Andrew Kay goes al fresco with a classic picnic from Carluccio’s
Great outdoors
Three into my Glyndebourne season and finally weather decent enough for a picnic. I grew up with year round picnics but these days I am less hardy and require at least enough sunshine to take the chill out of our long wintered earth. ‘The Marriage Of Figaro’ was a stunning opera to frame a good Mediterranean picnic and where better to get one than one of my favourite restaurant chains, Carluccio’s? It’s not the first time I have used their services for a picnic, and I have never been disappointed. In truth I have always been more than impressed.
This year’s model is a revised version of last year’s menu, a few tweaks here and there that make it interesting. We started off by tucking into a fine box of antipasti misti, chilli stuffed olives that packed a kick, caper berries, excellent artichoke hearts, balsamic onions and soft cheese. With a glass of prosecco it certainly set us up for a walk around the ponds and then in for the first half.
By the interval we were rather peckish so as the audience drifted off to one of the three excellent restaurants we headed for my favorite corner, a stone bench and a series of dishes that once again proved to be a delight.
To start, the very lightest of goat’s cheese tarts, crisp pastry and sharp fluffy cheese, very delicious and rather generous in size too. On the side two rich hunks of red wine and radicchio focaccia were more than satisfying, in fact we ate only one and not all of that. A salad of pearl barley with broccoli and toasted hazelnuts scattered with rocket was both creamy and refeshing, and again very generous.
The salad Panzanella with cherry tomatoes, olives, celery, roasted peppers and basil was lovely, a vibrant mix that was well dressed and rather moreish, the bag of sourdough croutons went unopened sadly, a carb too far at that point, especially as there was still another rather generous main dish.
Chicken breast roasted with a herb crust was succulent and deliciously tasty, and again very generous. The parsley and tarragon crust was a delight, not too strident but not without character. It came on a bed of baby lettuce leaves and a salad of waxy potatoes with red onion and spicy salami that was again generously present and rather effective.
To finish there were two rather pretty strawberry tarts, crisp choux pastry filled with cream cheese and piled high with strawberries dressed with balsamic vinegar. They were sweet but not too sweet, and sharp, but not too sharp.
Both Mr R and I have decent appetites but confess that we were beaten and I brought home the left overs in the pretty blue chill bag that comes as part of the £45 deal. Now that works out at £22.50 each for a four-course supper with enough left over for lunch the next day. In fact, if you bought a few extras the package would handsomely feed three, if not four.
On the train home I also remembered there had been a bar of chocolate in there too, but we were too full of Mr Mozart’s fine music and Mr Carluccio’s fine food. Carluccio’s picnic come in three categories, classic and vegetarian at £45 and bambini for one at £10.
Picnics should be booked no less than 24 hours in advance from Carluccio’s. For details visit www.carluccios.com
