Please note that since writing this blog post, Artist has closed down
A while ago I wrote a post about fashion and food: I would cook for the girls if Andrea would bestow on us her Spanish-style ‘What Not to Wear’ advice. Last weekend, the time came for me to relinquish my wardrobe to her critical eye and allow my clothes, shoes and accessories to be subjected to the Basque Country’s answer to Trinny & Susannah…
Quickly, however, she realised that the only way to get through to me about my fashion faux pas was to draw foodie parallels: the bag I’d been merrily carting along with me to weddings and such like was, apparently, akin to the powdered cosmopolitan mix I’d so disdained when another friend admitted to owning it. Meanwhile, my numerous pairs of (Jurassic) jeans were like soggy vine-less tomatoes – old and tasteless.
As a result of all this, we went shopping. I spent lots of dinner money (not quite sure how I’m going to pay for all the caponata and chianti in Italy in a week’s time) and came back with shoes, tops, bags, trousers and (wait for it) a waistcoat.
‘It’s lesbian chic,’ Andrea informed me confidently. Right.
So, on Saturday night, I decided to take my new lipstick lesbian look for a night out, and it started in Artist. Frankly, I probably couldn’t have chosen a worse venue for my waistcoat experiment. I should’ve been in some trendy Soho-esque bar full of chiselled waiters, brown leather seating and obscure cocktails. As it was, I chose a kitsch, over-decorated Lebanese restaurant in an out-of-the-way corner of the Sarphatipark run by a man for whom nineties jeans would’ve been positively cutting edge.
Still, things got better. A carafe of house red was placed, foil covered, on the table, and who was I to argue? I’d heard good things about the mezze, so we ordered baba ghanoush, (aubergine and tahini dip), labne (yoghurt-based dip), dolmas (stuffed vine leaves), fatayer (a kind of Lebanese version of calzone) with minced lamb and pine nuts, and fatoush (a Lebanese salad made with crisp bread). The latter was less than inspired but the labne was one of the best I’ve tasted. The rest fell somewhere in between.
The bill was shopping-friendly – i.e. affordable, even after a Kalverstraat spree. As for the waistcoat, will it be getting another outing? Probably. I’m off to Soho soon.
