Unconfined (for the moment at least)

Pizza! (Gorgonzola and Parma Ham)

As some of you have seen on Twitter, I have been out for a meal, in (well, outside) an actual restaurant! After a certain amount of dithering, and should-we, shouldn’t we, we did, and it was lovely. A very local restaurant has a nice terrace over looking the river (there’s a car park on the other side, but it’s artfully screened out with plants) and had published lots of info on their website about how they were managing their re-opening. When we got there, all the staff were wearing masks, and the tables were well spaced out, so it felt pretty safe. We did use a lot of hand sanitiser though.


The restaurant in question – it’s called Café du Soleil – has a proper wood fired pizza oven, so we had pizza, and it was marvellous. I also had beef carpaccio to start and panna cotta and strawberries to finish. And wine, of course. I’m not sure I’d feel safe inside a restaurant at the moment, but hopefully we can eat outside again.

View of the restaurant from our table

There are only three issues with this as a strategy: 1) The British weather. 2) We’re in the middle of a city, and there aren’t that many places with proper outside areas – there are a few pubs, but I’m not yet ready to deal with the British all-day drinker. There are a few places with tables on the pavement, but streets in Canterbury tend to be narrow, so they’d only work for quieter times. 3) The blasted virus itself, and whether it will continue to feel safe, even outside. Since pubs and restaurants opened two weeks ago, infections have stopped falling, and are even showing signs of rising, both nationally and where we are in Kent. Given that the English government’s approach now seems to be ‘Let’s pretend it’s all over and hope we’ve got a vaccine before anyone notices it isn’t’ I can’t see any possible increase being dealt with, so…

Dessert: Panna cotta with strawberries (I forgot to take a pic of the starter) 

But, at least I’ve had at least one nice meal out this summer, which is one more than I thought I might. And, as I can’t see myself braving a Saturday night out for a while, I’ll still be around for Confined Cocktails.