repeated the experience of bland and oily coming in a suitably depressing and greaseproof cardboard box.
This is food designed to be able to sit for a long time. It's sub-Pret-A-Manger food. It's bland fuel tarted up to appeal to the middle classes but utterly missing any freshness or flavour.
Truly, I can't imagine Mr Morris being very happy if he'd found such contracted-out rubbish being served up in his own home.
Go for a pot of tea and to soak up the room architecture if you must. But for food, might I gently suggest the nearby Le Delice, La Cafeteria or several other spots will serve you something much closer to William Morris' ideal of beautiful and useful. read more