Upton House is an Edwardian country house with an exceptional art collection and very nice gardens. It is owned by the National Trust. Now, the National Trust is a great success – it has managed to preserve more historic buildings than any comparable organisation elsewhere and, basically, provides an easy solution to the eternal question of what to do with the kids on a bank holiday weekend without breaking the actual bank.
The trust has come under some scrutiny in recent years for the heinous crime of “wokeism”. Apparently, this crime occurs by reason of acknowledging some of the more disreputable parts of our national story. Who knew? As Theresa May sort of said, if wokeism means being tolerant, truthful, kind and respectful towards others then I’m all in on woke.
Anyway, I digress. It was the Easter weekend and we wanted to take our daughter and some friends somewhere without breaking the bank. And so off to Upton House it was. The plan was a quick wander round the gardens, lunch in the café then a tour of the artworks in the house.
The flaw in the plan was the café. And before I get started let me make it clear that this was no mom-and-pop operation run by some local ladies offloading spare lemon drizzle cake. Oh no. The café is part of a centrally run National Trust organisation that prescribes the dishes, the ingredients, the suppliers and the prices. So in this review, I am not offering criticism of the staff, who managed the inevitable queues with aplomb.
Rather, it is the choice of food and the prices. I don’t even know which one makes me more annoyed, but let’s start with the choices. Take first the “meals” on offer. There were about 15 choices, but half of them were “baked potato plus” and then a list of student survival favourites: beans, chickpeas, cheese. Not as ingredients to be combined but as sole stand-alone add-ons. For £8.50 each.
Of the 15 or so choices, only two were not vegan or vegetarian. One was baked potato with tuna mayonnaise (in retrospect the best option available) and the other was a small and rather sad-looking fish pie (£12). Technically the “ham and cheese croque” was not vegetarian – no monsieur here, presumably because the National Trust is English and not French? – as it purported to have ham. But inspection of the two we ordered showed no sign of actual ham. Just cheese and bechamel over soggy bread. Looked great, tasted awful. They are reverse toasties. Normally the cheese melts into the bread and all you can see inside is the ham. Here it’s the ham that must have melted away leaving only cheese. Maybe the National Trust has discovered a new type of ham.
A similar story with the sandwiches – if chickpeas are your thing then fill yer boots. The few ham and cheese sarnies were fought over like a virgin wheatsheaf being devoured by a plague of locusts, leaving a pile of unwanted veggie options behind. Egg and cress did well among the undecided. There were also a lot of cakes. I had a “Classic Sponge”. This is what everyone in the country other than National Trust Cafes PLC would call a “Victoria Sponge”. But hey ho what’s in a name and in any event I had more of an issue with how it tasted. Which was not very good.
In the spirit of fairness and balance, I should add that my wife had a very nice pea soup.
I also want to make it clear that I am not in any way opposed to or prejudiced against vegetarian or vegan food. My favourite dish of last year was a cherry tomato risotto at London Stock. I also think that within not very many generations the whole concept of eating the flesh of another sentient being will be condemned as immoral and barbaric.
But it’s not where I am today, albeit I am considering pescetarianism as a first step, and I am sure it is not where most of the members are. These cafes have a captive audience and as a result, are very popular. So is Burger King by the way – it does not mean either is any good. You could feel and hear the disappointment with the choices in the very long queue. But it was too late to find an alternative as you are in the middle of a National Trust property. There is nowhere else to go and the kids are hungry.
Finally, and much more annoying than the lack of choice and poor quality, was the pricing. £4.50 for a small can of ginger beer. Nearly £9 for a croque monsieur containing no actual ham. These are prices I might pay in Mayfair or Soho with a shrug, but they are at rip-off levels for the countryside. To make it worse they are by and large taking this money off people you see with a lot of kids who who are trying to do something educational and interesting with them at the weekend rather than plonking them in front of the telly. These people are trying. The National Trust is not helping.
Now the National Trust as a whole deserves more praise and support than it generally gets from the press, but it needs to sort out whoever is running the cafés. Serve as many chickpea frittatas as you want, but also offer some food that people can persuade their kids to eat, and stop taking the piss and ripping off your visitors with £4.50 cans of ginger beer.
Related: A review of Bokan 38’s afternoon tea – Canary Wharf
