I'm more of a luncher than a diner. I seem to work more in the afternoon and I always prefer to meet someone for lunch. You can eat one tartine and it is sufficient.
The first place I started eating tartines was at a place called Le Cuisine de Bar on the Left Bank in Paris. It is much simpler there, something to nibble on before lunch. Nick, the owner of Tartine, has elaborated on the concept to make it into something more substantial. I first met him 30 years ago when I was at Oxford, at Brown's restaurant. Then he moved to London and finally he opened this place. I think this is the only place in Britain that specialises in tartines.
I think I am quite food-obsessed. My wife Susan is a fantastic cook and we are both looking for freshness and simplicity. I hate sauces and reductions and fussy colours. I would prefer cuisine bourgeois to anything more elaborate; coq au vin, rabbit. I prefer the Mediterranean olive-oil-based cuisine rather than the heavy butter sauces. I get very exercised about the different kinds of peppers and the different kinds of salt. Once you're aware of these things it is impossible to go back. It's inevitably why that finds a role in my fiction.
Throughout my childhood in Africa I ate vast amounts of curry because the quality of the beef and fish was not good. But also vast amounts of fruit like guavas, mangoes and pawpaw from trees in the garden. It was a strange mixture of Anglo-African colonial cooking, groundnut stew and lots of pepper. I don't have a sweet tooth; I like spicy food.
At Gordonstoun the food was disgusting. It was not good institutional food. Like most schoolboys of my era I ate out of the school tuck shop. As soon as it opened you'd go down and buy a packet of Jaffa Cakes and a litre of Coke. We had something that we called cow's afterbirth - milk pudding with red running through it. These early experiences have left me with a strange food schizophrenia - Africa/Scotland, England. I am among the last generation of that kind of colonial child. I look back and savour it but at the time it seemed absolutely normal.
I don't like dinner parties at all. At dinner parties you meet strangers. It's not that I am rabidly antisocial but as you get older you only want to meet friends. So we have kitchen suppers with friends. In France we live near a little village near Bergerac. There is a boucherie, boulangerie, charcuterie, crémerie and two markets a week. The precision with which you can buy food and the knowledge of the people selling it is breathtaking. You can spend 20 minutes talking about the kind of goat's cheese you want.
We have an old farmhouse with some barns and outbuildings. There was an old vineyard on the property and the man to whom we rented some land was a serious winemaker. We had three acres and replanted the vines - Cabernet Sauvignon. Four years later we had our first vintage, Château Pecachard 1996, and subsequently 1998, 2000 and 2001. I don't make a penny out of this - just all the wine I can drink.
I write about food a lot. It's always in my novels. It's a great way of establishing a historical and social period. I wrote a short story called Lunch which I'm very proud of. It is the description of a man's seven lunches in the course of a week but the subtext is that his life is falling apart.
Tartine, 114 Draycott Avenue, London SW3. 020 7589 4981
History
Opened four years ago by Nick Maddison, who was introduced to tartines by Boyd at the Cuisine de Bar in Paris and developed the Tartine-style dish, a kind of open sandwich of fillings (salmon, rare roast beef, shredded duck) on a toasted slice of Poilane bread. On the wine list are two from Boyd's vineyard, Château Pecachard 2001/2005, Côtes de Bergerac and Château Pecachard Rosé.
Most popular dishes
Tartine with buffalo mozzarella, roast vine tomatoes and basil pesto £8.75; tartine with shredded duck, crispy ginger, cucumber and plum sauce £10.50; burger with mustard mayo and French fries £9.95.
Who eats there
Prince William, Kim Cattrall, Patricia Hodge.
Opening times
Mon-Sat 11am-11pm; Sun 11am-10.30pm
