No Fool Like an Old Fool

Rhubarb comes ever earlier. The earliest rhubarb I have seen – the finest, slenderest, most elegant forced Yorkshire rhubarb – was at the River Café a week before Christmas. There is nothing we chefs hate more than a rival gaining an ingredient ahead of them in the season. Since we share the same greengrocer, I berated him for not telling me about the rhubarb. He cleverly argued that since I was such a stickler for seasonality, he didn’t think I would have thought it right to be serving rhubarb before Christmas.