A Chinese acquaintance recently taught me how to fashion a chopsticks holder from the paper they're wrapped in (you simply push it down like a foreskin to achieve a surprisingly sturdy corrugated structure). He also related a curious story about his days as a public health official in Hong Kong, and about an inexplicably popular restaurant called The Singing Sun.
"The food there tasted like dog dirt," he said, "yet there was always a long queue outside, and even though their squid with oyster sauce was the worst I'd ever eaten, I kept going back for more, day after day. I was drawn there irresistibly, just like the other customers, and I always left feeling elated." Eventually, he became so suspicious about the addictive quality of the food that he searched the kitchen, and all was revealed. The owner had decided to boost trade by adding a "special seasoning" to each dish - a seasoning which, under analysis, proved to be pure opium paste.
Although the queue at Bettys often goes into the street and round the corner, I'm not suggesting that they put pure opium paste into their food. No, the reason for the queue is that you cannot reserve tables at this famous tearoom (anyway, crack is the recreational drug of choice in North Yorkshire), so you'll need the patience of Lao Tsu if you want to eat there at a busy time of day. Judging from my experience, you must resign yourself to standing in a slow-moving line for 40 minutes, shuffling past a small museum's worth of 1930s kitsch and artificially faded photographs, as you inch towards the hallowed Alan Bennett territory within, full of palm leaves and waitresses in prewar uniforms serving refined, box-hatted ladies at tea o'clock. All of which is somewhat at odds with the ultra-modern electronic sliding doors, the computerised till and that leper's bell of impersonal modern catering, the "Wait here to be seated" sign.
You can also peruse the menu as you slouch along, although that was hardly necessary in our case, because when my guest and I eventually secured a table we had to wait another half-hour for our order to be taken. The cuisine is allegedly a mixture of Helvetic and Yorkshire traditions (the place was opened in 1919 by a Swiss confectioner, and describes itself as "where the Dales meet the Alps"), but the core dishes are really Italian, similar to the fare you'd encounter in a Tuscan rosticceria. Avoiding such local indelicacies as "Yorkshire Fat Rascal" (an obese scone) and "Yorkshire rarebit with chopped fresh chives in Yorkshire Cobble bread" (a self-aggrandising toastie), I ordered bacon and savoy cabbage rosti, only to find the former ingredient overwhelmed by the latter. Worse, the grated potato base was doused in cream and bland Gruyère, forming an insipid and uninviting texture, and although chutneys were promised as an accompaniment, I had to beg and plead before any arrived.
By now, I was thoroughly disgruntled, but my guest remained surprisingly gruntled, having been seduced by the heritage centre trappings on display and the prospect of a "live pianist" at 6pm (so much better than a dead pianist, I always find). But even she couldn't enthuse about the drearily substantial macaroni, declaring it "a disappointment of magnificent proportions". Whereupon I tried to raise a smile by saying that the problem with Italian cooking is that five days later you're hungry again, but I failed miserably.
We did better with the drink, however, a decent bottle of Alsace gewürztraminer (Müller 2002) being vastly preferable to the feeble Swiss house white (11.5%, I ask you), and organic ginger beer a welcome sight on any menu. But the Yorkshire curd tart that accompanied it was a pale imitation of the wondrously authentic confections I willingly used to queue for years ago, outside Scotts the butchers near the Shambles in York. A good curd tart is all about generosity, but here the chef had seriously stinted on the currants and spices. Ah well, at least the parsimony was reminiscent of Dickensian England at its bleakest, so in that sense it was traditional.
What made me pleased to be here? Certainly not the food, nor the speed of service. But I was pleased that my guest seemed pleased by the experience, even vowing to visit the related olde worlde tearooms in York, Ilkley and Northallerton (all run by Bettys & Taylors). The American visitors at a nearby table also clearly loved the opportunity to step briefly into an anachronistic Britain that only really ever existed in Agatha Christie novels, and why not? I must seem equally naive and ingenuous when I visit Katz's Deli in New York in search of an "authentic" American experience, and grin contentedly at the 1940s "send a salami to your boy in the army" sign that was probably made in 1975.
However, I left with many reservations, not least about the lack of reservations, an unsympathetic policy that can turn what ought to be a pleasure into an ordeal. Why do they do it? Perhaps the management enjoys making us wait, knowing that the British have long considered inefficiency to be a sure sign of excellence, and will therefore gratefully embrace any opportunity to join a queue.
· Bettys: Telephone 01423 877300. Address 1 Parliament Street, Harrogate, North Yorkshire. Price Lunch, around £50 for two (including wine); traditional afternoon tea, £10.75 a person. Open Daily, 9am-9pm. Disabled access.
