Mulga Room
People

A quiet Monday for the inner circle

Once in a while the house invites its regular guests to a Monday supper at which the kitchen tries something new. This time it was a lemon tart.

People

A supper for honest critics

A teacup and saucer on an ornate round table

The inner circle is a short list of regular guests, and on a quiet Monday it fills one end of the dining room. Caroline Howard sets the table with a plain cloth and a tea light, the lamps are dimmed a little, and Trevor Rossi comes out of the kitchen wiping his hands and looking, as he always does on these evenings, faintly anxious.

He had been working on a lemon tart for weeks. The pastry had been too thick, then too thin, then too sweet, and the filling had set like rubber on two occasions. The version brought to the table was thin, crisp, filled with a glossy lemon curd and finished with a little cream at the side.

The circle ate in a hush. A station manager asked for a second slice and was refused, on the grounds that there were others waiting. A retired nurse said it was the best tart she had eaten in thirty years. Simon Novak said nothing at all, which Trevor eventually decided to take as a good sign.

Notes from the table

What the circle said

Reviews were generous but not uncritical. Two guests thought the pastry could be a shade shorter, and one asked for more zest. Trevor wrote all of it in a small notebook, and the following week the tart appeared on the card with the pastry rolled thinner and a note about zest taped inside the kitchen door.

Why we do it

The Monday supper is not marketing. It is a way of keeping the kitchen honest. Regulars are the people who will notice if a dish slips by a degree, and who will say so quietly, with affection. Nobody pays for the evening beyond the cost of their own meal, and nobody receives anything for attending.

How to join the circle

Anyone aged 18 or over can ask Caroline at the door, or write to the address in the footer. There is no fee, no rank and no privilege, only the occasional invitation to eat something new and tell us what you think.