Eating Out Is a Picnic

What with the weather, you might not associate picnics with London, but civilized outdoor dining is all the rage. A sunny noontime will find hordes of Londoners basking on the lawn in Green Park or around the Serpentine in Hyde Park. In fact, for gastronomic flights of alfresco fancy, London can’t be beat.

Picnicking can be an elegant and pleasant alternative to the city’s restaurants, which in the face of current exchange rates are pricey indeed. Food shops do a brisk business even when the weather isn’t great; hotel rooms are perfect for picnicking as well.

While most visitors go to the food halls at Harrods or Fortnum & Mason, savvy Londoners head for Marks & Spencer’s food department. At the store on Oxford Street is a dazzling display of comestibles. Here there are no gentlemen in boaters and long aprons. This is the future, and the culinary specialties of Britain and the world are wrapped in plastic.

Although the presentation is a bit sterile, the quality and variety of produce are hard to beat and the packaging makes everything easy to take out.

All Kinds of Salads

Prepared salads come in all varieties, including a platter of fresh vegetables surrounding a dip for 1.59. Potato salad made with fresh new potatoes cost just half a pound. Slices of asparagus quiche (.79), rolls filled with sausages (.99) and a very good chicken salad (1.69) are other possibilities.

Hot roasted chickens (2.70) and a variety of sandwiches are also for sale. Containers of juice (.29), milk, beer, mineral waters from around the world and a wide selection of wines are sold in an adjoining department. For dessert there is trifle (.38), puddings and fresh strawberries (1.29). Heavy double cream and clotted cream are sold in small containers.

If you long for more atmosphere, next door at Selfridges you can browse among the traditional counters. Clerks will slice smoked salmon from Scotland or cut a piece of York ham while discussing the merits of each.

Selfridges is also a good bet for stocking up on picnic utensils. We saw a cart filled to overflowing with fresh Italian cherries at 1.99 a pound, and another held Belgian strawberries at 1.59 a pound. Next to the game pie (.95 per pound) was a sign warning customers to be careful of finding lead shot in it.

Buy a loaf of bread from the bakery, some cheeses and sliced meats, and perhaps some fruit or a pudding and you have the makings of a perfect picnic. And you should be able to do it for less than 3 per person (about $5).

For sheer excellence in takeout food, no place in London can match Boucherie Lamartine, the small shop run by the Roux brothers, whose restaurants, Gavroche and the Waterside Inn, are considered among the best in Britain.

Everything at Lamartine reflects a French influence: Chickens come from France, the bread is flown over from Paris every day from the ovens of Poilane and there are a wide variety of rare French goat cheeses.

Pascal Michel, the manager, is eager to show visitors the specialties that come in every day. For us he held up a tray of cold poached lobsters covered in glistening aspic and served with half a tomato filled with fresh vegetable salad (4.50 each), and pointed out the cooked chicken covered in a dressing made from extra-virgin olive oil and fresh tarragon (3.50).

Beans in Oil Dressing

A rabbit pie was presented in an elaborately decorated crust (3.75), and as an accompaniment, Michel suggested a salad of tiny French green beans in a light oil dressing (5.50 a pound). He showed us small crocks of duck and pork rillettes that sold for 3.50, with an extra pound deposit on the crock.

Elsewhere in the small shop were 10 terrines of fresh aspic and containing colorful layers of fish, meats and vegetables (5.35 to 6.35 per pound). Fresh foie gras is available all year and small terrines of it are sold for 6.35. We took two small terrines of foie gras (1.50 each) back to our hotel and ate them with toast and tea ordered from room service.

Not far away in Kensington, just a short distance from Harrods, is Jeroboam. Local wine columnist David Wolfe steered us to this tiny cheese-and-wine shop that stocks more than 150 vintages, and it was well worth the trip. The owner, Juliet Harbutt, helped us select cheeses from the display of more than 50 varieties. The shop carries more than 150 cheeses in a year, but many are seasonal.

Harbutt will gladly make up a selection of cheeses and even suggest a wine or two to accompany them. Be sure to ask for a copy of the informative wine-and-cheese list, as it has a wealth of information about some rare cheeses. For 4 to 10 you should get a very nice selection of cheese. Wines are fairly priced, from 8 to 15.

If cost is no object, select a wicker picnic hamper complete with linen napkins, silver cutlery and crystal wine glasses, as generations of royalty and peers of the realm have done. You can visit Fortnum & Mason and have them assemble a picnic hamper of prodigious proportions for your next soiree under the trees.

Hampers can be simple, but the really elaborate ones include vintage champagne, rare pates and cheeses, perhaps some wild game and, of course, bone china and silver as well as a crisp white linen damask tablecloth. They are just the thing for Ascot, Henley or perhaps a theatrical evening in Regents Park. Prices begin at 12.95 for pate, smoked salmon quiche, a green salad, fresh fruit salad, cheese and half a bottle of 1986 Muscadet.

Pulling Out the Stops

For grand occasions consider the Royal Box hamper, which serves two and costs 175. Packed in a hamper with fine linen, crystal and silver cutlery are such delights as fresh beluga caviar, some Strasbourg foie gras , a Chateaubriand, salad, a selection of French and English cheeses, a savarin of cherries, fresh fruit, a bottle of Fortnum & Mason champagne, a bottle of fine Bordeaux and some brandy. Fortnum’s requires that hampers be ordered before 11 a.m. the day before.

Harrods requires three days’ notice and charges 25 extra for a willow hamper. The poached salmon is artfully arranged in crescents on the plate, and carved vegetables add to the presentation. Prices range from 16 a person to about 30, with wine extra.

One can get simpler hampers from Partridges, a neighborhood store near Sloane Square. With a day’s notice they will prepare a hamper of cold finger food for 9.50 or a feast that includes whole smoked baby chicken, tiny new potatoes in a mint dressing, a fresh strawberry tart and several cheeses for 19.50 per person. They will be happy to suggest other menus; almost any suitable picnic food is available.

If you need a special occasion to order a hamper, Hobbs & Co. lists the dates of all the socially significant events of the season on the back of its picnic menu; they even include pheasant and fox hunts that extend into December. Hobbs will pack hampers that cost from 16 to 40, with special orders that can extend the prices into the stratosphere. Hobbs will arrange a serving staff and a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce for your outing.

Recommended: Fortnum & Mason, 181 Piccadilly, London W1, phone 01-734-8040. Harrods, Knightsbridge, London SW1; phone 01-730-1234. Hobbs & Co., 29 S. Audley St., London W1; phone 01-409-1058. Jeroboams, 24 Bute St., London SW7; phone 01-225-2232. Boucherie Lamartine, 229 Ebury St., London SW1; phone 01-730-4175. Marks & Spencer, 173 Oxford St., London W1; phone 01-437-7722. Partridges, 132-134 Sloane St., London SW1; phone 01-730-0651. Selfridges, Oxford Street, London W1; phone 01-629-1234.