Lunch for a fiver - White Hart

I look on the White Hart menu board, and see, to my delight, that one of my favourite dishes is on offer. Gnocchi in Cheese Sauce. Only £4.50. I confront a waiter carrying a large tureen of soup, who takes me over to a serving hatch.
“What do you want?” he says in a Yorkshire accent, balancing the soup precariously on a ledge.
“The gnocchi, please,” I reply, pronouncing it in the Italian way. Call me pretentious, but I call these little potato doughballs ‘knee-ocky’. He looks at me blankly. I repeat the order.
“The Gnocchi. Gnocchi?” More blank looks. I decide for a radical solution, hardening the ‘g’ and sounding the ‘h’.
“Can I have the ‘gernochy’?” I hate this solution, but it works. The penny drops. I go and wait in the newly refurbished front bar, all wooden beams and cigarette smoke.

Within three minutes my order arrives, carried by a cheerful teenage waitress. “Your gnocchi,” she says, in the Italian way. Half the plate is filled with gnocchi, the other half with roast potatoes, cabbage and boiled carrots. This would be considered highly unconventional in Italy. I decide to treat the plate as a two-course meal. The gnocchi are delicious, their bland chewiness set off nicely by the strong cheese sauce. The vegetables, my secondo piatto, are tasty too. I decide that I’ll come again. Maybe they’ll serve bruschette. AG