The evening service · licensed half
Five tables behind the pass
The dining room is the back room, one step down, facing the beds. It holds five tables, laid for four, which is twenty places and no more. The hatch to the kitchen is open all evening, so the room is quiet in the way a small room is quiet rather than in the way a dining room is meant to be: you can hear the pan.
The evenings, and the two sittings
- Thursday
- doors 6.30, one sitting, kitchen stops 9.00
- Friday
- doors 6.15, sittings at 6.15 and 8.15, kitchen stops 9.45
- Saturday
- doors 6.15, sittings at 6.15 and 8.15, kitchen stops 9.45
- Tuesday and Wednesday
- the room is not open; it is the counter only
Thursday is one sitting because the window is three hours and a sitting is a hundred and five minutes: a second one does not fit, and we would rather lose the cover than hurry the first table out. Friday and Saturday open a quarter of an hour earlier and run until a quarter to ten, which is three and a half hours, and two sittings of a hundred and five minutes fit exactly into that with nothing to spare. That is why the second sitting on those nights is not confirmed until the first is laid.
The sum behind all of this is on the front page, with every step of it written out, so you can put your own evening into it before you write to us.
What a sitting is here
A sitting is the table, for a hundred and five minutes, from the time we agreed and not from the time you arrive. We do not clear a plate to free the table, and we do not bring a bill before it is asked for. What the hundred and five minutes buys is the certainty that the party booked after you is not standing in the counter room while you finish.
The whole board is cooked to order off the same stove the counter used all day, by whoever wrote the board that week. There is no second kitchen and no second menu. The slow dish, started the day before, is the only line that is ever waiting on you rather than the other way round.
A party of five or six
two tables joined, so it costs the room two
Five or six people means two tables pushed together, which takes four places out of the room for the whole sitting. We will do it gladly, and we need to know before the week is written, because the board gets shortened when the room is going to be heavy.
The early sitting with children
the quarter past six, not the quarter past eight
Children are welcome at the early sitting on a Friday or Saturday, and on Thursday whenever the room is not full. There are no separate portions written on the board; we split a plate at the pass and bring two, which is what the board is short enough to allow.
A table that runs over
what happens at a hundred and five minutes
On a Thursday nothing happens: there is no sitting behind you and the room is yours until the kitchen stops. On a Friday or Saturday the second sitting is standing at the door, so we will come and say so once, quietly, about ten minutes before the time.
The licence, and the short list
The licence belongs to this room and to the evening. It is the half of the business the counter is not, and it is why the company carries two trade descriptions rather than one. Drink is served here alongside the food.
The list is written on the board with everything else, in the same hand, and it changes when the board changes. It is short on purpose: a few bottles we can describe honestly, cider from up the valley, and something soft that is not sweet. If we have run out of a bottle, the line is rubbed out rather than quietly replaced with another vintage.
Getting to the room: in at the front door, through the counter room, one step down. The step is shallow but it is there, and the doorway is narrow enough that it is worth telling us in advance if it matters, so we can put you at the table nearest the door.
How a table is taken