When it comes to eating outside, it’s all about the vibe

One summer’s day, about a decade ago, I ate lunch in the garden of an ancient Sussex pub blessed with such perfect set design I hated myself for loving it. We sat upon a terrace of ancient slabs, rubbed smooth by centuries of footfall, overlooking a pasture from which rose the trill of children’s laughter. Beyond it, through the trees, a church spire could be glimpsed, piercing the Tory-blue sky, and you could hear the swell of the London Symphony Orchestra seated over on the cricket pitch, playing Nimrod from Elgar’s Enigma Variations. I may have made up the bit about the LSO.

I cannot recall anything about the food I ate that day at what was then Moonrakers in Alfriston, at least not without checking. (Having looked it seems there was lemon sole, a bit of chicken with salsify and a chocolate parfait to finish. It was a whole delicious table full of middle-class privilege, fashioned from protein and carbs.) I said at the time that, with a setting this perfect, the cooking didn’t have to be glorious. It just needed not to be bad. It wasn’t. I mostly recall feeling like a willing extra in a Richard Curtis movie called Lunch, Actually. (If you Google the review, you’ll see I’ve just quoted myself. So, shoot me. It’s not like I repeated the gag about the location being hardcore porn for Ukip members.)

That’s the thing about eating outside. It’s all about the vibe. As this week’s magazine celebrates the joys of gardens it’s time to unpack what makes the outdoor eating experience tick not least because, it seems very likely that the first restaurant experiences to return after this crisis will be without walls or ceilings. We will all be eating outside. Let’s first acknowledge that the great British weather is not generally a willing accomplice. As I write, it’s kerbstone to chimney clear skies out there. By tomorrow it’s probably going to be blowing the sort of gale that won’t just raise goose bumps, so much as a whole honking flock. We must always make an accommodation with the forecast.

Which is what makes Riley’s Fish Shack, on the beach at Tynemouth, half an hour from Newcastle, so beguiling. The “restaurant” – those inverted commas are working hard there – is two shipping containers, banged together. There’s a wood-fired oven in the open kitchen that might provide warmth and a beach outside, dotted with firepits. It closes only when storms threaten injury – for this is the northeast, where they don’t hold with hypothermia. Tousled children run around deck chairs, the wind blows and you hunker down over groaning plates of pure cardboard.

Do I need tell you my lunch was a marvel? There were fillets of the freshest mackerel, the skin grilled to a blackened bubble and crunch, with roast potatoes and chopped salads that were so rugged they recalled late-career Harrison Ford. There were pearly fillets of plaice en papillote with brown shrimps, and empanadas of spiced salmon, enclosed in their own smoky flatbreads.

So yes, the food at Riley’s is very good indeed, especially at the prices. Main courses are mostly around a tenner. But it’s the air of the modestly intrepid that comes from eating on a beach, which makes it. I went in the autumn, or what we in London call winter, with a harsh wind blowing off the North Sea, and loved every minute. Each mouthful got a boost from the externals. It was a genuine exercise in augmented reality. They are now delivering various ingredients and food boxes and, I suspect, with every finger and limb crossed, may be better placed than most to reopen, given the social-distancing potential of a beach.

The greatest of outdoor experiences do not, however, always demand wide open expanses. They can be urban, too. I once had a lovely, still afternoon, amid London’s summer heat, in the courtyard at the back of Toto’s, a fancy Knightsbridge Italian, that is no longer with us. Lush foliage scrambled up the cream-washed walls and the roar of the city was reduced to a dull hum. Eating out there felt like the adult equivalent of that fabulous day when your primary school teacher said you could have lessons outside under the conker tree because it was sunny and almost the end of term.

There was a salad of asparagus with an egg yolk and flakes of summer truffle. There was spaghetti with pecorino and cracked black pepper served, as the menu said, “al dente in the Italian style, but if you wish them cooked longer, it can be done”. I wasn’t going to argue with the kitchen. Why ruin the mood? There was an orange and mascarpone tart. Eaten inside, by the glowering Belgian fireplace, I’m sure it would have been lovely. Outside, it was sublime.

I have more complex, though still weirdly fond feelings about that hilariously camp Chelsea old-stager La Famiglia. In the 1970s and 80s the walled back garden, with its retractable awnings for rainy evenings, was filled with stars of the sort they don’t quite make any more: the likes of Brigitte Bardot, David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton. Fashion has never exactly troubled the menu (now available for takeaway), which is great because the modern clientele, so many with the cheery orange skin tones that might involve a trip to Boots, hasn’t really kept up with it either. You always went to La Famiglia to see and be seen, and always outside where possible. In the current lockdown, I would kill for a bit of seeing and being seen, whatever the company.

But the outdoor eating space I yearn for most is the urban garden at the back of the Hackney Church Brew Co in north London, a gravel yard furnished with picnic tables and illuminated by fairy lights overhead, beneath the friendly boughs of London plane trees. When you eat in a space like this, formality crumbles. It’s all about the appetite and the soundtrack of babbling voices.

Elliot Cunningham’s live-fire barbecue operation, Lagom (roughly Swedish for “just enough”), suits it perfectly; in the falling dusk, the plates of sticky glazed pork belly or feather blade of beef, coal-roasted beetroot or courgette with chilli and mint, become mere shapes that you illuminate briefly with the torch on your phone. Then you just get stuck in and congratulate yourself for being there. Cunningham has been doing delivery of his smoked produce, which is now available across the UK. My advice: get a load of what he’s got and heat it up at home. Then take it outside and eat it there. No, it’s not quite a cheery Hackney garden. Nor will it be Moonrakers or Riley’s or Toto’s. But it will be dinner outside. And right now, we should all take it where we can get it.

News bites

Skosh in York has launched a weekly, changing, dinner-in-a-box for two, priced at around £50. Each box will contain bread and butter, a starter, a main, a cheese course and pudding. A test run included smoked haddock puris, poached trout with wild garlic nahm jim, and barbecue hoisin pork collar with a chilled noodle and spring vegetable salad. There will also be optional extra courses, for example lobster and watermelon salad or truffle-stuffed Tunworth cheese with fresh honeycomb. Boxes are for collection only. Visit skoshyork.co.uk

Meanwhile, in Stoke-on-Trent, outside caterer Ohana Eats is now keeping the city fed by delivering classy afternoon teas. Each box for two costs £20 and includes eight finger sandwiches (crusts off; but of course), two of their own cakes and a scone each, clotted cream, Tiptree jam and Yorkshire teabags. Each additional person is £10. Booking are being taken a couple of weeks ahead via direct messages on their Facebook page where they are @ohanaeatsuk

And finally, Hugh Phillips Gower Butcher has teamed up with other traders in Swansea Market to provide a delivery service including everything from baked goods and eggs, through pantry items to fresh fruit and veg. They even have flour. Oh, and this being Swansea, they also have that very local delicacy, faggots. The delivery service is both for the Swansea area and, through couriers, nationwide. Top marks for their web address, which is bestonlinebutcher.co.uk

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1