Things to do in Chichester Part II

After Cass, I headed into town, to the Pallant House Gallery. A fusion of a Grade One listed Queen Anne townhouse and a neat clean modern building, Pallant House boasts one of the finest collections of modern British Art outside the capital.

One of the highlights for me was a St Ives room which matched some fine Bernard Leach (and other) pots with a Barbara Hepworth sculpture, a Ben Nicholson drawing, and a classic Alfred Wallis ship painting; so simple yet so rare to see these artists together.

Elsewhere two very good Lucie Rie pots were matched with a Henry Moore figure. It was all just so right.

They had a big Patrick Caulfield exhibition on, which I kind of whizzed through, finding nothing much to detain me.

The prints room too was good with an exhibition of pre WWII landscapes by Paul Nash, Ethelbert White and others.

Then it was off to the Oxmarket Centre of Arts for a selling exhibition of good work, most done by local artists and very reasonably priced. By this time, the Mrs had sauntered through her 25 miles and I was summoned to Goodwood racetrack to greet her as she jumped the final fence.

We ate like kings in Chichester by the way. Really good fish at the peculiarly named Dining Room at Purchase’s, a lovely open top mackerel sandwich on onion bread at the Field & Fork restaurant at Pallant House, and quite simply one of the best Indian meals I have ever had at Masala Gate. The fish pakora was sensational. My main course came in the kind of traditional meets modern style London restaurants often aim for and fail: a well cooked and flavoured piece of sea bass atop a tower of aloo sag, with a crispy pakora perched on top, and a drizzle of tomato chutney reduction. Marvellous.