Jamfaced

Lunch for the wife

2012-01-10T12:05:00.001Z

Palazzo Versace, Surfer's Paradise

2011-09-28T16:54:00.001+01:00

Walking into the foyer the first thing to hit you is the smell. Mugged by the combination of rosemary and floor cleaner they seem to be pumping into the place, you don't have much of chance to take in the surroundings . "It's our signature fragrance", the concierge helpfully informs me, as I splutter onto the immaculate marble floor. That the Palazzo Versace has a signature fragrance is no real surprise, that it smells like what you'd imagine the Sloth scene in Seven smells like is something of a shocker. You soon realise that the whole enterprise, like the smell, is somewhat shocking.

The foyer itself is the fever dream of a menopausal Italian suburban housewife. A vast chandelier looms like the mother ship in Close Encounters, the floor is a shining expanse dotted here and there with the sort of furniture you would expect to find in Silvio Berlusconi's sex dungeon. Walking through the hallways the walls are dripping with cheap looking reproductions of Versace fashion photos, all seemingly from the the early '90's and mostly involving super models and Jon Bon Jovi modelling soft furnishings. You soon realise they've only licensed a handful so the images are repeated again and again. As constantly assaulted as you are with the apparent trappings of luxury, you feel a bit guilty noticing the cost cutting.

The room is certainly palatial. A sort of grown up version of one of those rooms they fill with balls for kids to vanish into. Instead of balls, it's cushions. There a mind boggling array of them covering the bed and chairs. There are twin double beds, which at first I mistake as a homage to the sort of misplaced Catholic prudishness you can find in family run hotels in Italy but then realise they've basically screwed up the reservation. This is not to say I'm not having a good time. I'm loving it, it's crass and silly and bombastic which is what you actually want from a place called the Palazzo Versace. This is not the sort of place to be subdued, quietly classy or softly and subtly luxurious. This place is on brand.

The Gold Coast is not the first place you would expect to find this hotel. The high rises of Surfers Paradise at first glance are more Malaga than Milan. Yet The Palazzo sits snuggly butted up against a shopping mall sporting luxury brands and an 80 berth marina for yachts of all sizes and is full of Chinese tour parties either checking in or checking out the signature fragrance.

Sometime later we've sneaked our way onto the beach through the bedlam that is the Sheraton Mirage foyer across the road from the hotel. Both hotels are a little ways up the beach from Surfer's Paradise and it's surprisingly empty. In the middle distance are the gleaming, futuristic towers of Surfers. On a hazy day, like today, they seem to float above the sand like a city from a William Gibson novel, a near future metropolis of neon, designer drugs and violence. By happenstance this turns out to be an accurate description of the town, minus any glamourous aspects that being in a novel might bring. I had my wallet stolen from the car up the road from the hotel and whilst the theft of my wallet might not seem to presage a crime wave, the 57 armed robberies in the last six months probably do.

Which brings me to the buffet. I'm not a fan of the buffet. There's probably another post in that statement. This buffet was akin to something at a Russian mafia wedding. A host of mismatched cuisines and a colosal display of seafood, so big as to shame the guys from Biggest Catch. I'm sure Sea Shepard should probably be informed. It was big, it was impressive and it was a bit mushy by all accounts.

Osprey Reef

2010-10-21T15:39:00.009+01:00

Grey Reef Sharks

The boat has been pitching all night, my berth at the front of the twin hulled dive boat Spoilsport rising and slamming back down as it crests a wave with a thunderous boom against each hull. One second I'm pressed into my bunk, a second later a microsecond of freefall and then the room shakes with the noise of the impact. I'm not sleeping well. My bunk mate is snoring gently. We'd been told the crossing would be a rough one or that we'd not even make it and have to turn back. At this point it's three in the morning and we are still steaming onwards towards one of the furthest outlier reefs of the Coral Sea, out past the calm and protection of the Great Barrier Reef.

Osprey Reef is a submerged coral atoll some 25km long and around 100km off the coast of Queensland, just south of the 14th parallel and is only visited by dive boats, the Australian Navy and the odd meteorologist and so, it is probably one of the best spots in Eastern Australia to see sharks. A whole bunch of sharks. In it's 30m deep water lagoon dive boats, for better or worse, have been feeding sharks for years and so they congregate here in the relative shallows when they hear engines on the surface. White Tipped Reef Sharks, Grey Reef Sharks, Black Tips, Silver Tips, Hammerheads and Silkies swarm through the water waiting to get fed.

Swimming with sharks is something special. Anyone who dives falls in love with them. The special delicately poised moment when you see your first shark underwater, usually a lone white tipped reef shark less than a meter long is to start a life long connection to the one of the most maligned animals on earth and unfortunately some of the most endangered.

Grey Reef with feed bin visible. The bin contains tuna heads

This feed is something new to me. I've only ever seen sharks in the water that were there of their own volition. I've seen Oceanic White Tips tracking dive boats in the Red Sea, circling them at night for scraps but never intentionally jumped in after the fish heads. Not that it's particularly courageous. Overweight gentlemen covered in neoprene breathing masses of bubbles into the water are not high on the average sharks repertoire of prey items. They will basically be ignoring me. Ignoring me in ways I've never imagined, sharks acute electro-sense zeroing in on the magnetic fields surrounding my body , down to my very heartbeat and marking me for shark social death.

Mike from New York is in full swing over breakfast. "Oh My God. I was thrown out of my bunk, onto the floor, can you fucking believe that, I'm getting off this ship, checking into a hotel. This shit is crazy." Mike's not been on a live-aboard before only having dived in more benign waters in the Bahamas, "...out of my bunk, onto the floor, I didn't sleep, not one minute", he explains. A couple from Austin, Texas, he taciturn and dry and she a Southern Belle though and through, watch Mike's kvetching with no small measure of amusement. That's the beauty of a dive boat, the sudden intimacy it thrusts upon you and a group of strangers. Diving is not very glamorous. It's heavy lifting, smelly neoprene and surfacing covered in snot. That and more often than not your relying on each other to cover your back if something goes wrong. And, at my end of the market, it means sharing very small cabins with someone you don't know. It's a delicate balance that can be tipped very badly if even one person doesn't mix well with the others. Twelve or fifteen people in close proximity basically trapped with each other for a week or ten days can be like being in the Big Brother house apart from the fact that no one's watching.

Sharks frenzy once the lid of the bin is released

The first animals to appear are a gang of white tip reef sharks, they hustle and bustle over the reef like boisterous teenagers. The first "proper" sharks, Grey Reefs, look more purposeful, more of a threat, more like the caricature of a shark, their lines thicker and more powerful than the serpentine white tips. Soon the water above me is a swirl of fins, black tipped, silver tipped and the huge bulk of a potato cod, bigger than a great many of the sharks. They group together and break, cruise for a while and then turn. Occasionally some imperceptible rule of the game is broken and you see pectoral fins dip in aggression and a brief chase ensues. A metal trash can is hauled down onto a rock outcrop by one of the dive leaders wearing chainmail gloves in case of misplaced attention. The sharks begin swirling in great arcs, the scent of tuna heads inside the can focusing their attention. The heads are attached to a chain with a buoy on top and once the lid is released the chain unfurls and the animals begin to frenzy, pulling at the heads with trashing twists of their bodies. One becomes entangled in the chain briefly but refuses to let go of the bait and eventually spins itself free tearing a chunk of meat with it. The display lasts less than a minute and the heads are all torn free, the sharks and accompanying remoras and pilot fish mopping up the scraps and then as if by some agreed upon signal they slowly disperse cruising in ever greater circles until they vanish into the blue leaving a few glittering scales and a scatter of teeth on the rocky reef outcrop.

Here be Dragons...

2010-10-20T17:28:00.005+01:00

Komodo National Park

The zodiac slows to a stop and we jump out, grabbing the sides we start hauling the inflatable up onto the beach. In the shade of a makeshift gazebo three men watch as we heave the boat up through the gentle surf and the skipper secures the anchor into the sand. He raises a hand, waddles up and sits with them. Another zodiac pulls up along side and assorted cabin boys, deck hands and a couple of kids from the galley jump out, football boots tied together by the laces swinging from their necks. A football is punted onto the beach and an enthusiastic and surprisingly skilful game of four a side breaks out. The skipped looks on ruefully. A torn Achilles tendon from another game on the beach a few months ago had ended his playing career. He smiles as I pass him and the welcoming committee. "No dragons here", he says playfully, "you'll not have to run" and gestures to my knee and the livid scar from surgery a few months prior, "..hopefully". "I'll out run you", I say, and he laughs translating for the three men of the welcoming committee, who smirk. One of the men, describing himself as the harbour master and sporting a rather natty uniform poses for a photo and another who must be in his 70's shimmies up a tree to pick fruit for the boat. We leave them to lengthy negotiations for the fruit and a prodigious, if mysterious, bag of green leaves and walk the kilometre or so up hill to the water filled volcanic caldera that crowns Satonda, tiny offerings of bleached coral and stones hanging from trees by twine marking the way. Wishes and prayers to the spirits of the still waters that fill the volcano.

Tambora wreathed in clouds

In 1816 the skies went dark across the world. The Year Without A Summer saw global temperatures plummet with crop failures and famine following. There were food riots across Europe and New York's Upper Bay froze over. Mary Shelley was so bored by the torrential rain and chill of that non-existent summer that she wrote Frankenstein and Joseph Smith so hungry that he moved to Palmyra, New York and ended up founding the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints. The cause of this mayhem was Mount Tambora, a neighbour to Satonda in the volcanic chain, scene of the largest volcanic eruption in modern times, an explosion with the force of an 800 megatonne nuclear blast. The violence of that day is wreathed in cloud and jungle vegetation today, with calm seas and twisting clouds over the summit but you can feel the threat in the mountain. Like nowhere else I've been these volcanic islands feel like they are out of time. A glance into the sky and pterodactyls might fly past, squinting into the tree line along the beach you might meet the eye of a raptor or T-Rex himself. There are still dinosaurs here and not just in the imagination.

Komodo Dragon

The visitor centre on the island of Komodo is a solid wooden structure with a raised verandah where you can order a thick powdery Balinese coffee and hang out with the national park rangers. The rest of the dive boat have gone up the trail with a guide, a young guy armed with a forked stick for fending off any inquisitive dragons. I'd been warned that the trail was hard going in the heat and that I was better off staying with the crew given my knee was still healing. In a whispered aside I was told that I probably stood a better chance of spotting a dragon that way anyway as the resident population were quite used to humans and often lumbered past the coffee stand. Drinking the bitter dusty coffee and sharing a smoke with the skipper and one of the dive guides, an irascible Brummie by the name of John, we didn't have to wait too long for a two metre female to stroll past the verandah.

It's a very singular moment, your first encounter with a Komodo dragon. Some small part of your brain, a tiny shard of genetic memory screams, "Dinosaur!" and there's a nagging feeling you should climb the nearest tree. The largest of the monitor lizards, the dragon has been unchanged for 4 million years. Not quite a dinosaur but it looks old, looks, like the landscape, like it's materialised from another age and that the gulf of time that separates it from you is vast, cold and alien. An off duty guide grabs his forked stick and gestures for me to follow him. He places a hand gently on my shoulder as we approach, indicating we've got close enough. It's mating season and so everyone is a bit frisky and given the startling turn of speed that the animal can turn on when called for, discretion is the greater part of valour in this instance. Up close the animal is untroubled by our appearance, flicking it's vast forked tongue backwards and forwards, teasing an appraisal of us out of the air. Later on the island of Rinca we learn that the animals there are no so tame and are told the story of a sunbathing German tourist dragged away for lunch, a tale so layered with the patina of retelling that I'm pretty sure it's not true. Why are they always German in these sorts of stories? And naked?

Back on Komodo, true to form the rest of the passengers on the boat turned up drenched in sweat not having seen a single dragon. I cheerfully point out one for them that's just appeared by the gift shop. I was not popular.

Masterchef. Two Ways.

2010-07-26T04:15:00.003+01:00

Masterchef used to be a sort of twee little show where housewives and gay men competed to create overly frilly dinner party fare whilst Lloyd Grossman unctuously slid around the set with a slightly bemused looking professional chef in tow. The re imagining of the show has turned it into a professional sport. A sort of UFC with chef's whites. Nowhere on the planet could such a proposition have reached more fertile ground than here in Australia. I can't really stress how big the show is here, it's the X-Factor with mis-en-place, a TV event so important they moved the only live prime ministerial debate of the upcoming election so it wouldn't clash with the final. In fact, I have the suspicion that they really ought to have made the debate a mystery box challenge to guarantee the viewing figures.

The lumbering form of Matt Preston

Masterchef in the UK is pure silliness but compelling viewing. The contestants are hungry, yes, but there's is a sort of knowing nod to the pantomime nature of Wallace and Torode. They are like two spoon sucking cockney villains who can barely hold a knife and fork and you'd half expect them to launch into a "this souffle's not cooked, you muppet!" or a "You mug! you don't put cream in moules marinieres, I should give you a slap, you numpty" before bundling the losing contestants into the back of a transit van. In Australia, they've upped the ante. Firstly, the final was based on points, including a quiz where the contestants had to name the cheese or exotic fruit. I quite liked this development, as it let us play along at home and added the excitement of contestants needing to make up points in the "identify the sauce round". Secondly, they have three judges. Two in the Wallace and Torode mould. The cheeky, ever so slightly wacky restaurateur and fashionably bald George Calombaris and the rather camp, cherubic Gary Mehigan. They gurn and shake their heads and try and imbue the opening of a pressure cooker with as much drama as the moon landings. However, the ace in the hole is the lumbering form of Matt Preston. This wet rubbery lipped Miss Piggy in a cravat is a joy to watch. Dainty in a way that only an immaculately dressed man of considerable size can be, he's the Simon Cowell of the show, with exacting standards and questionable table manners.

Another interesting change is that Masterchef is on a commercial network here in Australia. This means that every advertiser under the sun is allowed in on the act. A supermarket sponsors the pantry proclaiming "if you want to cook like a Masterchef cooks, shop where a Masterchef shops"displaying the sort of logic that a febrile seven year old would use to get his parents to buy him Batman pyjamas. Given that this is event TV of the highest order it's inevitably a feeding frenzy, overshadowing the World Cup and forcing the coverage of the Tour de France to include recipes.

So what does it say about Australians and food? Not a great deal, I think. As in the UK, this is cookery competition and popularity contest folded together, it's about winners and losers and there's nothing more Australian than that.

Different Continent, Different City

2010-07-20T07:39:00.000+01:00

Jamfaced has moved. In my never ending pursuit of the longest possible pause between posts I've decided that this time, time and distance play a part. Goodbye London. Hello.....

PETA in Borough Market

2010-03-16T14:26:00.004Z

Picking up a flat white from Monmouth Coffee this morning I was greeted by a gaggle of photographers and this rather cougar-ish lady covered in lettuce. Not something you see everyday. I was even more amused by the guy from Brindisa who gatecrashed the photo op whilst holding up a rather impressive leg of cured ham to much whooping and hollering from the baristas in Monmouth. Bizzare food moment of the month.

Bocca di Lupo, Archer Street

2010-03-12T08:23:00.005Z

One of my favourite places to eat in the world is the front bar at Cal Peps in Barcelona. Twelve or so bar stools along the brown marbled topped bar and an endless parade of the best food in the city. My last trip ended with two stunning meals in the restaurant and it's served as a benchmark for similar set-ups every since. I love its democratic sensibility, you arrive, you queue up enjoying a fino or two and when a seat comes up you eat. Given Barcelona's place in the history of Spain it feels somehow very correct that you can eat some of the best food in the city simply by turning up and waiting your turn. Barrafina on Frith Street, which is a near carbon copy of Pep's is equally egalitarian but we Londoners aren't nearly as patient and you can feel the hot needles boring into your back from people waiting to take your place and whilst the food is entirely competent, I always begrudge the cost and the clientele can grate at such close quarters.

Sitting at the bar in Bocca di Lupo I found myself cursing quietly. See, I’d planned this post rather meticulously. Restaurants where you eat at the bar are better when they are democratic and freed from the tyranny of the booking sheet. Eating at the bar alongside your fellow diners felt proper if you had waited your turn, queued with the self same fellow diners, rich man, poor man, beggar man and thief. Unfortunately, I was wrong. I fell in love somewhat with Bocca di Lupo and I’d booked my table a week ahead of time. Hence the cursing. Maybe I should go wait in the line at Polpo in Soho for an hour to rescue the post, I thought.

I didn’t as my Negroni arrived. Its bitter medicinal sweetness working alongside probably the best olives I’ve eaten in London. For those that don’t know Bocca di Lupo does regional Italian in small tasting plates or massive tasting plates (also known as main courses) depending on your mood. In the spirit of democracy that this meal started with we opted to try something from every section of the generous menu.

Lamb prosciutto, sliced wafer thin on the Cadillac of slicers pictured above, with pecorino sardo and a few raw broad beans set the pace with a simple elegance and home spun feel as we picked the beans from the pod ourselves. Roman fritti pitched up next, two perfect olives stuffed with minced pork and veal and two deep fried bocconcini, tender, moist and messy. Things eased off the throttle a little with a frittata of spaghetti & parmesan which was too heavy a load alongside the simplicity of the other dishes.

A second wave of dishes included clams with cannellini beans, tomato & basil which was spicy and warming and, as far as I was concerned the star of the show, a pot-roasted escarole endive stuffed with pine nuts, raisins & anchovy which was achingly tender; the bitterness of the endive pitch perfect against the salty sweetness of the stuffing. A big friendly childish chocolate filled donut brought the proceedings to a sugary high and all that was left was to pay the ferociously reasonable bill and fall off the bar stools into the warm clutch of the elitist, bourgeois, leather clad interior of the waiting taxi.

The Ginger Fox, Albourne, East Sussex

2010-03-10T21:41:00.002Z

The Gingerman group of restaurants in and around Brighton are fast becoming the go to guys for gastro pub dining in East Sussex. With three sites; Gingerman, The Ginger Fox and The Ginger Pig and a fourth on the way in Kemp Town, nominally called The Ginger Dog, owners Ben and Pamela Mckellar are creating something of an empire on the south coast. I ate at the now defunct Gingerman at Drakes a couple of years ago and so when dinner was touted at The Ginger Fox in Albourne some 30 miles from Brighton, I jumped over a lazy cow. Or something to that effect.

We were dining at the restaurant almost two years to the day since it had opened. Plenty of time to bed in then, though despite this, its location bamboozled the taxi driver and we spent about 30 minutes racing down dark country lanes, past ominous isolated gleaming white buildings called things like Exosoft. “That’s where the Apocalypse begins”, intoned a fellow diner from the back of the cab as we sped past one particularly secure looking example. Luckily, all thoughts of a viral zombie outbreak were diminished upon arriving at the rather lovely thatched building that houses the pub and restaurant.

The Ginger Fox has managed to retain a sense of itself as a country pub whilst shaking off the more fusty excesses of its ilk. It's a pretty space and the staff relaxed and welcoming. No Slaughtered Lamb glass eyed locals to scare off the city folks. Pity.

A starter of mushrooms on toast with a poached ducks egg signalled confidence in the kitchen and was simplicity itself. A main of lemon sole with potato and Parma ham pancakes was a cosy, motherly hug of a dish. Like slipping into brushed cotton sheets with a hot water bottle. Mango and pineapple trifle finished everything up nicely, a happy homely treat with a jag of old fashioned exoticism. Not everything served up was quite as reassuring. A vegetarian platter looked decidedly confused, not surprising as the restaurant has something of a reputation for discerning carnivores.

No alarms, no surprises. Just confident good British cooking served with a smile out in the country. Probably something of a rarity, now that I think about it.

N.B. I didn't take a camera to the restaurant so I used a picture taken in my garden last year. Of a fox.

Caravan, Exmouth Market

2010-03-08T08:15:00.004Z

Eating at Caravan was something very like living in a caravan, I imagine. Cold, crowded and dimly lit with constant noisy interruptions. Not that I’ve ever actually been inside a caravan, except for a very large RV in the US which doesn’t really count as it had a garage in it and I got lost looking for the toilets.

Caravan is something of an anomaly. On one hand there’s an impeccable pedigree with Miles Kirby, who was chef at The Providores & Tapa Room in Marylebone for the last six years, in charge. They roast their own coffee, they have some excellent baristas and from all accounts they serve an excellent brunch. On paper this should be a winner. In reality, in the hurly burly of a Saturday night it had trouble fighting it’s way out a paper bag.

The food is as you’d expect, an Antipodean jag of small sharing plates based around 5 or 6 for two people with clean simple modern flavours. Sort of. Salt beef fritters were warming but oddly flavourless. Wontons filled with cheese and peas, whilst harking to some classic comedy were not great. A mutton chop was lovely but microscopic; a mackerel dish almost saved the day, two simple little fillets that were stunning and the crowning glory, a great little dish of salt and pepper squid, reminding me of a similar dish at that Balmain in Sydney stalwart, Blue Ginger. Dessert was unassuming and the espresso great.

Being seated by the massive windows was a chilling experience, whilst I’m sure they’ll be lovely when it’s hot and they can throw them open, it was not pleasant with a chill wind blowing. Service was oddly over attentive, we got asked at last six or seven times if everything was fine, which whilst sweet at first got old and annoying fast. Oddly, three people from a large adjoining table decided they would stand next to our table and have a conversation. It was a perfectly civil conversation but they were standing with their backs to us and so their bottoms were at head height for about 20 minutes. It made it tricky to get the waiters attention. Particularly odd behavior as the bar was a couple of paces away and largely empty.

I can see that Caravan would be a hit with the Exmouth Market trendoid brigade and can imagine myself enjoying brunch with an impeccably made flat white in the sunshine of a summery Saturday. In the chill of winter it’s Antipodean charm doesn’t shine through.

Exchange Coffee, Lewisham

2010-03-07T10:09:00.004Z

I popped along to Exchange Coffee in Lewisham Market this Saturday to taste yet another award winning coffee. Neil Le Bihan took the London Barista Championship heats a few weeks ago and finished an admirable third in the UK finals. Kudos to him. Good to see places based in the badlands of SE London take on the more fashionable parts of London and come out on top.

The Table, Southwark Steet, SE1

2010-03-02T19:29:00.004Z

I appear to have had some sort of mental and visual impairment when it comes to The Table. It's been one of those lunchtime spots that I'd always meant to look out for and for a couple of years every time I looked at the Time Out cheap eats section I'd remind myself to go. When I finally mustered the energy I was astounded to find that it was where it was. I'd been staring at the place eating Tortilla burritos for months and never twigged. The burritos aren’t THAT good so I probably need an eye test.

First off, a bit of a gripe about communal tables. It's all very 1998 and frankly, bloody annoying. One of a party of prattling drama therapists stole my flat white and someone was conducting an interview with an enormous laptop to my left. Listening to someone sell themselves is a bit like hearing them talk dirty, embarrassing and should never be done over a sausage casserole. It's odd, since in some places it seems to work rather well. Noodle bars and the like seem to be able to seat people happily in rows. Slurping noodles and accidently pinging dim sum into a strangers lap is a perfectly acceptable way to eat. At lunchtime over a sarnie and a coffee, it feels like an intrusion. Also, the staff got a bit confused as they thought as I was sitting NEXT to someone I must surely know them and indeed, pay for their coffee.

That said, I rather like it. It's cheerful place, full of clean lines and simple food. The lunchtime wrapped sandwiches are a nice way to grab a quick bite and the mains are hearty and well made. Rotating specials and a regular pasta dish make for a satisfying lunchtime if you leave it a bit later and avoid the crowds. It's become my local late lunch spot of choice, though I will occasionally revert back to stuffing a shredded pork burrito into my face when duty calls.

What's a pizza mean?

2010-03-01T15:08:00.002Z

Pizza has been a dominant theme of late at Jamfaced HQ. A recent trip to Franco Manca in Brixton Market resulted in a frankly garbled post on how authentic the experience had been. Last week's trip to Pizza Metro Pizza on Battersea Rise revisited the notion of a perfectly authentic pizza experience in London. The meals have served as culinary bookends to a little personal journey of discovery regarding this most popular of global fast foods. That fact, that pizza is the planet's favourite junk food is at odds with most of its modern history and its story is a lovely illustration of the fact that we love a creation myth with our dinner.

Pick up a rock, better still, an amphora or handy urn and throw it in the general direction of the Mediterranean and chances are you'll bounce it off the head of a culture that ate something akin to pizza in its ancient history. From the Middle East to North Africa and Greece into the Roman Empire via the Etruscans and onto the Persians and Turks we've been happily topping fast cooked leavened bread with all manner of cheeses, herbs and meats for a couple of thousand years and calling it something a bit like pizza, pide, pitta, petta or pizzette. Do any sort of reading around the subject and pretty much everyone in Europe say they invented it. Even the Scots. However, it's safe to say that pizza in its modern form is from Naples and like so much in Italian life is a result of urban poverty, dodgy politics and the Italians unique capacity for divisiveness.

Italians are, as far as I can tell, the most fastidious eaters in the world. The slightest infraction of any one of a myriad of gastronomic rules results in a crinkled nose and palpable disgust. Of course, the irony is that no two Italians would ever agree on what those rules were. Italy is only a real place when viewed from afar. It took mass immigration to the US to truly define what Italy meant. Nobody back on the peninsula seems to have taken the Risorgimento and unification of the country as anything other than another way of gathering taxes until Italians in the US started telling them otherwise. It comes as no surprise then that for most of pizzas history in the overcrowded, cholera ridden Naples of its birth it was viewed with snobbish disgust as food only fit for the poorest of the poor, people too poor even to eat macaroni. Even the hoary old tale of how the Margherita pizza won its name in an aristocratic version of Masterchef has been spun. The actual letter from the palace on display at the Pizzeria Brandi detailing how the pizza was "found to be delicious" is from some powdered kitchen flunkey, not Queen Margherita and reeks of a sneering derision.

How did it conquer the world? The story goes that homeward bound GI's having fought in Italy brought back a love of the pizza pie and sought out pizzerias amongst the large immigrant Italian communities. London's first restaurant with a pizza on the menu seems to have been Olivelli's on Store Street which opened in 1934. I'd be interested if anyone can confirm this web gleaned fact or offer an alternative. The sole pizza Margherita on the menu may well represent the first time a pizza was eaten in a fashionable London restaurant, though I don't imagine that people weren't selling it and eating it amongst the 10,000 Italians living and working in London at the time.

Pizza is city food. It was codified in a city, transported toother cities where it spread and evolved and it's in cities that it has found its truest expression. Fast, portable food that can be shared. The Italian's, in their way, have codified it further, tried to capture what a pizza means through a protected designation and hoops to jump through for the sake of authenticity. Whilst it's good to know that they are looking to preserve something that was once so maligned, it's all a bit silly and the result often not what any sane person would think of as a pizza; sloppy, charred and thin. Tasty, but a struggle to eat quickly enough. I for one think pizza has found its spiritual home in the big cities of the East Coast, particularly in the five boroughs. I can't really think of anywhere else in the world that pizza makes so much sense.

Creation myths are important for religions, superheroes and dishes. Like all myths they tell us a great deal about how we would like to see the universe. The stories behind food often tell us more about our own aspirations and hopes than the truth of their origins. Pizza, the most urban of meals harks to something more bucolic; freshly baked bread, tomatoes off the vine and freshly made cheese, a channelling of a olive groves and lemon trees, of soft summer sun and sun flowers waving in the breeze.

Rose Gray: 1939 - 2010

2010-03-01T11:25:00.001Z

I first ate in the River cafe in 1994 or so and was a irregular regular there for much of the nineties. The place made a big impression on me during those formative years and I was an enthusistic collector of the cookbooks. It was one of those restaurants that stays with you and in some small way one of the reasons why this blog came to be.

Pizza Metro Pizza, Battersea Rise - Pizza Tuesday

2010-02-26T14:45:00.002Z

A few snaps from Tuesday's excellent pizza show down at Pizza Metro Pizza on Battersea Rise. Pizza Metro Pizza is one of only seven pizzerias outside of Italy to be included in the Gambero Rosso guide to Italian food. Props to them for some stunning pizza and to Daniel Young @ youngandfoodish for organising the event. The favourite on the night was a pizza of home made pork sausage, parmesan, mozzarella, Neapolitan spicy greens and basil which isn't pictured as I was too busy eating it to remember.

Cookbooks and Cocktails: A Sunday afternoons reading

2010-02-21T17:57:00.003Z

Looking back over past posts regarding cookbooks I've discovered that I tend to be in two very distinct frames of mind when writing. The first leans towards a drooling admiration with the pages of the book sodden with praise, the drift tending towards the notion that cookbooks are some of the most valuable texts we produce as a culture. The second veers sharply away from all this into screaming and violent hatred of anyone or anything involved in the creation of such vomitous bile, safe in the knowledge that when the revolution arrives those responsible with be the first put into the Wicker Man for burning. You'll notice that I get so angry my pop culture references get all muddled up.

Walking into the cookery sections of bookshops can be something of a dangerous pastime for me. Happily, over the last couple of weeks I've managed something of a lucky run in the book buying stakes.

First up, a collection of Kingsley Amis's booze journalism from the late 1970's and early '80's called Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis. Amis was a prodigious drinker, toper, drinkist and boozer. Reading this anthology of his drink newspaper column and booze based writing felt timely with present day wine columns being dropped left, right and centre by newspapers. It's safe to say Amis didn't actually write wine journalism, as he seems far more comfortable writing about, and drinking, spirits and beer. He does tackle wine with gusto and I'm pretty sure his knowledge was encyclopaedic for the time, it's that just that he seems far more enthusiastic about cocktails and spirits and makes a fundamental point about beer that should resonated deeply with anyone who enjoys British cooking. His point is a simple one, really. That traditional British cooking only really makes sense if you are drinking beer, or watered down Scotch, wine simply doesn't work with the cooking style and condiments of the British table as they were then. He's very much of his time and you find yourself conflicted by the wit and charm of the man when he's showing his age. The sheer amount people used to drink is actually shocking to the modern ear. Kingsley thinks nothing of recommending a mixture of Special Brew and Export in a silver pint pot as a jovial little tipple or recommending cocktails to see you through a difficult morning. The sections on hangovers are classics and you'll read no finer collection of Martini recipes.

Secondly, a book that was an utter bitch to find and cost me no small fortune, but which is again timely and necessary. The London heats of the UK Barista Championships were taking place this weekend and local SE Londoner Neil Le Bihan, who I chatted to after his UK Latte art win a couple of weeks ago took the spoils. Anyone wanting to follow in his footsteps will want a copy of The Professional Barista's Handbook by Scott Rao. It's technical, it's scientific, it's detailed and it'll either make you want to drop everything and buy a £10K espresso machine or simply throw the book over your shoulder and make some instant. The only place I could find this was at the excellent Coffee Hit website.

Thirdly, two actual real life cookbooks. Both of these fall into the bracket of documentary cookbooks, in that, certainly from my perspective, you are unlikely ever to cook anything from them, but serve as a mine of cheerful quite useful information and are lovely items to hold and leaf through. There are indicative of that trend to merge travel writing and food writing, which can be something of a trick to pull off and I think that Movida: Rustica by Frank Camorra & Richard Cornish, which covers Spanish regional cooking and The Songs of Sapa by Luke Nguyen, covering Vietnam do so well. They are loving documents really, nicely written, evocative photography and beautifully designed books. I've not cooked anything from them, so can't vouch for the recipes (which you would imagine would be key to a review about a cook book, ho-hum). Have a pleasant fifteen minutes next time you are in Waterstones and leaf through them both.

Franco Manca: 101 Things to Eat in London (UYTOL)*

2010-02-16T17:33:00.002Z

Can a pizza, made with flour sourced from Naples, olive oil from Salerno, cheese from Somerset and cooked in an Italian built pizza oven in Brixton be authentically Neapolitan? The question of authenticity is a mine field. It’s something we crave from our food and from our experiences. We brag about travel, about meals, about things we have seen. We seek to fulfil a need that we have experienced something fundamental. That only if something is replete with all the attendant markers of authenticity, only then is it actually real. Only through a peculiar combination of geography, time and who is physically present can an experience be credited as authentic and therefore given more meaning and weight. Is there a more authentic Neapolitan pizza than the one I ate for lunch at Franco Manca in Brixton Market? I would argue that there probably isn’t. Go to Naples and you won’t get any of them to agree on anything. The closer you get to something the fuzzier it becomes, the less cohesive as a thing. From the distance of a pizza oven in Brixton to Naples, this looks entirely like pizza from Naples. Sure, you might get individually better pizza but more authentic? Probably, but that's not the point.

Is it good? It would be almost heresy to say that it wasn’t. Niamh at Eat Like a Girl and Patrick Carpenter at Ostrea Edulis have been two lone voices in the night, claiming cold and claggy pizza. Mine was good, pretty damn good. Classic toppings of capers, anchovies, tomatoes and mozzarella were beautiful on a pitch perfect tender yet crisp base. The staff were cool too, not the tyrants that some commenter’s had me fearing. Brixton market is freezing, however, so I remained wrapped up like Mum-Ra The Ever-living for the duration but I actually think that added something to the experience, authentic or otherwise. I’d be hard pressed not to eat in here every day if I was more local, I scarfed the entire pizza and didn’t feel like I’d eaten half a ton of aggregate like I do with most pizza. Something of a miracle.

* until you tire of life.

Valentine's Day is Over

2010-02-14T23:20:00.002Z

Here you go. My one and only concession to Valentine's day. I arranged baked goods in a clumsy heart shape before presenting them to my wife with a dumb grin on my face. I thought about adding something luridly pink to it but there wasn't a Rampant Rabbit dildo to hand. I think it might have ruined the effect slightly. There's a deeper question here regarding the use of the same Pantone for sex toys and Valentine's day cards which I won't attempt to answer.

It's quite easy to get all annoyed about Valentine's day and the way new couples clutter up the place with their smiling and trimmed pubic hair (gag stolen from The Onion) or rather the miserable, desperate couples trying to think of something to say about the various dildo pink items they have bought each other and the bottles of Katie Price/Antonio Banderas branded scent scattered on the table. At some point I would have probably written some drooling rant about it all. Now, I feel sorry for people having to go through the proscribed motions from red roses to making love all night long in an R&B sort of way. I mean, who needs that sort of pressure in their lives.

Valentine's Day used to be a pretty benign affair. Kids would make Mums a card with lots of cheerful pink squiggles all over it and Dad would remember to bring home some flowers or even book a babysitter and a table at the Carvery. Teens would send each other secretive missives, "I love you Dean, from your secret love, Bracy Trown" and there'd be an article in the Sun about some bloke who'd hired a sky writer to scrawl "Marry me, Julie" over a field near Worthing. That would be pretty much it.

Yesterday, I heard a DJ on the radio talking about "Valentine's Day shopping" and I've been assaulted for the last two weeks by advertising. This is no surprise, but, it made me realise just how much shit you'd have to deal with if you were, say, three or four months into a relationship and Valentine's day landed on your lap. You'd have to book a restaurant, knowing you were getting fucked way before you'd even started the date and worst of all you'd have to be ROMANTIC. Being romantic without sounding or acting like you are mentally ill is really hard. Writing romantic poetry is really hard, creating a romantic atmosphere is hard. Romance is tough. It was invented by medieval courtiers who had nothing better to do, they had the time and the money and access to lutes. Most poor saps don't stand a chance. You just end up looking like a retard going through the monkey motions.

So, everyone reading who's "not doing Valentine's day this year" or thinks "it's all invented by the greeting card companies" spare a thought for the poor guys having to contend with the weight of expectation, the disappointments and the cold shoulders tonight. These are brave, brave men.

Augmented Kitchen

2010-02-13T13:07:00.001Z

This video of a future augmented reality kitchen caught my imagination this afternoon. Watch Keiichi Matsuda's video here. Made me excited and sad at the same time, particularly the plea for a RL meet-up.

Byron @ The Intrepid Fox, Soho

2010-02-12T15:42:00.004Z

Everyone else has been already and there has been much tweeting from all quarters about the burgers and shakes, so Byron had some living up to do. I was sort of down on the place before I stepped through the door, to be honest. I remember the Intrepid Fox as the most METAL of pubs and in my long-haired stinky youth downed many a pint of snakebite and black before staggering to the Marque club and throwing up prodigiously. It was full of fat, mental goth chicks and bearded men wearing tour t-shirts from the early '70s. It was, for a time, a magical place, unlike any pub I knew (the only other such establishment I knew was a pub in Morden that threw a night called Metal Hammer every Friday or Saturday).

Subsequently, walking past the place and seeing that the same fat goth chicks and bearded men were still drinking in there made me feel that a piece of my childhood still lived on, that if I walked in there I'd see a younger version of myself in a Marillion t-shirt snogging a goth chick with too much eye make up and an ill fitting Kensignton Market bodice. Thank the lord hip hop happened.

Alas, time marches on and it's a slick, modern, visible air conditioning duct sort of place now, with lovingly distressed exposed brick work and a chandelier made out of angle poise lamps. A projector loops a constant assault of images of people eating burgers that made my wife feel a bit ill. It's a nice enough space, suited to the sort of flying visit that a burger demands. I ordered the off menu, super, not very secret Big D. Wife ordered a cheeseburger and then got annoyed at me for not telling her about the super secret burger. Both burgers were bang on, as near damn perfect as a burger could be. Meat packed tenderly together and perfectly cooked. On the downside fries were lacklustre and industrial and the mac 'n' cheese a dry, dusty offering akin to something a flatmate might have cooked whilst at university and then left under the sofa for a week. Other upsides were the oreo shake, which was a thing of magesty and the onion rings which were chunky and sweetly tender.

At nearly forty quid for two it might make some baulk at a burger joint, but they would be wrong. To hold that near mythical beast, a perfect burger, in your hands is cheap at twice the price even if I didn't see snakebite on the menu.

Ghost town: A weekend in Berlin

2010-02-10T21:09:00.001Z

It's five o'clock in the morning and somewhere in East Berlin we stumble out into the snow. Behind us the looming mass of the club we've just left, a subsonic thud and steam from vents signalling the pounding music and mass of bodies somewhere below. Eye's adjusting to the twilight we are instantly transported back 30 years. The East Berlin of imagination, the East Berlin that those of us of a certain age remember as a place permanently shrouded in snow, the stillness of suspicion, starkly dead eyed apartment buildings, dead drops and micro films.

Berlin has its ghosts, the visible scars aside, that you only catch in moments like this, when the past peeks through the bright lights and neon of the city and catches you unawares. They are only ghosts, echoes of the past, of course, perceptible to the sleep deprived and inebriated.

Berlin is that rare thing, a city so cool that it doesn't need to act all cool and grown up to prove it. Berliners are very cool, way cooler than Londoners to be honest. They are wry, charming, funny and self confident but not brash, arch or arrogant. There's an energy, a sense of playfulness to the city, a real sense that any thing is possible. As party towns go it takes some beating and it has more genuinely beautiful women per square mile than any other city I've been to.

The beer would take a whole month of posts to catalogue, so suffice to say I was repeatedly astonished, delighted and depressed by the beer I drank over a weekend of high jinks. The food equally was accomplished and self confident. This is a city that wears all its influences on its sleeve. The US influence is ever present, of course, so much so I ate one of the best burgers ever in a multi-lingual burger joint called The Bird on Am Falkplatz. A sausage stand in the optimistically named Lustgarten provided currywurst, bratwurst and gluhwien to battle hangovers and the sub zero temperatures. A turkish kebab shop on Oranienstraße provided an astonishing late night schwarma and the single hottest chilli sauce ever to burn a worse for wear Londoner.

They just need to do something about all that techno.

Neil Le Bihan, 2010 UK Latte Art Champion

2010-02-09T22:41:00.003Z

It sounds like something out of a sports movie. Our plucky hero, dazed and confused from a catastrophic head cold with points deducted by evil judges in collusion with his arch enemy, all hell bent on denying him his prize, goes to pour his final latte. He knows he's only got one chance to pour the unpourable. The Flying Tulip. In slow motion, he starts to pour. All we can hear is his heartbeat and the ticking of the clock as it heads towards zero. A pause. He's done it, he's poured the latte they said could not be poured!

It was nothing like that, of course. Pity. Neil did pour a hanging tulip but I don't think there were any evil judges involved and I don't think it's considered unpourable, just very good. Not sure on arch enemies. Oh, he did have a cold, though.

Neil won the latte art prize as well as the award for best individual pour on the day at the SCAE UK Latte Art Championship and I congratulated him on his double whammy at Browns of Brockley, where he works during the week. On Saturdays, he and fellow podium finisher, third placed barista Lynsey Harley run Exchange Coffee at Lewisham Market, bringing superb coffee to South East London (more on that in a week or so).

After two visits, Browns has become something of a favourite for a number of reasons. Obviously the coffee's is pretty good as they are a skilled bunch of baristas and they use Square Mile Roasters beans. There's a changing stock of deli type goods on offer, but mostly I like the place because it's possibly the friendliest place I've walked into in a good long while. Punters interact with staff and with each other in a way that you don't seem to get at any of the Central London coffee haunts. A long central table means that it's easy to while away an hour chin wagging. A lovely spot for breakfast, too.

Small Objects of Kitchen Desire: Coffee Tamper

2010-02-08T22:17:00.001Z

I'm insanely proud of the coffee I make at home. I have the usual assortment of coffee machines, some slowly decomposing in cupboards, others gathering dust by the kitchen window. All at sometime have been urgent, necessary purchases and all have been superseded by the next stovetop, filter holder, french press or espresso machine that was going to revolutionise the way I made coffee at home. Then I gave up. There's no point, I figured. I can just get a cup of joe from the experts and drink tea at home, or wash the mould out of the bottom of the stovetop if I'm desperate. Unusually for me, I didn't plunge myself deep into penury and buy some semi commercial unit thinking of all the money I'd save by doing so. I just left it, happy in the knowledge that someone else was making my daily dose.

Until Christmas day last year, when my mum bought me a simple chrome espresso maker. Nice, I thought, it'll look good alongside all the others, but I ought to try it out, run it through, you know, get it up and running to show some willing. First couple of espressos to come out didn't look bad. The grind was wrong, but hey, there was a respectable crema and it looked like as near to 2 fl oz in 25 seconds as I was ever likely to get, so I mucked about some more. It's a pretty modest machine, yet, with some careful research, aka a couple of hours on coffeegeek.com, a plentiful supply of the right grind care of Monmouth coffee and a few gallons of milk I've managed to conjure up some pretty darn good looking espresso and a pretty flat white or two. I'm not talking latte art here, but something that looks the part and something I wouldn't be ashamed of giving to someone else to drink.

Central to this success, I'm sure, is a coffee tamper. I have my very own black and silver one now and the weight of it in my hand and the tactile grip of it reminds me of a Ducati Monster (a motorbike). I can't afford, ride or even spell the name properly, but, this little puck of shiny metal and rubber reminds of me of one, which is the surest sign that it's a necessary and integral part of the semi decent coffee coming out of my kitchen. It's a dangerous thing though. It's a gateway drug, my little black and silver enabler. I'm already nonchalantly reading reviews of some very shiny bits of kit and pondering the wisdom of re-plumbing my entire kitchen.

Table for One: A brief guide to lone dining

2010-02-03T23:38:00.001Z

There's an art to dining on your own. A rule set, if you will, that must be adhered to. These rules, in conjunction with some ancillary guidelines and recommendations I’ll be suggesting, are there to make you seem less threatening to other diners (and the staff) when you roll in asking for your table for one. It's an art that protects both you and any other diners in the restaurant from feeling unduly anxious. You must be prepared. Otherwise you're the nutcase in the corner putting everybody off his or her green salad.

Remember, as a lone diner you are a figure of ridicule and shame. It's best not to be too visible. That's why you often get the worst seat in the house. Often, it's the staff table and they have to clear the ashtrays, gin and playing cards out of the way before you can sit down. To aid in this it's best not to wear anything too conspicuous. Don't make the rookie error of wearing camouflage and a hood as this often leads to arrest under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Restaurant staff will react in one of two ways when you ask for your Table of Solitude. They'll either become instantly chirpy and chatty, breezing you to your table like "we get lonely men in here all the time" or they'll ask you to wait for a bit whilst they clear away the aforementioned gin and watch you for signs that you're going to pull a gun, start drooling or hand out religious tracts. In some restaurants, the head waiter may take care of your personally, with friendly banter and a "something for the weekend" charm. This is done to make sure you pay and don't steal the crockery.

Reading material is a must. An absolute must. If fellow diners see you by yourself reading, it relaxes them. I think a magazine or a newspaper better than a book. A broadsheet or a magazine like New Scientist or Monocle gives the lone diner an air of casual insouciance, a "just catching up with what's going on over a bit of food before I jump in cab to the airport and catch a flight to JFK" sort of vibe. Penthouse, Mayfair or Razzle will not have the same effect and may put more elderly diners around you in peril. A book is a tricky one. It can seem as if you are man of the world or it can give the game away and suggest you might hang out in bell towers. Any sort of self help book is out, as is any sort of military escapade, you know, KillZone Beta Five Bravo: The true story of the SAS from a man who's best mate knew someone who delivered towels to the barracks.

Fiddling with a Smartphone can be good. Interspersed with reading from a magazine is even better. Screaming blue bloody murder because you missed Red Pikachu is bad.

Just sitting humming of pom-poming to yourself is terrifying, especially if you insist on catching people's eyes and nodding creepily. Doubly bad if you smile at other lone diners. They will fear for their lives.

Restaurants with counters are good since it's acceptable to watch the food getting made and pubs are even better since a man enjoying a pint with a bite to eat is a joy to behold. Like a spring lamb or a rainbow.

This post was written at a table for one in Hiba on Borough High Street, a rather good Lebanese. Please excuse the bits of labneh, falafel and grilled chicken with aioli and harisa strewn across the keyboard. Using a laptop at a restaurant whilst eating dinner, is of course, inexcusable.

Blokes Eat Beef - A Goodman Redux

2010-02-02T15:40:00.006Z

I was lucky enough to snag myself a seat at Simon Majumdar's men only beef fest last night. 4 types of prime rib, the best smoked salmon in the world, Argentinian Malbec and the smelliest cheese selection ever seen in a London restaurant. At the end of the evening the room smelt pretty ripe, a fair few of us were considering vegetarianism and Lost in the Larder had passed out. Read Simon's write up of the proceedings here. Quite an evening.

Bincho, Old Compton Street

2010-01-30T11:57:00.003Z

Old Compton Street is like the Bosphorus, it's a meeting point, a crossroads, a bit like Istanbul without the big mosque and it has seen an equal share of vice, iniquity and violence as well as Greeks, Jews, Turks and Italians. Chinatown spills over from the south and trendoid digital, facilities house Soho and old school, strip joint Soho, jockey for position amongst the gay bars and scattered remnants of Little Italy. Friday night in Soho in full flight is a hilarious melting pot of bemused tourists, terrified out of towners leaving Mammia Mia at the Prince of Wales Theatre, crack dealers, drunk agency account managers and gay clubbers. Here, opposite the bright lights of Ed's Easy Diner is yakitori and kushiyaki restaurant Bincho. A tiny oasis of near calm in the river of noise and Friday nights in full swing and a favourite of mine after a few.

The slightly Tardis like restaurant is over two floors but I've never made it past the bar seats that run alongside the grills. I love the smell of the fire, watching the guys delicately manage the burning bincho charcoal and turning the skewers with all the concentration of watchmakers. The staff are young with PDA's strapped to their wrists for ordering and exciting hair in an Anime kind of way. It's overpriced, sure, but I'm rarely in there in a thrifty state of mind. The food is good fun and on the whole delicious. Grilled unagi is marshmallow soft and meltingly fishy, the kushiyaki of pork belly and beef rib are perfect with a beer and the crunchy skewered asparagus, a fresh little kick in the haze of wood smoke.

The Exhibition Rooms, Crystal Palace

2010-01-29T15:34:00.005Z

Ever since the League of Gentlemen aired the word "local" has taken on some rather dark and sinister overtones. So, that the Exhibition Rooms won the best new local restaurant accolade from Time Out back in September of last year seems to be a mixed blessing. Local seems to imply that you probably wouldn't go there if it wasn't within staggering distance of your house or that it's run by insane pig nosed serial killers. The latter, of course, is not true, the former might be.

A rummage around Google had me fearful before we'd even set foot in the place. From the slightly hysterical comments I'd read appended to reviews the staff were the rudest in the world. It was as if Bill Hicks and Jerry Sadowitz were running the place. This isn't true, unfortunately. The staff are very nice. Efficient, pleasant and run off their feet. They went careening around the place at foot tilt, sprinting away from the table before finishing their sentences. I got the feeling that they were a man down.

The dining room is reminiscent of The Garrison, without the studied distressing. It's a good space, open and buzzy but not deafening as it fills up. The same cannot be said for the horror show cocktail bar downstairs. A space so unremittingly awful that it inspires awe. It's like a febrile eleven tear olds idea of a cocktail bar. In 1997. Despite this, the bar staff were happily plying middle aged women in animal prints some good looking cocktails, so perhaps it all makes sense after a few measures.

Back in the dining room a ravioli of something red, something goats cheesey arrived. It was undercooked, sprinkled with cold unripe tomato and a jumble of ill considered wild rocket. So far, so average, though the freshly based bread was pleasant enough. Late arriving mains were a competent roasted poussin with a cranberry jus and a disappointingly dry and dense burger. The chips were nice. It was all pleasant enough, to be honest, but dull. I appreciate the pared down menu and the attempt to get back to some basics and I think the pricing is good, but I was waiting to be wowed, comforted or charmed. I wasn't. There are local gastro pubs doing this sort of shtick better, the Dartmouth Arms on a good night, for instance.

With all the restaurants along Westow Hill you'd have thought they would have to fight harder for the accolades at the Exhibition Rooms, but it's obviously found an audience who are happy with the slightly timewarped offering. I'll probably be happy enough to go back in a sort of default kind of way, but it'll need to up its game to become a looked forward to treat.

El Vergel: Back to the future

2010-01-27T07:59:00.003Z

Back in the pre-history of the internet, in the futuristic year 2000, I worked in the exciting, futuristic world of web development. I was a Multimedia Developer. Exciting and futuristic, huh? I was awesome. I wore box fresh adidas and was an insufferable twat.

Given that we were awesome and hip and did a great deal of happening, our offices were in London Bridge, behind the recently opened Tate Modern. It used to be a power station you know. Awesome! Given that it was London Bridge in the year 2000 there was nothing and nowhere to eat. Borough Market was only open on Friday and Saturday and all you could get there was chorizo sandwiches. One beacon of light, aside from the truly awesome Terry’s Cafe was El Vergel. Ten years ago you simply couldn’t eat any sort of Latin American food in London and yet, here was a tiny, bustling, cantina serving churrascos, soft tacos and delicious salads to hungry multimedia developers.

Happily having recently moved back into the area with work I found El Vergel not only still open, but very much expanded. They’ve moved from the cramped, teeming site I remember on Lant Street, to a cool large open plan space on Webber Street, just off Southwark Bridge Road. I say moved, I mean, just moved, as the space feels slightly unfinished. One end of the large airy space is for takeaways and the other taken up by refectory tables. At lunchtime they were quietly buzzing with today’s equivalent of multimedia developers, with whatever job titles they have now. Webomancers or something. Twice happily, it looks like the quality of the food has survived the intervening ten years even if my hair and waist lines have not.

The menu looks pretty much the same, from what I can remember, a little more complete maybe. The new premises need some breaking in but it was fun to sit near the massive open kitchen and hear the Spanglish banter over the counter. The steak churrasco was a bit of a Proustian moment for me, though it wasn't quite the revelation it once had been, the bread was a little too refrigerated but nit picking aside, a satisfying blast from the past. The accompanying intensity of a glass of fresh passionfruit juice added additional strength to the weak winter sun creeping in through the windows. The tacos looked good, as did the massive salad plates arcing out of the kitchen. Luckily, it looks like El Vergel might survive my nostalgia trip and become a bit of a lunch time favourite once more.

101 Things to Eat in London before you're tired of life: 2

2010-01-26T01:23:00.002Z

Well, I figured I would see if my little series survived another outing. This instalment is akin to the first in that one, it's pretty much a shoo in and two, it's achieved almost legendary status and things have a habit of becoming skewed beyond all recognition when they become legends. Also, this little regular dispatch let's me go back to places long since consigned to the blogging man drawer and blog about them all over again and ignore the plain fact it would appear lazy and unadventurous to do so. Score!

You know Tayyabs. You know the lamb chops. The restaurant and the dish are Whitechapel staples. A Punjabi Pakistani restaurant so good and so popular they named it twice. New Tayyabs. Like the New Shmoo or the Real Ghostbusters only spicier. The restaurant has been going for 30 years and it's as rammed on a Monday night as it is on a Friday. The lamb chops are legendary, mentioned in virtually every review ever written about the place. I've always had a sneaking suspicion that the ones at the Mirch Masala in Tooting were better, but I think on tonight's evidence that suspicion may have to sneak behind the condiments in a huff. They are pretty stunning. In fact everything that comes out of the kitchen is pretty stunning from the salty lassi sprinkled with cumin seeds, to the roti, chicken tikka and, of course, the chops. They are long thin, pounded flat and jacked up with a spice mix that it's hard to describe. Firey, pungent and good. Just good old fashioned excellent. The menu is compact and perfectly formed, the wait staff numerous, efficient and gracious, the bustling crowds dealt with in good time with good grace. A true London classic and one to be treasured.

Postscript: I've been reliably informed that despite my enthusiasm, it's not as good as it used to be and lunchtime is nightmare. 3 people have told me this in 4 hours so I feel honour bound to repeat it. Also, it's been pointed out that in a Timeout poll it was Londoners 10th favourite restaurant. I feel so populist.

Angels and Gypsies, Camberwell Church Street

2010-01-24T11:54:00.002Z

Saturday lunchtime is an odd service in many restaurants. When I was a commis waiter it was always the precursor to the main event, a sideshow distraction to the full on horror that was a Saturday dinner service. It can be a relaxed, quite affable affair, particularly if your waiter isn't doing a split shift and can go home after he's fed and watered you. It doesn't have the familial histrionics of a Sunday lunch or brunch sitting nor the best foot forward first date sheen of a Thursday night. It does have it's own particular foibles however; it can on occasion, depending on the gaff, be overrun with children and all the attendant horrors that eating in a restaurant with barely toilet trained emotional terrorists and their overwrought handlers in tow can bring. I approve of children in restaurants, but only if they can maintain a decibel threshold below that of a Tornado jet firing up it's afterburners. What is the point in bringing your food fussy, sugared up child to a restaurant in the vain hope he'll turn into Lloyd Grossman over the aperitifs, when you know he'll do nothing but scrunch up his tiny little fists and erupt into a solipsistic fit of range and angst at the first mention of food other than chips? Then again, my one year old god daughter has a more sophisticated palette and better table manners than most allegedly adult diners so I guess it all evens out in the end.

Angels and Gypsies in Camberwell is a curious little space that's been a long time coming. It's taken well over two years to open from when it was first mooted and now it has, it's been getting some pretty good reviews. On this particular Saturday lunchtime it was ticking over with diners, a few well behaved kids (i.e. plugged into ipods and DS's) and the two most inept wait staff I've encountered in a good long while. Actually one was just buzzing with terror at the thought of being asked for anything and the other, more senior member of staff, seemed to have forgotten that he was a waiter at all. Despite the challenges of getting seated and ordering something to drink from the menu that they could physically provide, the lunch menu was good. It's a pretty little collection of nueva cocina and homely classics. Bolhinos of salt cod were light, fragrant and nicely put together, two lamb cutlets were nearly perfect and the Patatas a la Pobre were a nice homespun jag alongside the classier tapas. The stand-out mackerel dish arrived after the waiter had taken our plates away, but was good shared with the one fork we had between us.

There's a good restaurant here crying to get out from under the sub-goth chic (stained glass and church seating), Fawlty Towers stereotypes and terrible name. Someone in the kitchen knows what they are doing and is obviously enjoying doing it. Maybe it was training day or something on this particular Saturday, but they seriously need to sort out the charmless front of house goons. Having said that, the price was seriously right for lunch, even if you factor in all the food they missed off the bill, and I'll be back, for sure.

101 Things to Eat in London before you get tired of life...

2010-01-23T00:12:00.002Z

The idea came to me whilst I was covered in pig fat, French's mustard and sucking on a root beer. A catalogue, a Blue Peter time capsule, a record of the 101 best things you could put in your mouth in the capital during 2010. I figured some old favourites, some new, some controversial, others democratic, stuff made by professionals, made by me, stuff made by you! As with all ideas that involve a covering of animal fat, I'm not sure if it will go the distance or if I'll think it such a good idea once I've used the lemon scented paper towelette of hindsight but, right now, it amuses me to imagine I'll be able to think of a 101 actual foodstuffs let alone 101 of anything that you'd want to eat in this city.

So, the inaugural entry is a Bodean's Pulled Pork Sandwich eaten sitting at a window seat in the Soho branch. The other newer incarnations of the place are a sanitised version of the original and are best avoided (especially at the weekend where they've become a sort BBQ based creche facility) as the three ring binder enterprises they are. The Soho mother ship still has that bustling, slightly chaotic free-or-all feel, imbuing it with a casual authenticity that really goes beyond the constant ESPN. That you see a large number of ex-pat Americans in the place seems to suggest I'm not imagining things. The downstairs restaurant I'm less keen on, the bustle and noise of the upstairs deli is perfect for this kind of food.

The sandwich itself is all that you'd expect. Feathery chunks of impossibly tender pork shoulder in a white toasted bun with BBQ sauce and, for me, a couple of squirts of mustard. The slightly medicinal sweetness of a root beer cuts though the whole thing beautifully. This is food for the belly and food for the soul, one of the truly great London meat sweats and a pretty much unparalleled slice of the US in the city.

Whippersnappers...

2010-01-22T11:57:00.007Z

The girl has only posted 7 or 8 times and she's already getting more comments than me. I like to think that's because people are in stunned awe of my posts. KK is down in Brighton and a friend, so pop along and say hello. As well as having an awesome logo, the girl can cook some.

World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Kitchen King

2010-01-21T21:29:00.003Z

On the whole, I'm not a fan of people. They get in the way and clutter the place up. Just tonight, two so called people knocked me off my crutches (long story requiring surgery) in a bid to make sure they got a seat on the train as the doors opened. Given there was ample seating for everyone (a rare occurrence, I'll grant you) I think they did it just to see how quickly I'd go down. One waved pathetically at me by way of apology and then got on the train whilst I was still on the floor. Like I say, I'm not a fan of people. Then, out of nowhere, they go and do something that makes me love them again, the cheeky scamps. Typical.

In this instance that something is recreating dishes from the game World of Warcraft in the real world and publishing the recipes. Breathtaking. For those of you who don't know their Blood Elf Rogues from their Tauren Shamen, I'm referring to the wildly successful massive multiplayer game published by Blizzard, played by millions and set in the fantasy realm of Azeroth (go and Google it for heavens sake). One of the many skills you can gain for your character is the ability to cook. These cooked items return you to strength, both physically and mentally after, say, you've battled your way through a cavern of bloodthirsty undead abominations with a giant sword and a lady wizard in skimpy pants.

The folks in Azeroth are a far more creative bunch when it comes to food than we mere mortals. They'll think nothing of cooking up bear steaks. Or boiling wolf meat. Or spicing up some giant spider's legs. Not content with slaying a bestiary of creatures from all parts of the fantasy spectrum, you get to make sushi out of them too. Like I say, it's wildly popular.

The people behind www.thewowcookbook.com are not trading in illegal bush meats, no, they possess cooking skills of 400 and they are cooking dishes from and inspired by the game. Be it the recipe for Murloc Eye Pie or Warp Burgers, Tauren Chef and her friends projects include The Tauren Cookbook and the soon to be completed Wrath of the Kitchen King and I love them for it. So, next time your riding your Hawkstrider mount through the forests of Kalimdor munching on spiced wolf meat, turn that giant chicken round and head for the Tauren Chef's blog.

Breakfast

2010-01-21T20:05:00.003Z

Pan, aciete y tomate. Toasted bread, olive oil and a thick sludge of chopped tomato. The breakfast of the best national football team in the world, matadors, long lived dictators and Rafael Nadal. I mean, it probably is. Alright, so I have no conclusive proof one way or another but it should be given that it is one of the best breakfasts in the world. Previous to a recent trip back to Spain I'd always had the country down as being not very good at the meal. It was usually some dryish madelaines, some Dorado biscuits (which are the best biscuits in the world so it was never that bad) and coffee. It is simply not a meal that the Spanish had put their heart and soul into, like they have with lunch. I was wrong.

We Brits excel at breakfast, the creaky old Somerset Maugham quote about eating breakfast three times a day is probably accurate and certainly an aspiration of mine. The full English is king. However, in fifty odd years we've gone from around fifty percent of us starting each and every day with a fry up to less than 1 percent, so it's hardly representative anymore. We've just gone and borrowed everyone else's breakfasts and muddled them all up. Italian coffee as seen though the big milky lens of American tastes, cereals and muesli from Satan himself or the Swiss (you decide) and hideous malformed croissants which we've brought over from France and then tortured horribly as a reminder of Agincourt, pounded by yeomen until they surrender. Tea and toast are all that are left to us. And porridge, but big girly porridge with sugar and milk not hairy arsed porridge with salt and brimstone in it and a shot of single malt to round it off.

I don't know if you'd noticed but everywhere has started selling porridge. I noticed it in L.A. early last year and thought nothing of it. Just figured it was a food meme that would sweep through the town and fade. It would appear not. It's here in London and it appears to be surviving, if not thriving. Porridge, no longer the preserve of Golden Spurtle winners and burnt pans soaking through the day whilst we toil at work or spattered on the inside of a microwave, but something one can buy at Pret. Odd.

Belated Happy New Year by the way.

Milk in your coffee?

2009-10-08T19:16:00.002+01:00

In Markman Ellis' excellent history of the way we drink coffee, The Coffee House: A Cultural History, there is a chapter called something like The Lactification of Coffee. I forget the exact title and I haven't drunk enough espresso to get out of my chair and go and find my copy. You'll just have to trust me. Anyway, the premise is a simple one. The way coffee is drunk has changed out of all recognition from the black, hot and bitter to the smooth, milky and sweet. Starbucks is to blame, probably.

He's right of course. The average coffee shop serves variations on large milky drinks that taste vaguely of coffee. The current trend in London for flat whites et al have upped the ante a little, in that at least the coffee is well made and not drowning in milk but there's a vaguely dunderhead trendoid factor involved in getting decent coffee from the likes of Flat White and Fernandez and Wells. You tend to have to wrestle past fixed wheel bikes and iphones or baby strollers made by F1 racing teams. The other curious thing is that they've done away with froth. I remember the days, not so long ago, that the true sign of a well made cappucino was a mountain of chocolate flecked foam you could snowboard down. It would take a foot long biscotti to find the coffee, long since transformed into a molten hot nuclear plasma under the intense pressure. Now, to the new cofferati it's anathema. It's all about silky milk. A merest hint of bubble and the barista gets his head broiled under his very own steam wand. Oddly, the ancient Mayan thought the foam the best bit. They were keen on human sacrifice too. I doubt the two are connected.

We drink a great deal of coffee in the UK but we aren't coffee lovers. We are a nation of tea drinkers really. Like the Japanese. Tea requires ceremony, patience and inspires a certain rectitude. If you look at how coffee has grown up in this country it's always in contrast to tea. Coffee is always more at home alongside debate, sedition and mischief making than tea which hangs around providing succour, comfort and familiarity. True coffee loving nations are chaotic, noisy places usually with a hint of corruption crinkling the edges. We are probably well on our way but we're not quite there yet.

Sherry/Xeres/Jerez

2009-09-17T23:14:00.004+01:00

Jerez is Spain proper. It’s the Spain that big city sophisticates in Madrid and Barcelona say isn’t really Spain, it’s something that doesn’t really exist they’ll tell you, but here it is nevertheless. Jerez is sherry, flamenco and the blistering sun. It’s dusty, gypsy haunted and poor. The sherry business ain’t what it used to be, us Brits don’t drink it that much anymore, and consequently Jerez has some of the highest levels of unemployment in the country. Yet, everywhere you look is sherry. It’s in the street signage and furniture and town clocks paid for by the bodegas in happier times. Tio Pepe, Domencq and the slightly jarring British names; Sandemans, Williams and Humbert, Harveys, testament to the importance of “sack” in the British imagination in years gone by. The high walled compounds of the bodegas themselves are like white washed fortresses with impossible visiting hours. Well, nine till six during the week, anyway. Unless it's a fiesta. Which seems to be quite often. There’s a faded grandeur to the town, and the people, as well turned out as anywhere else in Spain (they are a dressy lot on the whole) have a provincial air. Noble, haughty and brassy.

Sherry is the perfect drink for the climate. It’s fair to say it’s a reflection of the place itself. A glass of chilled fino is the colour of the local chalky Albariza soil and dry as a bone, like sipping on a refrigerated glass of midday sun. Not the jolly yellow midday sun of an English summer. This is a searing white light that feels like an x-ray. At five in the afternoon, the temperature sits at an egg frying 45 degrees Celsius (Fahrenheit junkies can work this out for themselves using the gizzards of a chicken of whatever it is you guys use) and the only people on the streets are heat addled Northern Europeans grinding their way through the tourist spots like World Of War craft players hoping to level up. It’s too hot to sweat; the moisture just evaporates immediately leaving you slowly desiccating, like a leg of jamon iberico.

We’d just finished lunch and poked our noses out of the air conditioning. It was a meal spiked with sherry and we were ready for bed, ready to wait out the remaining heat of the day and reclaim the streets for dinner at around midnight. Kidneys in sherry, bulls tail in sherry, a semifreddo of Pedro Ximenez with raisins, pistachios and cinnamon, glasses of ice cold fino and the pruney sweetness of a dessert PX. Every dish jagged with complex citrus and herby medicinal flavours, every dish simply bloody amazing. Oddly, a trip back to the same restaurant a couple of days later was utter crap. I guess the planets had lined up for us. Walking back through the afternoon heat little white tents were being set up in the main square ready for sherry tastings. Another fiesta, commented a woman from Madrid, “...they never do any work down here”, she said poking her Andalucian husband in the ribs with a smirk.

Jerez is celebrating its harvest festival at the moment. La Fiesta de la Vendimia. It runs for three weeks and it kicked off with a concert in the bullring. It seemed the whole town had turned out to see the Bulerias performed. The Buleria is one of the mainstays of flamenco. A fast paced melange of guitars, hand claps and song. A pure stripped down slice of lost loves and land, pain and solace. The voice of muezzin calling the faithful to prayer is in its DNA. They take their flamenco very seriously here, almost as seriously as their wine and it comes as no surprise that Jerez is home to the largest extant Gypsy quarter in Spain and it’s here that the Buleria was born. Where the fashion for prodigious mullets that the young chaps were sporting comes from, however, is anyone’s guess. Luckily for us they take their food just as seriously. One stall was selling huge piles of fried baby squid, chunks of cuttlefish and whole anchovies. Another freshly made potato chips, paper cones of tiny dried shrimp and enormous sandwiches of fried pork and green padron peppers. No one is the mixed crowd of young and old, locals and tourists was going hungry.

A tour round a bodega seemed churlish to refuse, especially one with it’s own collection of Old Masters. Bodegas Tradicion specialise in VOS (vinum optimum signatum or happily Very Old Sherry) and VORS (vinum optimum rare signatum or with even greater luck Very Old Rare Sherry) which are the oldest and rarest appellations allowed by the sherry police. These wines are aged in solera (the fiendishly labyrinthine system in which sherry is made) for up to 30 years and they have a bizarre complexity from the tar like sweet PX to the apothecary aromas of the Amontillados and Olorosos. Tradicion do not grow their own grapes, instead they pick and choose from the best and blend these wines, which are like Jerez itself, are complex and something of an acquired taste, but one worth pursuing.

A double dose of Jamie

2009-09-02T14:52:00.015+01:00

I spent a slightly bemused hour in front of my telly last night watching Jamie Oliver's new show, Jamie's American Road Trip. Now, I'm not one to bash the guy simply because he's on TV. He's inoffensive enough most of the time, I quite enjoyed the school dinner thing and I even rate some of the cookbooks. The issue I have is that there's just too much of him, he occupies too much space. Yes, he's been piling on the pounds but this is something else. Everything Jamie Oliver does is packed to the gills with, well, Jamie Oliver. His cookbooks are so full of pictures of him that Jamie's Italy resembles some horrid niche gay porn mag for people who like tubby cockneys and tomato sauce. The food is always second billing to Jamie's thick tongued grimace.

Take last nights programme; Jamie hangs out in the "Mexican enclave" of San Pedro in Los Angeles He's in search of Mexican food. Given that the border isn't that far you'd figure he could catch a flight, but he's after the authentic foods of the whole of Mexico so maybe we can cut him some slack as there's less ground to cover. Maybe.

So, what does Jamie do, given he has unfettered access to the best Mexican cuisine has to offer? He hangs out with and patronises some former gangsters, who have a glassy eyed "I'm on TV, but I don't understand a word this maricon is saying" expression throughout most of the show. I felt for them, there's probably nothing in their former lives of crime; not the drugs, the violence, the deaths of family and friends that prepared them for this lisping cockney caricature intruding on their grief and their kitchens. It's like he'd seen a few Louis Theroux documentaries and decided "I'll do that and cadge a few recipes at the same time". Unfortunately, Jamie lacks Louis's empathy and curiosity and his own gargantuan self regard gets in the way. Virtually every recipe is Jamie's take on something. He's surrounded by people who know this food and culture intimately but decides, fuck it, I'll have a bash and then spout off about how he's just like them because he loves his family too.

Two comedy moments stood out. Jamie speaking Italian to a group of confused Hispanic ladies at a cactus farm because I can only guess he figures, "well, it's all the same innit!?" and the scene of him being fed mescal and getting a bit trippy. It was obviously a set up and I doubt he got more than a mild buzz but I'd have actually loved to see him totally lose it and go on a drug fuelled cockney rampage.

As for the double dose, I ended up in Jamie's Italian in Canary Wharf on Sunday for reasons that I won't go into. It's the third time I've been to one, having visited the Bath and Brighton branches and I have to say I actually quite enjoyed those two visits. There were nice enough spaces, the food was okay and the bill a fair reflection on the whole experience. It was pleasantly, "...meh".

However, there's something rotten in the state of Jamie. The one defining characteristic of all three restaurants, the one thing they all shared was anger. There's no way to reserve a table, so the front desk is a scrum of people trying to cajole, bully or insinuate their way in. They get angry. Really angry. Way angrier than I've seen at any other restaurant with a similar system for getting a table. The line at Wahaca is a jolly affair by comparison and people seem genuinely content to get a few mojitos down before the little buzzy thing vibrates and they can sit down. People at Jamie's Italian are pissed. In Brighton, a very large Scandanavian woman sick of standing for all of about ten minutes loudly proclaimed she would write to the man himself to complain and I think that's the crux of it. They want the man himself to show them to their table. Despite themselves, they figure Jamie owes them one for turning up. It's too personal, too much identified with him, people reckon this is a fine dining experience when it's just really a Frankie and Benny's franchise with better parmesan. Expectations are too high and so people just seem to lose it. Much how they would in Italy, I imagine, if they were ever confronted with such a restaurant. Authenticity, see?

By the way, avoid the Canary Wharf branch. It feels like a motorway service station canteen and take a deep breath before reading the menu. It makes me want to punch someone.

Forager

2009-08-31T16:59:00.002+01:00

Steely green-grey leaves of Sea Purslane, delicate cotton like Rose Bay Willow Herb flowers, fiery Arsesmart, Catsear and Mugwort daisies, Ribwort Plantain and the bright yellow flowers of Ladies Bedstraw are all in the process of being pressed and dried by a couple of kilos worth of cookbooks on my kitchen table. Evocative, mysterious and downright silly names of ingredients I can pretty much guarantee do not appear in any of recipe books applying the pressure. They are all wild growing herbs and edible plants we foraged this weekend guided by the expert hand of Miles Irving in the woods and along the coast near his home in Kent.

Miles runs Forager, a supplier of wild food to restaurants including St John Bread and Wine, Paternoster Chop House and the Rivington Grill and has recently published a book on the edible plants of the British Isles (take a look here), so it's fair to say we were in good hands picking through vast array of edible plants and berries around us. "Peckham's good for wild rocket, especially along the old canal path", he confided, "and you'll get wild garlic in Sydenham Woods", assuring us that you don't need to stray too far from Zone 1 to forage for wild food. In fact, Miles regularly does well attended foraging walks in London parks and along the Thames, educating "switched on foodies" where to find interesting wild plants and how to avoid poisoning themselves. "You can make a beeline for wild rocket when it flowers because of the distinctive yellow petals, but Greater Celandine looks very similar and it's deadly poisonous...", he pauses, " ...I'd really like to see you write that down.," he says with a rye smile.

Later at Miles house, I was picking elderberries from the stalks to go with lunch, work that stained my fingers purple for the rest of the day. However, the combination of venison with the berries in a red wine reduction was stunning and worth the odd looks in the newsagents on the way home. The other revelation from Miles's kitchen was Sea Aster, a succulent shoreline wild plant that is my new favourite vegetable. It's like a cross between samphire, asparagus and spinach with a lovely silky texture.

That afternoon, walking along the Kent coast we found super food Goji berries, Samphire, salty sweet Sea Purslane and wrestled with tart Sea Buckthorn berries which are notoriously hard to get off the shrubs. We picked dark green Seebeet, from which all beets have been bred, including chard and beetroots. The challenge for Miles, it seems, is making sure that he doesn't over use each foraging spot. He visits scores of sites throughout the year and whilst some are regular as clockwork, others are fleeting and only a deep understanding of his quarry keep the whole enterprise going. That and some luck. Driving past a stream, he goes to point out one of places he gathers watercress. A bright yellow JCB is tearing the plants out, freeing the clogged stream, "That one's gone for a couple of years then", he says, with the smallest of sighs. Walking back up to the car laden with foraged goodies, Miles eyed the myriad swaying yellow heads of wild fennel flowers with a knowing eye. I guess he'll be back to this spot pretty soon.

Bubbling Under

2009-08-27T14:05:00.005+01:00

Scuba diving off the UK coast is, on the whole, an exercise in masochism. The water is cold and green, the visibility tends to be negligible and getting kitted up in a dry suit, with thermal undersuit, when there's even a hint of sun is akin to feeling like a boil in the bag fish supper. Add a dive boat rocking on a big swell and vomiting dive buddies are never far behind. British recreational divers can be a rum lot; foul mouthed, fond of bizarre, potentially dangerous practical jokes, nudity and hard drinking. Given that it takes a special kind of idiot to want to get into 5 degree water to see a wreck a murky meter at a time that's probably no surprise. Having tarred the dive community with a stereotype it both loathes and somewhat cherishes I have to say I love it. I love it because every so often you do a dive that blows your socks off, a dive of unrivalled beauty, where you realise the seas off our coast are teeming with life and history.

One of the fascinations for me is seeing the stuff you normally see on ice at the fishmongers actually doing what it does in life. A monkfish, as you can see from the excellent picture at the top of this post that my friend Dan Charity took in Portland, Dorset, is seriously ugly. Ugly, but a beautifully adapted hunter, patiently waiting for prey to be attracted to the fake bait suspended from the spine between it's eyes. John Dory are slow ethereal looking animals with diaphanous trailing fins. Spider crabs can be so big that I've often mistaken them for rocks until they've moved. Pollock are streamlined silvery torpedoes and scallops feed through a fine lace like filigree that protrudes delicately from their shells. Lay one in your hand and once they sense that danger has passed they pump like muscular butterflies and swim off into the blue.

This being a food blog, it was my intention to post on diving for scallops off Swanage and dissecting one aboard the dive boat afterwards for your edification and my lunch. It's a semi regular occurrence on chartered dive boats that the skipper suggests a local drift dive (letting the current carry you along) over some scallop beds as the last dive on the Sunday. Most people see this as the skipper trying to get out of going too far off shore so he can get the boat back and cleaned up and have his tea at a reasonable hour. Personally, I'm usually in favour, as the chance to eat freshly caught raw scallops overrides any desire to see more twisted metal (though I do love a bit of twisted metal). Eating one that you've caught yourself, fresh from the sea, prised open with a dive knife, is a revelation. The main white meat is sweet and vibrant, the coral, creamy and delicately textured, like foie gras. Unfortunately, circumstances transpired against us with time and tide hampering the trip, as well as a misbehaving Tom-tom. We managed a dive under the pier in Swanage where this rather cheery Tompot Blenny posed for me. Luckily for him, he's not edible and we had to settle for mussels with chips and a few beers by the beach. Well worth the trip.

Goodman Restaurant, 26 Maddox Street

2009-08-24T20:48:00.011+01:00

So, it’s sort of inevitable that I’ll make some sort of comparison with Hawksmoor when talking about Goodman. As far as I am concerned Hawksmoor has been the best steak house in London for such a long time that any pretender to that crown is always going to have to go into a head to head, pound for pound steak based slug-fest with the champ. Now, to put this into perspective, I love Hawksmoor, I’ve celebrated a couple of birthdays there and had my stag do there and even been treated to dinner by Dos Hermanos, so it’s pretty entrenched in my affections.

So, when Goodman opened as a pretender, I was intrigued but felt like I was cheating on a long serving and much loved girlfriend with a flashier, ritzier, younger model. You know, I needn’t have worried. Goodman reminded me of Morton’s, the chain of steak houses in the US with the hilarious table service. The waiter approaches the table with the meat board, which is fine, but then proceeds to show what’s going to be in your salad, vegetable by vegetable, “Tonight, we have onion”, he then shows table an onion with a gesture akin to a magician revealing a chosen card. OK, they didn’t do that at Goodman, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if they had.

The place has Peter Luger aspirations, and that’s all good as far as I am concerned. Having their own aging room and imported USDA grain fed beef as well as UK and Australian grass fed beef is a good thing too. The staff are lovely, cheery sorts, so no complaints there and my baked New York cheesecake was delicious, as good as any I’d had in the US.

Three black marks against Goodman. When being told about the specials the waiter didn’t specify any prices and there wasn’t a specials board in eyeshot, so I assumed that the price of the steak I ordered would be something akin to the highest price quoted on the menu. It was an amazing piece of meat I was buying and I knew it wouldn’t come cheap. When the bill came and the steak was £50, I was annoyed. I probably would have still ordered it, but at least I would have been warned and accepted the consequences of my actions. It was a serious Porterhouse, beautifully cooked.

Second black mark, no macaroni cheese on the menu. A small thing I know, but, in the pound for pound battle of the steak houses important.

Three. The bar at Hawksmoor pounds the one at Goodman, like Ali demolishing Liston.

So, no, sorry, I don’t think it’s as good as Hawksmoor. It’s a slicker, more polished product and I really wanted to love it, but you know, in this case, I’ll be sticking with the old girl for a bit longer.

Postscript: It appears I wasn't the only one to hit up Goodman for meaty treats this weekend: Other write ups here at LondonEater and Bellaphon.

Ginger and White, Perrin's Court, Hamstead

2009-08-23T16:40:00.003+01:00

The lovely thing about Ginger and White is the sense that you've stumbled on to a hidden gem. Tucked away from the traffic on Hampstead High Street, Perrin's Court is a quiet pedestrianised parade of shops, galleries and cafes. Sitting at the top of the street are the chocolate brown awnings of G&W, self styled British Coffee Shop and brain child of Tonia George, food writer and stylist turned proprietor, and her Kiwi business partners, Emma and Nick Scott.

The label of British Coffee shop might remind older readers of Lyon's Tea rooms and coffee shops, however, whilst that might be in G&W's DNA, it's evolved the notion out of all recognition. The coffee is cutting edge, sourced from boutique roasters Square Mile and the food simple, showcasing great British ingredients with a home cooked, ever-so slightly-rough-edged feel. Weekends bring slow roasted pork sarnies and the salt beef is top notch. The cakes are some of the best I've had in a coffee shop.

You can tell I fell in love with the place, huh? Can't recommend it enough, just the sort of honest, considered and relaxed place I do love hanging out in and now that the weeks have ironed out the opening day kinks, this little oasis is destined to be a favourite.

Ultimate Barista Fighter!

2009-08-21T15:51:00.002+01:00

Nick, one of the co-owners at Hamstead's brand spanking new coffee shop, Ginger and White (which I'll be posting about later) shared this video of Square Mile Coffee Roasters after hours barista fight club. That's El Grifo in the mask....You can find the results from the night here at Ultimate Barista Fighter's website.

Borough lunchtime

2009-08-19T17:47:00.010+01:00

I've been working about ten minutes from Borough Market for six months now and despite the fact I've gained a pound for every month, I've become something of an old hand at nimbly navigating the lunchtime crowds. Despite the advertised opening times, you can actually eat in the Market everyday if you are so inclined. Noobs at lunchtime eating at Borough are often blinded by the MIAB offerings (Meat In A Bap) so here's a list of the finest weekday fare:

Monday: Tricky day Monday. There are a few MIAB offerings, the new sausage guys with the grill next to the now derelict Wheatsheaf pub on Stoney Street are open as is the chicken burger place on the east side of the market near the barber shop. Gastronomica, bang smack in the middle of the main market is worth a look. The parma ham and goats cheese piadini are stunning, as are the excellent panini or the kick ass lasagna which moves quick and isn't always available. Otherwise, the Roast takeaway is an option, though it can be cripplingly expensive and a bit unenthusiastic. Hobbs, the roast meat place on Bedale Street is open, but I'm not a fan. Top it off with a flat white at Monmouth and maybe share one of the massive brownies from the Flour Power City Bakery, who run a skeleton crew.

Tuesday: Things pick up a bit on a Tuesday. Furness Fish start up their massive pans of Thai and Caribbean curry, though oddly they don't give you any bread on a Tuesday. Go figure. There are plenty of MIAB options, with MIAB royalty Brindisa firing up the grill for their long serving chorizo and rocket sandwiches.

Wednesday: Things start gearing up for the full market days and I always stroll though hoping a few more people will open up. I'm always hopeful that I'll be able to grab a few empanadas from Portena or some fresh gnocchi from La Tua Pasta and I'm always slightly shocked that they aren't open. A colleague insists on fish and chips from fish! but it's all a bit much for a weekday lunchtime. I'd had high hopes for the rather unfortunately named Best Italian on Park Street, but it seems to be some sort of wooden spoon emporium. Weird. Usually it's a cheeky pint in the Rake and then MIAB.

Thursday: The first full market day of the week and probably the best day of the week to go down there. Everyone is open but the crowds don't really appear. If you've got time to kill then there's a veggie spot that's very popular over by the barber shop but the queue is a killer and they take their own sweet time making everything. La Tua Pasta and Portena are finally open in the southern section of the market, as is another MIAB favourite, the Boston Sausage Company. El Gustubis have started knocking out enormous salt beef sandwiches, however, the queue is something to behold.

Friday: Get down there early if you want to stand any chance of surviving the lunch time crush. The overspill is open under the arches and it's the first stall on the left that should be your first stop. The Damascean Falafel Company. The queue builds up quick but get there around 12.30 and you can tuck into a outstanding number 3 with relative ease. The one with pickles, as pictured. King of the MIAB on a Friday is the German bratwurst place one stall on from the falafel stand. Get ready to wait and be berated by the guy selling mushroom pate next door for blocking his stall in. Worth the wait though and you need the sauerkraut. The raclette dude is outside Brindisa if your heart needs stopping or suck down a couple of Colchester Natives at Richard Haward's Oyster stall.

Saturday: Do not go. It's hellish. If you do, approach from the London Bridge side, go down those stairs past that cafe with the dodgy paella outside and the stall on the corner, before you are sucked into maelstrom under the railway, is a Jamaican pattie stand. Grab a few and scurry off back the way you came.

Slow Ludlow

2009-08-17T21:57:00.005+01:00

Ludlow Castle is famous for two things to my mind. Firstly, that Henry VIII's older brother Arthur and his bride, a certain Catherine of Aragon, spent their honeymoon there. Arthur would scurry along the icy battlements to her chambers for mead and tiddlywinks. Unfortunately, it seems the cold proved too much for Arthur and he caught the medieval version of swine flu and checked out. The second thing it is famous for, by rights, is the orange curd they sell in the tea shop there. It's the crack of curds. Unbelievable. Oh yeah, there's the small matter of the Ludlow Food and Drink Festival which is held in the grounds of the castle, you might have heard of that, but that wasn't on.

So given the chance to spend a few nights in the grounds of the castle itself, in what's called the Catherine of Aragon apartment no less (thought I don't think it had a DVD player when she was there) we jumped at the chance. That and the fact it was within striking distance of a few Michelin stars and some country walks added to the appeal.

Given Ludlow's status as England's only Citta Slow and it being something of a draw for food loving sorts, expectations were probably a bit high. Had its star waned, I thought, picking through the very ordinary local farmers market in the main square. This wasn't quite the fabled market town I'd imagined. Yes, there were a fair few butcher's shop, a pretty good deli and some very good pubs but it seems the recession had bitten hard and there was a slight air of melancholy. Still, a few rather good lamb kebabs, wrapped in greasy brown paper, bought from a stall holder were the centre piece of a picnic eaten in the earthwork fortifications of an Iron Age fort some hours later, so I shouldn't have been too harsh.

My faith was restored by two things. Firstly, the Ludlow Food Centre. It's a purpose build farm shop a little way out of town stocking as much local produce as they can, with the farm estate butchers at the heart of the operation. A bakery using locally sourced organic flours makes some cracking sourdough and the jams, oh man, the jams. Every cheese sandwich I make is haunted by the lack of the onion jam I bought from there.

The other was the Michelin starred Mr Underhills. In the cold light of day, it's not the sort of thing I'd normally wax lyrical about. From the outside the cooking looks a bit frilly, a bit chichi, there's a custard and a foam and even a veloute or two, but, you know what? You just have to relax. Don't get ansy about it. It's in a beautiful setting, the staff are attentive, relaxed and the food, well, the food is great. The fillet of venison from the Mortimer forest, where we'd been walking earlier in the day was a local treat and the pre dessert of iced rhubarb sponge stopped me in my tracks; delicate, explosive flavours with a sense of humour. Also, I've never seen that many petit fours on one table. I liked it. A lot.

Anyway, that orange curd. Magic. Pure sugary magic.

A little favour...

2009-08-16T21:27:00.003+01:00

It appears my blog roll is hopelessly out of date. Any suggestions of things I should be reading would be gratefully received.

Recipes

2009-08-16T17:55:00.009+01:00

The recipe was from Nigel Slater's Real Food, a battered copy of which has been on my shelf for as long as I can remember (it came out in 2000, so I obviously have dementia). Mushroom and Spinach Lasagne. It's a good recipe. An old friend, if you will. A dish that made sense even when you read it on the page. Solid.

I'm no particular fan of Nigel, the cookbooks pretty good. Out of interest I've just spent an amusing five minutes reading the amazon.co.uk reviews of it, which range from gushing to accusations of impropriety and one poor chap getting quite annoyed about the quality of the binding. The only reason I mention it is that some books just seem to stay with you, they aren't that exciting, they are just part of your kitchen landscape splattered with ingredients from the recipes they contain. A map of failed attempts and successes smeared across the pages like very haphazard medieval illuminations.

One of those what I had for lunch posts...

2009-08-12T19:12:00.009+01:00

Sweden in the winter, before the snow... is what it feels like here in London. It hasn't helped that I've been reading Nordic horror all afternoon, slumped in a favourite reading chair, armed with a cup of tea. Assisting the mood is the rain that has been falling in gray and silver sheets for most of that time. Actually, tell a lie, there was a moment of blue sky when I popped into the garden and saw my first red tomato of the year. A little "ripe tomato" dance ensued.

So, my mood lifted by the cheery red new arrival, I set off into the kitchen for lunch. I was going to repeat the sunny little number I conjured at the weekend, a happy little salad, doing what every good salad should; sparkle and crunch whilst hinting at bitterness deep down. Slivers of grapefruit, pine nuts and a little cumin, tahini and lemon to jack the whole thing up, give it a sense of place, a little history, perhaps conjure some shisha smoke.

Oddly, I was distracted by buckwheat soba noodles with smoked mackerel and spinach, which took me somewhere else entirely. A long way from a rainy, green gray London anyway.

Lessons from our sci-fi past...

2009-08-10T12:36:00.007+01:00

You may have seen that the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs released a discussion document today, excitingly called Food 2030. Like Space 1999 but more futuristic and more easily digested. It's basically a call for comments on what Britain's food infrastructure will look like in 2030 given climate change, food security and self-sufficiency and the inexorable rise of the global population.

Personally, I don't know what the answers are. I'm guessing something to do with allotments, sell by dates and some semblance of a return to seasonality. You know, not expecting to able to eat asparagus in November. Frankly, I'm not going to enter into the debate because it strikes me that enough nutters are clamouring for a thirty meter fence round the entire country, a return to rationing and hanging Jamie Oliver from a lamppost for making us eat foreign muck, for me to sensibly comment. It's somehow all a bit futile, I thought. Then, no actually, there is something I can bring to this debate, I thought. An in depth knowledge of 70's and 80's sci-fi. What better way to look into future than by looking at the way we used to look at the future, in the past!

So, here are my five solutions to averting the coming food crisis as inspired by Charton Heston et al.

1) Bit of giveaway there. So, yes, first up is the inevitable 1973 classic Soylent Green. Instead of worrying about growing food for people, simply feed people from assisted suicide clinics to other people in the form of nutritious wafers. Simple.

2) Instead of an exponentially growing population, we could take a leaf out of Logan's Run and just not let anyone live beyond the age of 30. They'd be plenty of food for everyone, but Saga magazine might take a hit in its readership.

3) When ever you order something from a restaurant you should only get half of what you asked for. Like Deckard in Blade Runner when he tries to order his dinner before being rudely interrupted and getting arrested. We all stay thin and only use half as much food.

4) Split the population in two. Have one half become brutalised and warlike, have the other half become immortal and bored. Have one half grow food for the other by scaring them with giant floating heads. Who says, films like Zardoz have nothing to offer in terms of practical solutions.

5) Get an Imperial Battlecuiser and halt the flow of time. Don't know how this will help, but Christopher Plummer and David Hasselhoff seemed to think it would in 1978 Italian sci-fi, so-bad-it's-good classic Starcrash.

A cup of tea at East Croydon Station

2009-08-08T00:20:00.002+01:00

The train is 6 minutes late and I'm sat at East Croydon Station armed solely with my Ipod and a cup of tea with all the charm of wet cardboard soaked in dishwater. Given that there are six or seven competing coffee stands on the station platforms, you'd have thought someone could get this right, if only by a slow evolutionary crawl towards something more like tea. This is akin to the fabled "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea" that Arthur Dent had to contend with. But, there's power in a cup of tea, even one entirely unlike tea. It's a power drawn from the endless repetition of tea making. From my frankly heathen brewing habits to those of a friend of a friend who tastes tea for a living (the company pays her dental hygienist bills) and whose tea making skills are so rarefied no one can actually make her a cup. The endless cycle of tea making has forged my cup of tea into a weapon with mystical qualities. Cup Of Tea of Warding Evil ,+4 Endurance.

What's it protecting me from? Well, East Croydon to be frank; sunburnt tourists shivering in ill thought through last-day-of-the-holiday clothing choices disgorged from Gatwick, gangs of kids in sportswear, gangs of kids in emo wear, gangs of blokes in bad shirts, plain old fashioned nutters and, oddly, Mormons. One on an earlier train derisively asked a perfectly innocent elderly Hindu lady if she found it difficult to keep track of all those gods. I have no idea why there are so many Mormons in East Croydon, they just seem to be something of a permanent fixture.

Two girls sit next to me on the bench, both sporting slightly fading '80's revival neon clutching a can of Stella each. One talks about her boyfriend with such a forceful passion that I'm convinced Mark Antony (the Roman general not the Rn B singer) is going to clatter onto the station in full armour and whisk her away. He doesn't. Pity.

That's not to say sitting here, as I have done a fair bit, doesn't have its fair share of little epiphanies. Very late one bitterly cold night I sat bewildered as a shiny Horwart's Express style steam engine flew through the station. The only other person on the platform was asleep so I can't verify that it wasn't an acid flashback. During a period where I had to use the station a great deal there was a moment each day that I looked forward to. A gentleman in full business suit, bowler, briefcase and umbrella would get off a train neatly holding a Selfridges' Food Hall bag and glide through the throng like the ghost of some pre-war commuter.

Back to my desperate cup of tea. It's cooling now and my train is even later. Guess, I'll need a refill, I want it piping hot when somebody tries to mug me.

My Red Cookbook

2009-08-07T00:21:00.008+01:00

There are too many cookbooks and they all look suspiciously similar. There's some bloke gurning on the front and looking like he'll explode from how nice his life is and if you'd only heave your corpulence from the sofa for five minutes and cooked something from his book you might get a tiny tiny glimmer of his fantastic life in your own miserable stuttering, laughable excuse of an existence.

Whoh, there MG. You're losing them.

Here's an idea. Buy a blank book, one of those nice Moleskine ones Bruce Chatwin used and go to a mates house and cook something with them. Have a chat, reminisce, see what's going on their lives, take a few photos, or draw a picture, write down the recipe. In a few years, you'll have something special. Something rich and beautiful, heavy with the smell of time spent with friends old and new, good food and bad, laughter and probably a bit of smudged mascara. I'm going to do it. I bought mine today. It's red. I'll let you know how it goes.

M&S I hate you.

2009-08-06T22:03:00.004+01:00

There‘s part of an old stand up routine by Alexei Sayle that goes like this. Alexei tells us that he would invite friends round for dinner, spend several days preparing the meal and then claim that he had bought everything from Marks and Spencers, at which point everyone round the table would exclaim, “Oooh, what would we do without Marks & Spencers...” in a high pitched middle class squeak. A typical slightly surreal moment from my doppelganger Mr Sayle, but, given the ubiquity of M&S Food Halls on motorways, high streets on the southern section of the Northern Line and refurbished railway stations he’s still got a point. I trust Alexei, he once wrote a song about the Revolutionary Biscuits of Italy.

My point, then. Dear old Marks and Sparks. I hate you. Hate is a strong word but dislike doesn’t cut it in this instance. Simple pure malice against a supermarket isn’t generally a good idea, there’s just too much to hate. Also, what are you going to do when you need loo paper and milk at 11.30pm and the Tescos Express round the corner has sucked the life from every convenience store in a half mile radius? The stark realisation of my absolute hatred of that middle class bastion of carrot batons and pre-prepared ham sandwiches only happened about an hour ago. I was eating the pictured pesto chicken and bacon salad thingy and it slowly dawned on me. EVERYTHING TASTES THE SAME. It had never really occurred to me. Everything I’ve bought in the damnable place tastes exactly the same. The desserts included. Everything tastes smug. And self satisfied. And mostly of mayonnaise. Even something that's meant to be spicy is primly hot, nothing too offensive, it's not bland, it's limp and well meaning. Like the Church of England.

So Mark's and Spencers, I hate you. I hate you for all the meals I've eaten on trains and in cars where I've thought, "Ah, I'll get something nice from M&S" and have been fooled into thinking that eight pieces of pineapple and a ham and cheese sarnie should cost eight quid only to find no discernible difference between the two in terms of the way the food makes me feel. Fuck you, M&S and your flat food.

Swimming with Tuna

2009-08-05T20:47:00.010+01:00

I've always thought of myself as the total omnivore. The very notion that there was something that I wouldn't eat was dismissed with a casual wave of a roast swan's leg. The very idea that I would stop eating something because I believed it was wrong to eat them, well, I'd have spat out my badger's noses. I think if you go back and read a lot of this blog, it's obvious that's where I was coming from. No, before you drop your bacon sarnies, I'm not about to admit that I've become a vegan, nor even a vegetarian. You see, I've been around cows, seen them mooch about chewing the cud in that mellow sort of way cows do and I have to say that I have no problem eating one. As long as they've spent their time gently plodding around in a contented sort of way, I'd say that being on my plate is a fitting end. See, now the thing is I've seen tuna hunt and there's no way I'm ever eating one again.

It's rare that you get to see fish doing fish stuff. For an hour here or there with scuba gear you might catch a glimpse of what the average fish gets up of an afternoon, but, on the whole, you just don't get to see them living out their lives, so they appear distant, alien and cold. Dead, to be frank, is what they mostly do. You just don't really get an emotional attachment. Even fish in captivity seem robotic. Exciting fish, like sharks, rays and moray eels populate wild dreams of Captain Nemo and Jacques Cousteau, but on the whole, for most people it's hard to get emotional about something that comes in small round tins.

As a kid, I remember quite clearly, being struck by the fact that a tuna fish was large. I'd imagined them small, like whitebait. What I didn't really know then and what I've seen is that they are big. Big, ferocious and fast as quicksilver. A tuna fish in full flight in as awe inspiring as a lioness bringing down prey. It's like a streak of lightning spinning through bait fish. I watched a small school of twelve of fifteen fish spiraling through the water and catching fish, avoiding the lumbering bulk of a cruising reef shark like racing cars navigating a chicane. Like so many silver torpedoes they flew past me in the water, again and again, going from near standstill to ferocious attack with a virtually imperceptible flick of the tail. This was magical, exciting, not something to be mixed with mayo and stuck in between wholemeal bread.

So, I have no idea if this ban will last. Probably not, but I hope so.

The Ivy: an experiment in recession psychology

2009-03-19T18:45:00.006Z

In these dark financial times there's a whiff of revolution in the air. Not a beard wearing, cigar smoking, army surplus whiff of revolution. A more considered, more hand wringing sort of feeling. A new conservatism? A new puritanism? Nothing that severe. More a sense of propriety. Yes, that's it, a sense of things being a touch more, proper. People thinking about having not such a flashy car, people considering how they consume, trying to offload some of that vulgar bling baggage we've been carting about for the last few years. Feeling good about recycling, about composting, about cycling to work, about getting rid of piles of crap on ebay.

By way of testing this theory we went to the Ivy for brunch on Sunday. That home of vulgar celebrity with paparrazo haunted entrance and Micheal Winner's baritone forever reverberating around the place like some dark ancient Lovecraftian Old One.

Nope, no sense of it here. No sense of a new anything. The menu which has been described to me as comforting British cuisine with French brasserie classics is actually boring, unimaginative and the cooking barely competent. I mean it's not bad, it's credible, at least, just really, really dull. Canteen does this way better, with a much nicer vibe and at a quarter of the price, with a St John inspired austerity.

The staff at the Ivy are pretty much what you'd expect. Nice. Slightly disinterested. Again, bit dull. The clientele? Slightly desperate, neck craning buffoons? Russian oligarchs and their obese children stuffing lobster and french fries into disinterested maws, eyes searching for the vaguest glint of celebrity to justify, well, justify everything? Maybe. Normal people eating overpriced mediocre food? Probably.

We were very excited to see Jonathan Rhys Myers, the "sexy" Henry VIII from the TV show The Tudors looking very dapper in a creme coloured suit. That seemed to make the whole place relax a bit when he turned up and the apple crumble and custard dessert was something I enjoyed a lot more, so thanks Hugo Boss advert man. You saved my brunch/lunch fusion if not my faith in a new world order.

A 3 star allergy

2009-02-23T15:28:00.000Z

Earlier this year I threw up for about 4 hours after leaving Nobu Toyko. This time last year I found myself throwing up into Thomas Keller's herb garden outside The French Laundry. On my 30th birthday a few years back I was so sick after a meal at Gordon Ramsey in Claridges that ended up being taken to casualty. Several years before that, Nobu London was the start of a rather prodigious all night vomiting session. I'm allergic to Michelin stars in would appear. The more an establishment has, the more likely I am going to end up throwing up a couple of hundreds quid worth of haute cuisine. L'Atlier de Joel Rubuchon didn't illicit a response, more for the fact you get so little food when you eat there, any allergic reaction is bound to be small.

I figure there's three possible causes to this Anaphalasis Michelinus. One, that despite my dire prognostications to the wait staff about what will happen if I so much as sniff a crustacean, the chefs are out to test if my allergy is real and load me up with as much secretly deposited crab meat as they can. After that Jeffery Stiengarten piece about food allergies everyone looks at me like I'm just a big girl and what harm could a prawn possibly do? Well, vomiting blood is what harm a prawn can do. To be honest, this all seems very unlikely, fine restaurants are probably not in the habit of trying to kill patrons (I've been to a few not so fine restaurants where this is more than likely the case), so I figure I should move on to my next theory.

The next possible cause is that my wife is trying to kill me. She's the only common denominator in all these dining experiences and I suppose I have to entertain the notion that she takes these opportunities to try and off me. At various times, I would say this is the most likely explanation, though I'm sure she's imaginative enough to come up with something a little more interesting if she where aiming to shove me off this mortal coil. No, at the end of the day, I have to say that she'd probably come up with a far tidier and economical way of wacking me that watching me eat foie gras. That, you see, probably hits the nail on the head. I think it's over excitement. I end up eating too much, too quickly and my body just decides that 12 courses is too much and goes into purge mode.

Nintendo Food Thingy

2008-06-24T23:08:00.002+01:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2157587/Nintendo's-talking-cookery-guide-could-threaten-traditional-recipe-books.html

Any link between my loves of food and games consoles is one worth re-iterating here. No, Nintendo do not pay me anything to promote thier food related games (er, though if you're looking for anyone Mr Miyamoto...) I just love a bit of convergence. So here you have it Nintendo's talking Cooking Guide: Can't decide what to eat? Basically, a talking cookbook. You shout at it to tell you the next bit of the recipe. Brilliant. The recipe's do a look a bit shit at the moment, but I'm holding out for the Mario and Yoshi do Ferran Adria sequel. On Karts.

Taste of London

2008-06-24T22:42:00.004+01:00

I’m feeling slightly aggrieved at this weekend’s Taste of London. Whilst I think the idea is a good one; many of the city’s best restaurants pitching up in Regents Parks and serving up 3 dishes which us poor huddled masses can then buy for a few quid, it does feel like a victim of its own success. For one thing it was really, really, really expensive, I mean eye wateringly wallet shatteringly expensive. OK, I might be overstating the expense but I did feel seriously ripped off by the end of the day. 25 quid to get in and then you had to buy paper tokens, “charmingly" named crowns to exchange for food at 50p a shot. The average dish was about 8 crowns. OK, only 4 quid, but given I paid to get in, the entire event was sponsored by British Airways and the place was littered with exhibitors touting muesli and fruit juice (who’d I’d assumed paid to be there) I did get the distinct sense I was getting mugged.

There’s a middle class Glastonbury feel to the proceedings, an actually very pleasant mix of ages; a sort of country fair crossed with a music festival sort of vibe, which once you get over the shock of the place being absolutely rammed was actually pretty chilled out. Having said that I did almost get into a fight queuing up at L’Atelier de Joel Rubuchon.

Despite the fact that they were serving hamburgers (admittedly beef and foie gras burgers with caramelised bell peppers) they hadn’t quite grasped the logistics of fast food production. They had some very smart waiters basically having to throw burgers at rabid self confessed foodies and then had to halt production every hour or so to smooth their perfectly coiffed hair and fry up some more. So, whilst waiting patiently in line for my burgers, I ended up in an altercation with a very nice Frenchman. To give him his due I was the one who told him to fuck off first. Luckily, we ended up the best of mates, extolling the virtues of the various Rubuchon outposts we had both tried and sharing a slightly gangster handshake as he pottered off with his langoustine fritters with basil pistou (typically obtuse Frenchman!).

So, despite all this we did eat some pretty special food. I’m told the burgers were good (irony was I don’t eat foie gras anymore , nothing ethical, it just makes me ill) and the massive Chocolate Sensation (Creamy Araguani chocolate, bitter chocolate sorbet and Oreo cookie cruimbs) that the L’Atelier were knocking out were probably the best thing I ate all day. The guys at Nahm, David Thompson’s Thai place were making some pretty special treats, Pomelo dressed with caramel and roasted coconut served on betel leaves and probably the best green curry I’ve eaten. The Gavroche and Artubus were too rammed to consider going anywhere near despite the promise of a smoked chicken and foie gras terrine with lentils and truffle vinaigrette and braised pigs head respectively, fearing another fight I opted for the rather simple zucchini fritti at Theo Randall and the naverin of summer lamb and cous cous at Skylon both which had survived the vicissitudes of mass production to be pretty damn good.

Other bit and pieces worthy of note were the pork belly at the Le Café Anglais , though the lentils were a bit worse for wear by the time I got them. One disappointment were the Cripsy puffed poories and the Spring roll stuffed with masala omelette at Café Spice Namaste, which like a friend of mine said you’d think were really good if they came from your local Indian but not at a restaurant you’d gone out of your way to eat in. Before I knew it I’d blown my stash of crowns and we left, not before jeering at Jamie Cullum who was playing in one of British Airways executive tents and regretting having missed out on some of the good stuff at Rhodes Twenty Four, Launceston Place and Canteen.

All in all it was quite fun, my gripes aside, though I have to say if we hadn’t been to the Royal China Club before hand for some of the best dim sum you’ll get in this city – steamed pork buns to cry into, I’d have been heading to Burger King on Baker Street straight afterwards.

Save our Bacon

2008-02-22T15:05:00.000Z

A subject dear to my heart. Pigs. Given the bad press they’ve been lumbered with by several of the world's major religions and virtually every European language I can think of, it’s heartening to know that at least one British supermarket is doing a little to give them a PR boost. Actually, not so much the pigs themselves, I don’t suppose they care very much about not getting into the papers, but a more endangered breed altogether, the British Pig Farmer. They are having a tough old time and I was invited to Roast in Borough Market for the launch of Save Our Bacon by the folk at Waitrose Food Illustrated to hear all about it. A press launch! The very idea that Jamfaced would be there seemed bizarre, but I guess I’ve been put on the mailing list by mistake. There was going to be free sausage, so who was I to refuse the invitation?

This is where I do my best Micheal Winner impersonation, just try to imagine the rest of the post as spoken by a man with a great deal of mash potato in his mouth.

I was actually invited by Tonia George, food editor at the magazine, who’ve I known for a very long time and knows of my penchant for bacon. This is name dropping of the most horrific nature and I apologize, I’ll use some swear words in a bit so keep reading. Guessing that she needed someone to act as a pork based waste disposal unit, I tripped along and the first thing I was greeted by was a hog on a spit. An auspicious start, for me anyway. The poor bugger tending the animal had been at it since two in the morning all so I and a horde of journalists could have crackling at 9 in the morning. Good man.

So, here’s the deal. Some 95% of British Pig Farmers are thinking of quitting the business. Despite the fact we are more conscious than ever before about where our food comes from and how it’s produced, according to the British Pig Executive; the average pork farmer loses 26 quid per animal. The supermarkets are screwing them all for cheaper meat, feed prices have soared due to the demand for grain and all in all, if we aren’t careful the British Pig Farmer will be no more and we’ll have to eat other pigs, that don’t speak English and don’t willingly go into proper sausages. It’s all pretty damning actually and I’d advise you all (even you yanks, do you even have pigs anymore? You’ve probably bred missile shaped pig bacon tubes or something, as I’ve never had good bacon nor sausages on either coast –yes, I expect howls of derision) to sign up.

I’m so proud. I copied some of that out of a press release. I didn’t know there was such a thing as the British Pig Executive. I love the fact there is, a fine porker in a pin stripe comes to mind. So, clutching my press pack I watched the proceedings, whilst stuffing my face with pork. This I believe is how the best journalism is conducted, so I felt quite the professional. I saw the Hairy Bikers giving endless interviews. I saw Krishnan Guru-Murthy eating sausages. Eric, who was giving a sausage making demonstration, had a stash of British Army Sausage seasoning, the recipe of which is covered by the Official Secrets Act. He’d seen it stuck to the wall in a kitchen in Aldershot and taken a sneaky photo. I took a photo of him and his seasoning. Feeling quite good about my scoop I headed off into Borough Market and bought some hot cross buns. Food journalism is a doddle!

Sign the Save Our Bacon petition at www.waitrose.com/saveourbacon

Save the oatcakes!

2008-02-18T14:13:00.003Z

Going north of Watford but all in a good cause. The Hole in Wall on Waterloo Street in Bucknall, Stoke-on-Trent has been serving up traditional oakcakes (pancakes made from oatmeal) for over a hundred years and is now threatened with demolition. Sign the petition going to 10 Downing Street and help save this fine old culinary institution....

Read all about the The Hole in the Wall here.

Sign the petition here.

Things you only cook once a year.

2008-02-06T00:01:00.000Z

Turkey. Toffee Apples. Anything to do with Pumpkins. My bi-annual attempts to make jam, mayonnaise and veal stock (actually that's probably once a decade). Lentils. Pancakes. Ok, I made up the bit about lentils. I never cook them, the vicious little buggers, but tonight was my yearly pitch battle to make pancakes. An ongoing struggle of good versus evil, an eternal battle to get the batter right, get them to cook evenly and yes, I'm ashamed to say flip the little fuckers. I just told the girlfriend on the phone that I was cooking them. There was a pause. "How's it going?" was the tentative reply. Forefront in her mind was the year I exploded into an apoplectic rage when my pancakes were all lumpy and tasted like cardboard. Years of therapy and a much better frying pan later, this year's effort was well, pretty effortless.

Of course, I doubt anyone actually remembers the recipe for pancakes; I got mine from the rather unwieldy "How to cook bloody everything" (or something along those lines) by a committee of home economists (You know the kind of thing, basically every recipe you could conceivably want described in the same dry tone I imagine a surgeons instruction manual might describe a vasectomy) and it worked a treat. I was a touch suspicious at first but it proceeded along uneventful lines until I had a stack of steaming golden brown discs sat upon a plate. Here's hoping next year is as easy. Happy Fat Tuesday everyone.

Notes from the Underground

2008-02-05T17:07:00.000Z

Someone just sent me this interview with the Annie Mole, who writes the very cool Going Underground blog covering all things, well Underground. London Underground.

http://trustedplaces.com/blog/2008/02/05/annie-mole-the-interview/

The very cool thing is she sites Jamfaced as one of her favourite blogs, which I must say was very kind of her. Cheers Annie!

Cooking as therapy or how to cook your way out of the blues

2008-02-05T16:20:00.000Z

Dark days and rain don’t lend themselves to being expansive and creative about food, not for me anyway. It’s a time to hunker down, head down, teeth gritted, time to get through the rest of winter without getting too down. It easy to fall back on a few old standards in the kitchen, not even thinking about what you’re sticking in your mouth. The temptation to come in from work and vegetate in front of the TV or the 360 is ever present and the thought of putting any thought to what I’m eating is a bit much. This is not, of course, the best state of affairs for a food blogger, it’s pretty much terminal in fact. Funny thing is that once you actually stop and think and spend some time pottering around in the kitchen , the mood lightens and simple flavours and textures can really turn you around.

I’m not talking chocolate, well, I probably am to be honest, but that’s beside the point. it’s been far simpler than that over the last couple of days. The tang of grated parmesan on pasta from a hunk I bought in Milan a couple of weeks ago, the memory of eating panini bought from mobile stalls as I walk towards the San Siro to watch the most frightening game of football I’ve ever seen bringing a grin to my usually furrowed face. The citrus herby twang of fresh thyme on a roasting chicken with family knocking round the house. Five perfect little fairy cakes in a shop near the office that I bought for some colleagues.

Stopping being quite so inactive and actually getting down and dirty in the kitchen, making something for the sake of making it. I’ve being trying to avoid cooking for the sole reason of blogging about it, it can feel a bit mercenary and I’ve been questioning my motivations regarding this old blog of mine. So I’ve been trying to get back to why I started blogging in the first place, because it’s fun and I love the thought of making something well and then just sharing that with you lot. I don’t want cooking or blogging to become a chore. I don’t want to feel guilty about not doing it, I want to just cook, make a mess, fill my face and get a spring back in my step. Just messing about with flour and eggs, the simple pleasure of dicing an onion perfectly, the meditative process of cooking and preparation.

14 minutes and 9 seconds to blog

2008-01-22T22:36:00.000Z

I'm at the airport and I've just paid a considerable sum of money to access perhaps the slowest machine on earth to bring you this post. 13.05 now. So, what could be of any interest at 11.30am in an airport on a Tuesday night? What need has Monkey Gland? What could he possibly tell us that would whet our appetites and charm our senses? Well, actually not a great deal in the immediate vicinity save a rather folorn looking barista at Cafe Nero and an arcade machine that keeps playing the first five or six bars of Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene. It was the depatures board that got me thinking.

Ever since I was a kid the departures board has held a fascination (9 minutes now), the promise of far far away places; Jedda, Hurghada, Bangkok. Names that seemed to speak of dust storms and white horses galloping across sand or opium dens and roof top chases in an Indiana Jones style. More often than not it I would ask my Dad what they ate in the places on the board. He would take delight in lying outrageously (4 minutes, 28 seconds). It always seemed to make our own hum drum destinations (Valencia, Alicante) seem drab and unintresting. Here I was standing with a thousand possibilites in front of me and we were off to see (and more importantly eat) the same old things.

Travel is easy now and flying a chore to be endured. Airports seem to be more like bus stations with a few Prada concessions as a nod to a luxurious past. Though, that feeling, looking at the departures board endures. Mysterious places, the whiff of spices. Time's up.

Very Much Like a Whale: Eating Japan Pt 1

2008-01-05T09:16:00.000Z

Men’s fashion in Toyko this micro second seems to consist of looking like a cross between Russell Brand shot with a glitter gun and a Kiss band member on a day off. An Edward Scissorhands meets a rock scarecrow. For the ladies the Gothic Lolita look is very much in vogue. Don’t ask me what a Gothic Lolita is, but it looks like a cross between what I was wearing in 1988 hanging out in Kensington Market listening to The Cure and the Fields of the Nephilim and a strange Mary Poppins vibe; bonnets and petticoats and the like coupled with as much skull based jewelry as is possible to wear without falling over. A sort of Sleepy Hollow schtick. The slightly older ladies seem content with very short city shorts and very high boots. I feel permanently underdressed no matter where I am, and a complete old perv. Lucky, then I have the distraction of the 300,000 eating establishments Tokyo boasts to keep me from the humiliation of trying clothes on in Japanese menswear stores (“I’m sorry, sir, you’ll have to go to the Sumo district for those sizes”).

Coming to Toyko, you get a great many recommendations for places to eat, followed usually by a series of mixed up and contradictory directions. The guide books are all written by tofu munching hippies as far as I can see (though I have eaten a great deal of tofu and realized it’s not the same stuff they try and press gang you into eating in wholefood cafes) and strangely don’t seem to recommend very many actual Japanese places, and then there’s the Michelin guide to consider. Frankly, I took one look at the thing in the airport and decided I was better off following my nose. It struck me that I would need a letter of introduction from a high to medium ranking member of the angelic host to even get a sniff. It’s hard not to get caught up in the bleeding edge cuisine game, frantically trying to get reservations and the like and to be honest, whilst I’ve succumb on a few occasions over the last week or so, the best food I’ve eaten on this trip has been completely by accident, getting lost, walking into the first place I could see and ordering what the bloke next to me was having.

So, a few highlights and one particularly insane low point. 3 perfect slices of tuna, two a deep blood red, the one on top an almost bubblegum pink, a spring of tiny pink perilla flowers heart achingly positioned next to them atop a long maple wood counter in Mayashita on the 36th floor of the Maranouchi building above Tokyo Metro station. A chou bun and a cup of coffee watching the thousands walk past in Harajuku. A bowl of soba noodles and a piece of semi dried fish in an unassuming but beautiful noodle house, small glass cabinets displaying pine cones and sweet little wood cuts of radishes, chosen because we were lost and it was bloody freezing; the single best noodles I’ve eaten but I’d be buggered if I could tell you what it was called or where it was. In Kyoto, playing a game of “What this called?” (“Ahh…Blowfish!”) with three chefs whilst eating kaiseki, the fantastically elaborate style of food of the city; more than likely the original tasting menu, old school to the tune of a thousand years. They had a little handwritten card behind the counter, which they would consult before introducing the next course.

A bowl of stew, containing at least four items I could not and still cannot name coupled with a bowl of rice topped with fish fry in a local restaurant in a back street of Kyoto, no English menu, no English speakers, just pointing at things in pots and hoping. Really beautiful, beautiful food made by three guys in a kitchen with more elegant discipline that any other kitchen I’ve ever seen. Almost silent these three worked, the waitress calling the orders and they acknowledging with a barely audible “Hai” and a nod, moving round each other with practiced ease.

Oh yeah, and possibly the most revolting combination of jelly fish and slices of duck in a dunderhead trendoid restaurant in Roppongi; it had a beautifully studied worn cool to it, but the food was shockingly bad and apparently I learnt as we left, Italian. Who knew.

I’m typing this from the 22nd floor of my hotel over looking the sparkling lights of Shibuya half expecting a police spinner with Harrison Ford and Edward James Olmos to fly past, Harrison with a half eaten bowl of noodles in hand. I have dinner reservations. More soon.

Tokyo Fish Market

2008-01-02T09:16:00.000Z

The man who pays the piper calls the tuna

2007-12-31T23:05:00.000Z

The combination of jet lag and not having slept on a futon since I was a student (and then mostly under the influence of mind bending drugs) meant I woke up early on my first morning in Tokyo. Very early. Lucky then that being in a ryokan in Ginza I was a stones throw away from the single largest concentration of fish and fish mongers on Planet Earth (outside of a major body of water). An unlikely destination for someone on four or five hours sleep but the one place in Tokyo I was keenest to see.

You know those 1000 places to see before you die books? The ones that will probably mean the death of us all as the planet heats up to boiling point as we all rush about seeing then all? Yeah, well, my mental list had the Tsukiji Wholesale Market pretty much at the top and here I was, one chilly, frequent map consulting walk away, with one thing on my mind. Tuna.

The streets were empty and the usually all pervading neon dulled as we walked through the darkness before dawn. The people people on the streets were being drawn in one direction as we walked with that slight sense of aprehension I've learnt you get trying to find anywhere in Tokyo. Then, after fifteen minutes walk a moment of recognition. Something deep within my nerdish soul knows we've arrived. A Blade Runner moment (I'll be peppering references to the film through out my posts over the coming days - sorry, I'm a card carry geek boy and so can't help myself) as a sea of people driving tiny vans and cool little motorised pallets, steered with what I can only describe as a ships wheel appear. A throng of busy hard nosed fish mongers, porters and dealers smoking, shouting and generally ignoring the directions of the uniformed officials waving little lightsabers to direct traffic. Here and there bemused tourists getting unceremoniously shoved out of the way. It almost feels like home.

Once you're in the market proper the bedlam eases ever so slightly, and the serious business of fish is evident. Fat round tuna having arrived from across the globe, sits waiting to be dissected. Each is proudly wearing a number dictating what the sage and wise tuna men of the fish market have decided is its place in that days tuna firmament. In the general bedlam I'd missed the tuna auction but the results weren't hard to spot. Fish 5 and 6 were particularly impressive looking, but then again so where 29 and 30 so proof, if proof were needed that I'm not good at judging the individual merits of large pelagics.

Watching the tuna men take one of these animals apart is more akin to surgery than fishmongery. Basically, these guys use a series of what can only be described as razor sharp meter long swords to take them apart. I've been contemplating buying one ever since I saw the market tuna traders using theirs but I'm not sure what customs would make of it (coupled with the frankly pornographic manga comics I've inadvertently picked up) so I've had to make do with picking up cheap kitchen knives (more on that very exciting moment later). The quivering ruby red cuts of meat that were left after all this endeavour and displayed by the traders were heartbreakingly pretty, every hue of red you could think of; scarlets, burgandies to candy pinks, they made me hungry and frankly horny (must be the manga).

Walking through the inner market is bewildering. Serried ranks of clams, plastic tubs of eels swimming in their own blood, fish still gulping for air being filleted, mussels the size of rugby balls, squid lined up like bullets in meter long pallets, enormously fat lipstick red octopi in piles, fish, fish and more fish. Stuff that is unrecognisable, frightening or just plain bizarre; proof of God's fever dream during creation, a Darwinist box of delights eliciting more ooh and ahh's from me than Blackheath on the 5th November. A bloody marvel.

Traversing the outer market and eying up the noodle stalls for breakfast I was conflicted. The porters were tucking into bowls of ramen, slurping them up noisily but I was hungry for tuna, I needed that protein rush. Knowing that the places in the market were probably tourist traps we bit the bullet and silently gorged on fatty, slick tuna. They weren't the most delicately slices of fish, nothing like some of the sashimi I've eaten since but they satisfied something deep and carnal and they cut through the deepening jet lag to give me a boost until breakfast.

Bare Essentials

2007-12-19T20:35:00.000Z

There's nothing to eat. There's nothing in the fridge. You can see for yourselves, take a good look, see if you can spot anything that you might fancy for dinner. Ok, I could get utterly pissed on all the booze, which might alleviate the situation for a while until I wander out into the night in search of a kebab and die of exposure on a park bench. That aside, the cupboards are bare and dinner seems to be a half empty tin of anchovies and some lemon curd. Oh yeah, smeared with butter and marmite.

I'm all for catch what you can, rustling and general invention in the kitchen, but I have to say tonight I've reached the tipping point. The point at which it is no longer possible to make a meal with the food you have in the house. There must be name for this. Yes, now I come to think of it there probably is. Hunger. Oh well, Cheers!

Back to my Roots

2007-12-18T12:27:00.000Z

My hands are cracked and ragged, the bitter cold has turned them gnarled and rooty looking, no amount of hand cream seeming to help. It's made all the knife cuts, burns and scrapes look like a map of the Underground spidering across my fingers, a scar tissue patina of cooking related injuries. There's burns on the wrists from inattention whilst pulling scones out the oven, a large pinkish knobble of a scar from disregarding basic safety precautions and trying to open a bottle of olive oil with a newly bought Global knife. One fingernail is looking slightly forlorn having been sliced by some overenthusiastic onion chopping. Another scar from distant youth tells a story of impatience and a glass bottle of fizzy pop. A handy history of cooking in MG's kitchen, badges of culinary honour, like wiggly sergeants stripes.

Anyway, I've needed heating up on these eye watering bright brief bitter winter days, I've hankered for colour and warming depth. Beetroots, cavolo nero, kale, parsnips, spuds, even sprouts. Not the crisp, sweet colours of spring, not yet anyway, the more mature, serious winter veg has got me excited; something to bring some life back into these brittle bark like hands.

Even with Christmas on the doorstep, I've not been thinking about birds, though a three bird roast in the butchers shop on Lordship Lane was tempting. I've slow roasted lamb shoulder, 4 hours of gentle heat making the meat fall off the bone like expensive lingerie off a high class hooker. The tender flesh separating at the merest touch. Pork belly studded with junipers, thick slices of quiveringly rare beef rib cooked for hours at the slightest of temperatures. Roast meats and the bitter warmth of cabbages and greens and the comfort of turnips and Jerusalem artichokes. It'll pass soon enough, I'm sure and I'll kill someone to get to a decent lettuce but for now, not for me the frivoulous excesses of spring and youth.

Figgy Fame at Last?

2007-09-16T19:34:00.000+01:00

I didn't take this rather lovely shot of figs. It comes from the Waitrose Food Illustrated article on figs in this months issue. Which I wrote!

Yes, fame and fortune beckon. Sort of. Well, not really actually, I was just really rather chuffed to be asked to do it and they made my recipes look amazing, so I'm doubly happy.

Here's the online version but go out and buy a copy, you'll see my gurning mug in the contributors page.

Festival Food and Fancy Dress

2007-09-13T19:51:00.000+01:00

You're not likely to think of the average music festival as a culinary hot spot. Aside from hash cookies, dodgy vegetarian food and Class A drugs there's not often a great deal of good stuff to eat (which obviously depends on your point of view on the consumption of disco biscuits!). Well, that was my perspective on heading to the Isle of Wight for Bestival 2007 last Friday. Admittedly, the last time I had been to a festival was Glastonbury in the early '90's and I don't remember a great deal about it in terms of the food. Actually, I don't remember a great deal about it all. I needn't have worried to be honest.

A great deal has changed in the festival going stakes since I was a seemly age to actually go to music festivals. Firstly, you can charge your mobile, get money out of the cash point and if you are in possession of one of a myriad of coloured wristbands, even get a shower and use a proper loo. That coupled with the fact that Bestival is the largest fancy dress party in Europe and that the sun decided to come out for probably the last time this summer made for quite the civilised set up. Good thing myself and my friends misbehaved in a thoroughly uncivilised manner to make up for it.

Nursing gargantuan hangovers and aching limbs from sleeping in badly constructed tents and air beds the last thing I was expecting was pitch perfect cappuccinos and delicious smoothies. Lunchtime brought wood fired pizzas, jerk chicken and rotis, organic burgers, burritos (which given the usual sorry condition of Mexican food in the UK was a bonus) and some rather good Thai. Don't get me wrong there was a fair bit that was dodgy looking, such as the chili con carne potato wedges I found myself trying to eat at four in the morning whilst dressed as an RAF officer (including enormous 'tash) but on the whole I was quite impressed. Not a sprouted mung bean in sight.

3.14159265

2007-09-01T22:52:00.000+01:00

Yes, Pie. I'm sorry, it's been a while since I last wrote and my internal editor isn't quite up to speed. I'll apologise in advance for any other dubious puns in the weeks ahead.

FINALLY, I've managed to get a broadband connection in my new house and I can return to this rather dusty looking blog and do something useful as opposed to unpacking boxes and saying "Where the hell did this come from" every time I take anything out.

This is actually Kid Pie. As in cooked by a kid, namely my nephew, not made of kid, as in the child or baby goat. Yes, this chicken and leek pie was cooked by a twelve year old hoodie who likes playing football, typing indecipherable text messages and playing video games. If the more hysterical elements of the British Press were to see him with a rolling pin, I have no doubt they'd slap an ASBO on him and demand that national service be brought back to teach him some manners. Yes, a pretty much normal twelve year old with an penchant for football shirts and being cheeky.

It was an excellent pie, it truly was, I couldn't fault it. I'm not saying that in the "food cooked by kids" I couldn't fault it, where you take a bite and expect to find play doh, hair and small action figures embedded within, all the while saying "Mmmmm, delicious!" and hoping not to gag. This was excellent. Deeply savoury, comforting with a light crisp pasty. A delight for a knackered uncle who never wants to see another packing box in his life.

Never Fear

2007-08-23T12:17:00.000+01:00

Moving house is a tricky old business. The kitchen is ready. I'm ready. More food blogging fun coming your way soon! I can finally stop eating takeaways!

Wake up and smell the hummus...

2007-07-20T00:15:00.000+01:00

We all have a tendency to fall back on the familiar in times of need. Friends, family, the local vicar, yoga instructor or evolutionary biologist (I always fall back on Mr Dawkins in times of doubt, safe in the knowledge that being reminded I share most of my DNA with a puffer fish and that onions have more DNA that I do, makes me feel a lot better about the world). We fall back on the things that make us feel safe, comfort us and generally reassure us that everything will be alright in the end. The bacon sandwich post below is indicative of that tendency in myself, preaching about the joys of a bacon sandwich as if it where Philosophers Stone, Middle East peace accord (now, that would be a surprise) and Unified Field Theory rolled into one. What an arse.

I made a choice last night. The only way to deal with feeling shitty, tired and bored was not to retreat into comfort food and feeling smug. It was to face dinner with a rakish, devil may care, fuck the pasta and pesto and let's make some shit up attitude. I whizzed some hummus together. I've never made it before. I spiked it with cumin and a sprinkle of smoked paprika. I scooped great mouthfuls of it on chucks of flat bread and made a big stupid mess. I coated chicken thighs in rose harisa, lemon juice and olive oil and pan fried them and threw them into the self same breads with a sprinkle of toasted almonds. I sliced cucumber and mint for a salad salad to add crunch and freshness to all this spice and chili.

I was doing all this with a sense of abandon, not lavishing the care and attention that it might have deserved but just revelling in the act of making something a bit new, something a little different, letting the kitchen become a playground. This wasn't anything groundbreaking, it was just playing and like every good session of reckless play, someone got hurt. I sliced a huge chunk out of my finger and ended up holding it above my head wrapped in a panty liner for the rest of the evening. Hell, that's creativity for you.

Fuck the caviar and eat the pigs

2007-07-19T22:43:00.000+01:00

A battle cry. A cold hard shriek in these days of no smoking in pubs (now consigned to the compost heap of history; far greener than the dustbin) and cut rate premiums on your private medical insurance if you run like a hamster in a wheel at your local gym twice a week. A shout of fury in this time of low sodium, high fibre and fair to middling GI, resounds from a small kitchen in South London. It echoes throughout the land as one man confronts the majesty of a toasted white bread BLT with mayo. And a cup of tea. And a line of coke to assist with the shrieking. OK, maybe not the coke, I'll never taste the sandwich, but the tea defiantly.

This wasn't intended, nor will it be, a fat is flavour, screw the food fascists sort of post. There's nothing that I can say that Fearnley-Whittingstall hasn't said and then raised and slaughtered for his own table or a million other food writers waxed lyrical about when it comes to the joys of pork fat, bacon and assorted pig related products. This is a post about the bacon sandwich and why I feel I need to post about it. Again, probably, because I am terrible at remembering what the hell I've written on this site half the time. Trawl through the search thingy and you'll probably find my visa card number, the name, number and outstanding invoices of my tailor and a half eaten slice of pizza.

No, this is about bacon sandwiches and the joy they bring. The BLT, with it's vaguely American posturing in the sunshine of a Saturday morning or just humble bacon with brown sauce and mustard jammed between two bits of white bread grabbed from the caff (note the ever important phonetic spelling) with a cup of sweet tea from a Styrofoam cup on a cold blustery morning on the way to work. This is soul food, food that enriches and nourishes and makes you glad you didn't have to eat muesli again for fear of having to kill yourself if you did.

I stomped home the other night and wandered into the supermarket, my mood black and my stomach growling. My local supermarket is a hell-hole at the best of times and this particular night was obviously crazy bat-eared alcoholic night. They careened around the place nestling tins of Spam next to cheap scotch and lighter fluid and generally snarled the place up. I didn't even know what I wanted to eat, which made the whole thing even more frustrating. Then, it dawned. Bacon sandwich. I was saved. The stress melted away as I serenely traversed the nutters and the traffic and the rain, safe in the knowledge that pork based sandwich sweetness was coming my way.

Chelsea buns and a lemon curd epiphany

2007-07-01T18:25:00.000+01:00

These Chelsea buns are cooling in the kitchen, the glaze hasn't even hardened yet but I've already eaten two and the girlfriend has helped herself to one. The flat has been awash with the smell of baking all afternoon, first the sharp yeasty tang of dough rising and then the sweet spice of cinnamon and nutmeg. Outside, it's been pretty miserable, the same rain clouds that have sat over the city all week are lingering and the rain hasn't stopped all day, so the smell of baking has brought a little sunshine into an otherwise grey week. Inevitably, as I type the sun is breaking through the clouds, as if to prove a point.

The Chelsea bun has a proud history in the city, made famous by the Bun House in Pimlico, where various Hanovarian royalty would stroll in for a bun on their way to Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens and the crowds would gather for Hot Cross Buns of a Good Friday and probably head off to a public hanging, tucking into the sweet bread and currents whilst complaining about their rickets, or something. You can tell my sense of empathy with Londoners of the early 1800's is nothing if not a little shaky.

Anyway, I had fun making the sweet bread dough; the anticipation of waiting for the dough to rise, like waiting for a child to come home from an exam, slightly fraught but forever hopeful. It's the fun of bringing something to life, like sea monkeys but better looking and without the tendency to terrify small children as they eat each other, leaving one enormous scary bastard in the little plastic tank that you have to flush down the loo. Way better than than. However, like with most children, I was proud but a little disappointed. The Chelsea buns were pretty good, but not the cinnamon sweet explosion of flavour that I had hankered. Your children never turn out the way you hope.

The lemon curd epiphany referred to in the title was more a rediscovery. Lemon curd to me had fond memories from my own childhood but I had always put them in the "memory better than reality" school of foodstuffs. Like Sherbet Dib-Dabs, Blackjacks and Slush Puppies. I was in A.Gold (fine purveyors of English foodstuffs) and saw a jar of Mrs Darlingtons Lemon Curd. It was a pale honey colour, vivid but elegant, not the radioactive coloured stuff I remembered from Lemon Meringue at school. I bought it on a whim and was blown away. This was serious lemon curd, lemon curd for grown ups. Like being seduced by a sultry lemony temptress. Subtle, evocative and adult. The texture was silken and the flavour strong but satisfying, not the violent tooth decaying sweetness I remembered. I can't stop myself now, I'm smitten.

Marmite Memory

2007-06-27T23:34:00.000+01:00

It all started over on I'm Mad and I Eat. Cookiecrumb (an American type lady) got very excited by a pot of Marmite, even going as far as smothering a chicken in the stuff and roasting it up, to good effect it would appear. Actually, it may have started on Becks and Posh (an English type lady in America) some time ago, when that Guinness Marmite came out. See, it got me thinking about Marmite, firstly at what a very unlikely substance it is and secondly, at the great and proud shared history we all have with it.

I came to Marmite late in life, it wasn't something you found in the average Spanish household, it was alien English stuff in the supermarket, something your mates at primary school had smothered down their ties, mixed with egg yolk usually. It was dark and evil smelling and my Mother certainly would have had no truck with it. I came to it through a very early girlfriend, already far enough into adulthood to have a girlfriend you have breakfast with, mind. I was confronted with two jars at the breakfast table, one of Bovril, which my young lady friend smothered on her toast and one of Marmite whilst her mother thinly (yes, it was a pretty liberal type household, in that nice British we won't talk about the fact that this 'orrible oik probably just had sex with our daughter) scrapped onto hers. I tried them both and have to say the Bovril won out, I mean it would, it was beefy!

Over the years I have learnt to love the stuff, the girlfriend can't abide it so we are a pretty average household in that regard. There's a certain melancholy to it, though. A sadness at all the Marmite soldiers I didn't get to dip in my egg yolk and let it liberally drip down my school tie.

I pity the fool...

2007-06-22T00:39:00.000+01:00

So I didn't make one. It seems the natural choice when confronted with a pile of gooseberries but I wasn't in a fooling around kinda mood. I was after something a little sweeter, something that remained true to the bright green English gooseberries sitting in the bowl but that spoke of something a little more exotic. A fool seemed a bit pedestrian. I wanted to create an English spoon-sweet, one of those sweet preserves eaten with a tiny spoon with coffee in the Middle East and Levant.

The unripe gooseberries seemed to be the perfect vehicle for it. I figured it was a matter of making a sweet preserve that has some texture to it and had something of a floral quality , something akin to the rosewater that might be mixed with a fig preserve but something quintessentially English. Elderflowers it was then, and a natural partner to the gooseberries and gently fragrant. Now, I know making a preserve is meant to be something of an exact science and upon reading up, I knew that the gooseberries were laden with pectin, the agent in fruit that makes a jam set. I also knew the jam sugar I was using was laden with the stuff too. In the end, in a true culinary punk fashion I decided to wing it a bit.

The smell in the house as the mixture boiled up was something special. Like distilled English summer rising up from the pot, the only thing missing the tang of cut grass, luckily the mixture was a brilliant green to make up for the fact. The pots are cooling in the kitchen, but I couldn't resist a quick taster. The taste of sunshine and wildflowers. Something of a success.

Late Night Baking

2007-06-21T13:10:00.000+01:00

My blueberry scones bring the boys to the yard. Damn right. Actually, they only bring the girlfriend to the kitchen to sleepily look at me with no small degree of bemusement. It’s late and I’m baking. Baking blueberry scones. They weren’t actually that good in the end. I think the blueberries don’t add enough sweetness, so they are a bit dull unless you slap a great deal of jam on them. Which I did, whilst cursing myself for watching Meet Joe Black at one in the morning.

There is something slightly suspicious about cooking in the wee hours. It somehow feels slightly subversive, dangerous or criminal, as if cooking late at night was something only somebody up to no good would do. You’d imagine people coming in from a contract killing, ludicrously labyrinthine confidence trick or mafia turf war and cooking something soothing, grabbing a beer, unholstering a gun and then kicking up in front of a shit Brad Pitt film. Normal people don’t do it, they’ve finished in the kitchen hours ago and are tucked up in bed. Of course, I was up to none of those things, I only had the compulsion to cook some scones after a pretty average day at work, but there is something to be said for it.

Baking is quite the soothing activity, it requires careful weighing and the like, but then you get to make a bit of a mess, sprinkle flour over everything and get your hands into some soft squidgy cake mix and feel smug. Late night radio is also the perfect background noise to baking. Laughing at the nut jobs on LBC talk radio at or Jazz FM providing a beat poet vibe to your mixing. It’s a great thing to do before bed as the smell of your sweet tasty efforts linger as you climb into bed and you know you can legitimately eat cake for breakfast.

Maybe I can start a trend, unite the nation on a Friday night. Don’t drink and do pills, mix and make cakes. Club nights with Victoria sponges and muffins. I think this might have legs. I think I probably need some sleep.

Borough Market Tour

2007-06-18T23:12:00.000+01:00

A brace of London based foodbloggers and food writers descended onto Borough last week for a tour of the market with Celia Brooks Brown, a food writer who does regular tours of Borough, Portobello and Marylebone Village. Organised by those kind folk at trustedplaces.com this was a chance to get to meet some old friends, greet some new ones and generally get some freebies off the stall holders, something that any serious blagger, sorry, blogger, would be foolish to miss.

Celia obviously knows her stuff and the tour is great introduction to the market encompassing a bit of history and introductions to some of her favourite spots with samples to be munched along the way. The wine merchants Bedales, the floral hall restaurant Roast and a fair few of the dangerously good stall holders were on the itinerary and it rounded out my quickly grabbed lunch of a chorizo and a couple oysters rather well.

To be honest, none of us were new to the market, apart from maybe some Italians who'd flown in for the occasion so there weren't too many surprises, but I have to say we were all raving about the white balsamic vinegar and I for one was slightly bemused by the truffle honey, admittedly mostly due to Ben from Food and Drink in London making me taste some pesto at the same time. Not the best combo it had to be said. I'd heartily recommend the tour to anyone who's not been to the market or as a cool touristy thing to do if you're a visitor and of a mind to get guided round the best Borough has to offer.

De Poteo in Portobello

2007-06-13T21:00:00.000+01:00

The girlfriend made a startling confession last weekend. Now, she's not a born and bred Londoner like myself, but has lived here a fair old while so I was taken aback when she announced that she'd never actually been to Portobello Market before. In fact, she doubted she'd ever been to the Portobello Road. Now, as any good Londoner of Spanish extraction knows, NW London and environs is where you traditionally go to get ripped off if your after Spanish produce, particularly round Ladbroke Grove (though Borough Market is gaining ground). Once a bastion of Spanish and Portuguese immigration and home to the only place you could decent churros outside of the Spanish Convent in Southfields (festivals only, I hasten to add) I aimed to set this sad omission right. So a brief gander in the time out guide later we hopped on the tube.

They are still there amongst the trendoid Pie and Mash restaurants and shops selling Japanese denim. The old guard Spanish community still chugs along merrily, a few places have caught on to the Spain is the New France vibe and have smartened up and they are selling paella Valenciana from the market stalls but a couple of the old crusty places I remembered as a kid are still there, if not actually open when we turned up (ah, how authentic!). Cafe Garcia with attached grocery is all glossy and sleek these days and charging seven quid for a can of tuna and 5 for white asparagus. I suppose they have to pay for the new fittings somehow. The cafe was ok, a nice pork empanada and a passable tortilla had survived the lunch crowd and were nuked for us. The coffee was good and as a very hungover friend of mine turned up a plate of free churros were handed over as the place was closing up. They weren't as good as the ones I had earlier from one of the market stalls but it was the thought that counted. Galicia, a seriously old school restaurant about a ten minute walk away was closed. This used to be the hub of the local Spanish community and I hope it still is.

My hungover friend sheparded us off the Portobello Road onto the roads around Blenhiem Crescent to good effect. The swank factor rises somewhat and we were faced with some serious where to have dinner dilemmas. We settled on a change of theme, despite mine and the girlfriend's intention of eating Spanish the whole day (and night).

E & O is Pan-Asian and one of the more chilled dining expereinces in the capital. The hubbub of the bar is soon forgotten when you hit the dining room, a nicely mellow modern space made for minor celebrity spotting. That aside, the simple presentation and service is relaxed and amiable. The menu is a pretty standard assortment of thai, chinese and japanese dishes, all competently prepared at an agreeable price. You can't say much fairer than that. A salt and pepper squid was a highlight as was the cripsy roast chicken and I hear the sushi is pretty good. It seemed to do my mate's hangover the world of good.

E&O 14 Blenheim Crescent, London, W11 1NN
Telephone: 0871 2238049

PS The tortilla is actually one I made the next day to make up for breaking the Spanish theme of the day.

Last Food and Coffee Shops

2007-06-12T18:06:00.000+01:00

A few book reviews are in order after my brief hiatus away. A rag tag collection of books on English food, coffee and something quite frightening.

The Last Food of England by Marwood Yeatman is in a similar vein to The Taste of Britain which I recommended a few months ago. It's part culinary history of England, part encyclopedia of English food and part lament at the loss of what was once so bountiful. It mourns the food we have lost and the food on the endangered list, hence the "last" in the title. Unfortunately, Marwood isn't quite as eloquent as Laura Mason and Catherine Brown who did a masterly job with The Taste of Britain. It's a sort of Daily Mail reader does English food and gets in a terrible state about it. It's actually, probably unintentionally, quite funny in Victor Meldrew-ish type way. I am recommending it with the caveat that you'll probably want to stick Marwood's head in the last domestic faggot oven in use after a while, but it's got a fair few historical gems in there, and makes for an interesting, if slightly frustrating read.

The Coffee-House: A Cultural History by Markman Ellis is a history of the coffee house from the very first in London in 1652 (imported from Mecca, Constantinople and Cairo) to the vast empires of Starbucks and Costa Coffee today. From the role coffee has played in our culture artistically and politically to the slightly sinister notion of "the lactification of the coffee house" (a turn of phrase I loved!) by the massive chains, it's a scholarly account of just how important a drink it is, fermenting revolution and teenage rebellion through the ages. I liked it, but then I'm a sucker for these cultural histories of food stuffs of which there now seem to be for every item in your pantry. I'm waiting for Marmite: The Great Divide. Maybe I should just write it myself.

Living and Eating by John Pawson and Annie Bell is possibly the most frightening cookbook I've ever laid my eyes on. This is not a recommendation. This is something to be leafed though in horror. The recipes are fine, possibly a little dictatorial in tone but it all looks fine and dandy in the mix this with that stakes. The truly horrific thing is the large swathe of the book that basically tells you if your kitchen doesn't look like theirs (all minimal and shiny and expensive) you may as well fuck off. It's a cross between food porn and house porn and I found myself shouting at it. Shouting at a book is never a good sign. It's the worst masturbatory puff that I've ever seen. It's one thing to tell people how to cook, but wrapping it up in this sort of lifestyle bullshit is condescending in the extreme. Take a look for shits and giggles.

Dinner with the Fool's Lantern

2007-06-11T19:02:00.000+01:00

I have to admit that many of the meals I cook are eaten in front of the T.V. I make the effort some times, setting the table and setting some mood lighting, but more often than not dinner is sprawled out over the huge coffee table in the sitting room whilst watching the telly. I’d like to say that it what I’m watching is intellectually stimulating or particularly essential viewing, but I can’t. Basically, it’s utter geekery like Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Spaced repeats and Life on Mars, which I missed the first time around. I’m fending off the advances of Big Brother as hard as I can, but the girlfriend keeps getting sucked in and I follow, like a sheep, either that or she’s getting a fix of Extreme Makeovers: Home Edition and we stare at the screen in fascinated horror for hours until they finally move the fucking bus and you get to see what consumer durables the family get. It’s like the most drawn out porno you ever saw, taking two hours to get to the money shot.

Anyway, cooking for TV viewing is a skill in itself. For preference you have to be able to eat with your hands, which is why I assume there’s always a temptation to go the fast food route, which is a pity since I read that eating in front of the TV is the modern world equivalent of eating round a campfire whilst the shaman tells tales. An activity quite so ancient, even in its modern form demands something a little better than a Dominos, I reckon. I’ll happily roast a chicken and steam a couple of corn on the cobs with a dollop of butter and a sprinkling of cayenne pepper for a double bill of CSI. Tapas style grazing strikes me as near perfect, a couple of warm potato tortillas and some peppers, an olive or two and a racion of jamon. Perfect for shouting at the 10 o'clock news or hiding behind the sofa with when Dr Who’s on. A bottle of wine, a bowl of fettuccine and tomato sauce and an episode of The Sopranos is near perfection.

It’s always soothing and comforting to be in front of the TV with something good to eat. The experience is far too depressing if the food is as shit as most of the programming, somehow it’s ok if you’ve spent the time in the kitchen beforehand, it feels like you’ve paid your dues for the evening and are entitled to watch whatever you like, no matter how brain numbing.

A return to eating for pleasure

2007-06-08T18:15:00.000+01:00

You’ll notice that posting has been sporadic over the last six weeks or so. You know how it is; work gets hectic, life takes over, food becomes fuel. You start to rely on a couple of recipes without thinking, lunch is a grabbed sandwich from the bloke who comes round the office or with clients in a mass produced sushi joint. Even going out for dinner descends into a long procession of rare steaks, the thought of ordering anything particularly stretching seems too much of a chore and you need something very familiar and comfortable, like wearing an old worn dressing gown or trakkie bottoms. I’d just lost interest really and the thought of investing time and effort in anything new was very far from my mind.

It’s funny the things that bring you back into the fold. Sitting in a friend’s kitchen tasting the apricot jam she’s made. Sitting at a picnic in Fulham Palace on a hot sunny day eating food lovingly cooked by some serious cooks; a simple home made sausage roll, a seaweed wrapped rice ball studded with broad beans, a thin omelette wrapped around smoked salmon eaten from grease proof paper. At home some poached eggs on toast for breakfast, sunlight streaming in though the windows. A return to eating for pleasure. A realisation that you’ve been denying yourself what’s important and good.

Racine: French Food and the Portuguese Cup Final

2007-06-07T20:19:00.000+01:00

Stupidly, the girlfriend and I decided to go to the Tate Britain over that particularly miserable Bank Holiday weekend to see the first major exhibition of British photography at the gallery. How We Are: Photographing Britain is an excellent collection; unfortunately, I only managed to see about a third of it, the rest obscured by the other couple of million people who decided to do the same and who then seemed to follow me around, generally standing in front of things that I might want to look at.

A particular highlight that I did manage to get a peek at was the small collection of food photography from the ‘70’s. Books called things like “Food in Colour” featuring the some of the most shocking use of pineapple rings imaginable. I never knew food could be quite so vividly primary coloured. It also seems making concentric circles was an important factor in 1970’s food styling.

We tried our best, we really did, even braving the café but the great rain coated masses finally drove us out. On the street with a booking at Racine on the Brompton Road two hours away we were a bit stuck. So what to do? When in doubt, find a pub. So we did. In the warm gloom of a pub on the Vauxhall Bridge Road we hatched our plan. We would stop in every pub on the way to the restaurant, thus killing the next two hours and getting us in the mood for dinner. Armed with brolly and a very rough map drawn on the back of a napkin copied from a borrowed A to Z we set off.

2 hours later, after more than a few pints, six games of pool and an education in Portuguese football we stumbled through the rain into the tastefully muted space that is Henry Harris’ French bistro Racine. I never knew there were quite so many Portuguese immigrants in Pimlico, so I’d had to drunkenly resist a few chalked up fish stews and plates of calamari on offer in various pubs, that and the elation of victory on the pool table had me in a hungry mood.

We weren’t so pissed as to be a hazard to ourselves or the staff, but were more than half cut to start giggling at the tables of Americans that seem to have colonised the place. Sorry, to any American readers, but we were drunk and they all looked like Barbara Bush.

The restaurant has been open five or six years now and quite a few folk I’ve spoken to rate it as one of their favourite spots in the city. It’s old school French regional cooking and I’d been looking forward to a visit after the high praise the steak tartar had been given by a friend. That was soon forgotten after a glance at the menu. Classic dishes stared back at me and I was entranced from the start. After much deliberation and the distractions of the fine bread and butter, which were always topped up the minute there was only a single piece left, I settled on the Calves Brains with Black Butter and Capers and Roast Quail with Wild Mushrooms.

The Calves brains were creamy and sweet, every so slightly crispy on the outside, perfectly offset by the deeply savoury capers. I wracked my own brains for the last time I’d eaten brain and it must have been when I was a kid and if you believe my mother, seemingly lived off lamb’s brains. The girlfriend’s Saffron and Garlic Mousse with Mussels was less of triumph, only because she realised she didn’t actually like mousse when it arrived and there weren’t enough mussels and too much mousse for her taste.

The quails were ever so slightly bloody and sweetly tender, my enjoyment of them aided a great deal by the provision of a finger bowl just at the juncture that I thought I was going to have tackle them with a knife and fork. The girlfriend’s rabbit was triumphantly gamey and cooked quite perfectly. The cheese plate we shared was a bit of a struggle, it has to be said, more to do with being just pissed enough to gorge on bread at the start of the meal than anything else.

All in all, Racine impressed with a no nonsense, straight to the point menu. I liked this. No messing about and assured. A bit of gem I’d say.

Racine, 239 Brompton Road, London, SW3 2EP
Telephone: 0871 3328626

Travel sweets and service stations

2007-05-15T18:03:00.000+01:00

The constant drone of wheels on tarmac, a sudden downpour of rain, swirls of water jettisoned from the back of an articulated lorry, towering clouds of cotton white, deepest grey and the endless green of fields flecked with sheep and cattle. Driving on the motorways is always something of adventure, filling the boot with bags, stocking up on snacks and drinks, laughing at local radio stations and grabbing a coffee in the nowhere spaces of service stations.

Driving to and from Manchester a couple of weekends ago reminded me of trips as a kid, the seemingly endless road, counting cars, seeing hot air balloons and eating enormous bags of crisps. When we were young we’d drive to Spain every year, a three day drive of bizarre place names, the slowly descending count of kilometres to Perpignan; the Spanish border beyond. A never ending supply of ham and cheese baguettes, chocolate milk and familial bickering. We’d eat in grubby truck stops, a whole rotisserie chicken or a massive bowl of moules and the inevitable British staples of travel sweets and tea from a thermos. Someone was always sick . I’d play my Game and Watch computer game until the noise drove everyone mad, usually way before we hit Dover; Donkey Kong and calm nerves whilst driving round the Périphérique being mutually exclusive.

Here, service stations are a quintessential British experience; brash and placeless, the bright colours and neon tainted by the smell of exhaustion and the sound of crying children. The food, no matter how hard they try seems lost; it’s just fuel, like the petrol they sell. There are hints of a sea change. Marks and Spencer’s food halls seem to be trying to establish themselves on the roads along side the Burger Kings and Little Chefs and I hear good things about service stations on the M6 in Cumbria and Gordano on the M5 with local produce and good food on sale, perhaps one day French lorry drivers will be singing the praises of the Heston service station and a certain namesake might have taken over the restaurant.

You put basil in the ratatouille??

2007-05-10T18:20:00.000+01:00

Pixar's latest movie features a rat who loves dining in Paris's finest restaurants and has a nose and for cooking the finest food accompanied by the ghost of a chef. Looks lovely too. Take a peek here.

2007-04-24T17:51:00.000+01:00

I knew the food at Zizzi was a bit suspect but I never thought it would result in this kind of reaction.. here

Cooking Mama

2007-04-24T17:25:00.000+01:00

It’s not often that I recommend a game. Since when I’m not cooking or eating, I’m probably to be found playing a game, I think this a rather startling omission. Now, I know what you are thinking, this guy must be enormous in that classic geek kinda way and he’s going to babble on about some long winded Massive Multiplayer game where he’s a level 60 Night Elf who rides a flaming Pig of Doom. This is not the case, but not too far from the truth, but actually beside the point, because here is a game that combines my too great loves; cookery and my Nintendo DS. Which is surely both a stroke of genius and a happy coincidence.

Cooking Mama puts you in the kitchen, chopping, simmering and folding pastry all under the expert eye of Mama. A woman who’s eyes become flames when you get things wrong, so not too dissimilar from my own mother. Using the stylus of the DS you have to cook a variety of Japanese and Western food within a time limit trying to cook just like Mama, gaining her praise with success and her bizarre flaming eyeballs when you fail. There’s even a Nintendo Wii version which I’ll surely tell you about just as soon as Nintendo start actually making enough of the things for me to buy one. It’s addictive and frantic silliness and I’ve even found myself pondering a few of the recipes for future real life cookery. The fried gyoza look particularly tasty, if only I could get the pastry folding bit right.

In search of the new

2007-04-18T12:42:00.000+01:00

I was asked today if there was anything that I hadn’t eaten that I really wanted to. Some strange culinary treat that I had never tried or never come across. It stumped me slightly, I mean I’ve eaten some pretty weird shit in my time and never being one to deny myself much in the way of food, there isn’t much I haven’t come across. I’ve eaten caviar off the chest of a willing, if inebriated young lady. I’ve sampled the delights of brains and various offaly goodness from a host of animals. I’ve eaten gold leaf laced milk pudding and goose barnacles fresh off the rocks. I’ve been pretty adventurous but then again, there’s always something you haven’t tried yet.

Some are geographical considerations. I’ve never eaten real gumbo in Louisiana or the sort of BBQ that Dr Biggles seems to encounter on a near daily basis in the US. I’ve never been to the Tsukiji Fish Market and eaten tuna marrow scooped from the spine of one the great shining beasts. Still in Japan I’ve never drunk tea prepared in the formal way or a bowl of ramen from a streetside vendor whilst the neon twinkles, like Deckard in Blade Runner (Yeah, I know it was LA, I’ll out-geek you in a second sunshine!). I’ve never eaten a steak in Argentina or ducks feet in China. Never sampled a bolognaise in Bologna or a Bouillabaise in Marseille. Then, this struck me as cheating. I mean it’s just a simple matter of not having been somewhere and naming things that places are famous for, which means I could go on for ever.

In the same sort of category there are all those restaurants I’ve never eaten in. I’ve not made it to the Fat Duck and tried the sea food platter with ipod playing the sound of waves (a new addition to the menu if the slightly hysterical tabloid press is to be believed). I did once go to the Manoir de Quatre Saisons but got turned away. Admittedly, I was very drunk in the passenger seat of a vintage Bentley and demanding breakfast at 5.30am, but again that’s a whole other story.

So , I tried to break it down a little. Firstly, edible animals that I had never eaten that theoretically I could get in this country and that I would actually want to eat. Squirrel perhaps, or some sort of snake? Locusts? Hmm, maybe. I seem to remember eating earth worms when I was small, so they are out. A stag? Yeah, that seems more like it, a great big slab of stag. Or is that just venison? A roast vole? A roast mole? Altogether too Wind in The Willows, methinks and probably endangered. A hedgehog? Now, there’s something quite evocative, baked in clay round a gypsy campfire. Probably not something that happens a great deal these days and St Tiggywinkles would probably have something to say about it. I changed tack.

On the vegetable and plant front there are probably a million odd things that grow in hedgerows and fields that I have never heard off that would be good to eat. I imagine peppery leaves, succulent weird shaped tubers and strange, twisted fungi. This is where I need to do some serious looking in the culinary states as I imagine I’m missing out on some pretty cool stuff, not that I’ll find it in the supermarket. Time to buy some tweeds, a pair of sturdy Wellington, a book on botany and get muddy.

Pork Delights

2007-04-16T15:58:00.000+01:00

In theory, roast pork should be the prince of all roasts. Moist, veined with flavoursome fat and topped with a crown of crispy crackling. It above all meats should be the most sought after, the most revered and relished. Basically, it should be kicking beefs ass and sticking two fingers up at chicken in the Premier league of roasts. It’s unfortunate then, that in general, it can be a dry and cardboard tasting experience, a rather dull and tasteless affair.

The reasons would appear to be many. The average "porker" is raised for leanness out of some strange hangover from the eighties where we all demanded lean pork. Unfortunately, lean pork is about as interesting as paper when it comes to the roasting stakes. Rich veins of fat is what you need to fully appreciate the joys of roasting this most noble of farm yard animals. Go anywhere else in Europe and it's evident that the continental Europeans haven't forgotten this fact, nor have they forgotten the joys of all the other wobbly bits a pig has to offer, ears and feet and heads.

A roasting pork belly is a joy to behold. The golden crackling and the thyme that has been lovingly rubbed into the scored flesh, pervade the kitchen with a smell that transports, comforts and excites. This particular example came from William Rose Butchers in East Dulwich, one of the only butchers shops I know that has queues out of the door and practically round the block. Coupled with simple boiled potatoes, steamed cabbage and spinach with some tart home made apple sauce, jacked with citrus, it was everything a Sunday roast should be. The pork was sweet and rich with a hint of game, the crackling deeply savoury and satisfying. Everyone around the table was content and comforted, the ever so slightly greasy smiles telling the whole story.

This, of course, would seem somewhat hypocritical after my last post, but I was reduced to a quivering wreck by the sight of such porky splendour so I'm afraid the diet will just have to wait.

Six Pack

2007-04-13T14:13:00.000+01:00

A six pack? I think not. A sturdy barrel is a more fitting description of the state of my midrift, a William Shatner-esque barrel shape. I could have been an action hero in the ‘50s. One of the those sturdy looking blokes who played Superman or Dick Tracey on TV back in the days of black and white. Real shaped men, men who ate raw eggs and steak did a bit of work down at the track.

Ok, as per usual, I am kidding myself. With the arrival of Spring it’s time for one of those periodic bouts of battling the bulge; time to get serious in the gym, puff my way round the park, stop eating cake. See, I’m not one for keeping balance in my life. I’ll veer from eating super healthily and hitting the gym every day to sitting in my pants eating chocolate fingers and pondering what I’ll have for a “second breakfast”. I’m just rubbish at getting the balance right. If I’m hungry, I eat. If I’m bored, I eat. If I’m tired, I eat. It’s not that I have no self control, it’s that there are no half measures, and I can’t only eat half a chocolate éclair.

Writing a food blog and not eating seems slightly criminal some how. So remember people, I’m carrying this extra baggage for you! Don’t know how I’m going to get into my speedos come the summer though. I’ll leave you with that slightly horrific image whilst I go looking for the other half of that éclair.

Wedding Fatigue

2007-04-11T21:19:00.000+01:00

Coming down the M1 on Sunday after waking up in the freakish non world of one of the endlessly repeated rooms of a Travel Lodge, I cursed my age and that of my friends. Getting to your thirties means two things, your conversation veers inevitably towards house prices despite all your best efforts and all your friends get married. It’s at times like this that you realise just how many friends you have compared to your partner i.e. not that many, and you start to judge them on how much you are willing to spend on seeing them get hitched and boy, do they getting hitched in droves. This was my third wedding of the year and the second in two weeks. Two weekends had taken on that slightly fraught quality that going to a wedding will give a weekend and in my slight delirium I’d started comparing the wedding parties outfits and quality of the favours at the two events. This was not a good sign.

Both events were lovely, of course. I’m a great believer in weddings and no matter how bad you personally might think any of it was, the two people at the centre of the event probably think it’s the best thing ever, so you should forgive them anything. Actually, the two wedding I attended were great with excellent lamb appearing on both menus as mains, which kept me happy until the wedding buffet turned up. I can’t resist a good wedding buffet.

Personally, I can think of nothing worse than inviting all the members of my family into a room and trying to feed them. It would be a fucking zoo with far worse table manners and high expectations. Luckily, most people have better behaved families than mine, so all the events I have attended lately have passed off without a hitch. Apart from the intended one, of course.

I’ve been on both sides of the wedding catering debacle on more than one occasion. I’ve been silver service waiter, chef and barman and I have witnessed my fair share of car crashes. I catered a wedding where we laid out all the food on tables on a stunning Saturday afternoon, only to watch it all get washed away by a sudden monsoon about fifteen minutes later. Literally washed away onto the floor. I was a waiter at a wedding party where nobody spoke through the entire meal, the only sound that of clinking cutlery. Yet another where the social divide between bride and groom was amply demonstrated by the mother of the bride playing the spoons in time to the string quartet, whilst the grooms family looked on in horror.

Wedding’s are so fraught with danger that it’s a wonder everyone just doesn’t get hitched in registry office with two Thai waiters from the restaurant next door as witnesses (yes, I know a couple who did it). One false move and you’ll offend vast swathes of family. Get the guest list a touch wrong and you find yourself nursing an usher with a fat lip and black eye. Misjudge the vows and you’ll have half the congregation vomiting into their hats. I’m perennially amazed that people take them on. But take them on they do and I think I still have a couple to go to this year. One features a hog roast in the evening. Now, that’s a wedding feast I can get with.

Hidden Gems

2007-04-07T09:58:00.000+01:00

London is a big place. A very big place. A friend described it to me as the Victorian L.A in that scores of towns and villages got swallowed up by the cities of London and Westminster. This formed a conurbation that was only made accessible by coach and horses. Seeing that the average speed of travel on the roads of London has remained the same for at least a hundred years (between 7mph and 11mph depending on who you read) it's fair to say that not much has changed.

So, with London being such a big place it's inevitable that you'll miss things. Certain pubs, restaurants, parks, cafes and shops will remain hidden from you. It may be they are in a part of town you never go to, of which there are frankly hundreds. It may be there are ever so slightly off the beaten track, down a residential street or in an odd location. It's the same in any city no doubt, but with London being such a sprawling mess this seems more acute. Sometimes you'll find something right under your nose. Yesterday was a case in point, it came as a bit of surprise to find a rather good cocktail bar on top of the National Portrait Gallery.

We'd gone to see The Face of Fashion exhibition and after wandering about pictures of semi clad young things, including a disproportionate amount of Kate Moss, we spotted the sign for the bar. Being the intrepid seekers of booze that we are, we scaled the 3 floors are were confronted with a rather unique view of London. It's always confusing when you suddenly see the skyline of the city from an unfamiliar angle, so we spent a good few minutes trying to figure out which buildings were which. Then we hit the cocktails. They were pretty good, competently, if a touch slowly put together and the restaurant menu looked acceptable, though pricey.

It is always fun finding that sort of thing, an unexpected spot in the heart of something very familiar and as views go in this city, it was a good one. An excellent first date location if ever there was one or a "nods as good as a wink to a blind bat" recommendation for visitors to the city.

Macho Macho Man

2007-04-03T21:36:00.000+01:00

I was asked for some recommendations the other day, it was a very specific request that got me thinking about some of my most deeply held beliefs, about my place in the world, about my very sexuality. The request was for some cook books. But not “poofy” ones.

At first sight this seems like the age old association of men who enjoy cooking with being gay or overly feminine, despite the fact that time and time again cooks tell us what a testosterone filled environment the restaurant kitchen is. They do love to go on about how shouty and macho they all are. Which is odd of course, since quite a few of the gay men I count as friends could probably beat the shit out of me, drink me under the table and then make me top notch eggs Benedict. Whilst fixing an engine. There is of course another age old, not very subtle distinction as play here. The restaurant kitchen is somehow a forge, a trial by fire, where men are real men despite the fact they do dainty things with parsley, somewhat akin to the army. Cooking at home, particularly anything beyond reheating or barbecuing or the creation of a “fucking hot chili” is viewed at potential to be booted from the straight camp. Of course, attitudes change. These days more and more men want to be seen as the kind of bloke who likes to cook. This inevitably becomes competitive.

Get more than one man “who likes to cook” in a room and you’ll see. It immediately becomes an alpha male thing. Whose kitchen is the baddest, who’d got the phat knives and meat thermometers. Who’s cooked the biggest bit of meat. Who’s made crazy shit from scratch. You made Cassoulet? I cured my own bacon, muthafucker! Mayonnaise from parts? Eat my Bouillabaisse! Once a pecking order is established then normal conversation can resume, but for a few minutes it’s akin to stags butting horns.

Celebrity chefs, TV shows and the press have imbued the process of cooking with competition, with machismo and now it’s possible to wear an apron with impunity, as long as it looks like something the “pros” would wear. Cooking can make you look cool; cooking can even get you laid. As long as the cookbook or recipe has swearing (sic) and the guy who wrote it was a crack head, kills the animals himself or eats bits of animals you’d never even heard of then it’s ok. If he’s pretty normal, he’d better have a cool sounding job in a cool sounding restaurant. If any of these are missing the guy better be telling you how to cook a meal that’s, in the words of the immortal Ollie Reed, a guaranteed leg-opener.

Let’s look at the March 2007 issue of Esquire magazine. A suited and surly Robert Downey Jnr looks out from the cover, which also promises The 2007 Esquire Recipes for Men. We have a stack of blokey recipes like Steak Tacos, Pulled Pork Sandwiches, Spaghetti with Lobster by a group of male owner proprietors and then a few pages later, how to hold a knife, how to braise etc with car manual style instructions by various executive chefs. Not a woman in sight and “It’ll get you a lot of love for a little cooking time.”

So, back to the question. How did I answer? Well, I figured Antony Bourdain, Fergus Henderson and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall had had enough press and told the guy to buy a Donna Hay book. I figured he could do with something a little less macho in his life.

Camisa and Son

2007-04-02T08:57:00.000+01:00

Italy played Scotland in Bari on Wednesday. With a couple of a dodgy results over the course of this European Championship qualification the Italians pretty much had to win to stay on track to get to the finals. The Scots were looking to get anything they could out the encounter with the World Champions. I was looking for good pasta in Soho. As the crowds gathered outside Bar Italia to watch the game I was pondering my dinner.

Actually, I knew exactly where to go for good fresh egg pasta in Soho. It’s Camisa and Son on Old Compton Street. They have a nice little selection of handmade pastas and more dried pasta than you can shake a wooden spoon at. They also have the best tomatoes anywhere in the city. Sicilian tomatoes that taste of sunshine, even in winter. I have a soft spot for Camisa, over say Lina Stores round the corner on Berwick Street, I’ve been going there since I was small and the surrounding area was full of melancholy looking strip clubs. It’s unashamedly old school with the over laden counter on one side and the glass fronted drawers full of dried pasta on the other. Above the serving counter herbs, spices and dried mushrooms hang in clear plastic and you can barely see the staff if the place is full of people. Which it often is.

I was looking for pasta, sausage with fennel and any dinky italo treats that caught my eye. Some egg tagliarine, 6 Sicilian sausages (especially flown in from Palermo along with the tomatoes, bugger the food miles) and a few sweet Easter goodies later, I was set. I always get coy in Italian delis. My Italian is pretty good and the staff are generally babbling away happily but there’s something that always stops me from launching into full stream, I guess I’m just shy or probably more fearful that my mothers Neapolitan accent will give me away and the Sicilians will stop dead in their tracks and stare, in an American Werewolf in London type way. My mumbled “Grazie” and “Arrivederci” held up in the end and there were no eerie silences. Not that there would be, as the fine folk in Camisa would probably never notice, being a bit too busy with the hundreds of other Italians bustling through the shop.

I have to comment here on the outlandish behaviour of the Italians at Easter. Not in terms of good old fashioned Catholicism but in terms of sheer size of the Easter eggs. In this country, you get an Easter egg and it’s a smallish thing made of milk chocolate and full of chocolate buttons or mini Mars bars. The Italians create these huge, freakish looking eggs wrapped in yards of shiny paper and a million ribbons. The really big ones, some seven kilos of chocolate, go for about a hundred quid a pop and would probably kill anyone attempting to eat the whole egg and seem roomy enough for a couple of Fiat Cinquecentos to sit inside . I marvel at the scores of these things that festoon the average Italian deli every year and wonder who the hell buys them. The ones in the East Dulwich Deli were 25% off the other day, so I guess no one does.

Oh yeah, the Italians won 2 - 0 and I made it home to catch the second half.

Camisa and Son: 61 Old Compton Street, London, W1D 6HS

Books to read and a minor rant...

2007-03-29T19:50:00.000+01:00

Picked Eat London by Terence Conran, Peter Prescott and Lisa Linder up today in Foyles and was pleasantly surprised by it as I leafed through on my way home. A nice collection of London food recommendations including restaurants, delis and the like, coupled with some lovely photography and recipes from various chefs in London. It's everything this blog should be if I had enough time and money to plough into it. So save yourself the bother of every reading this site again and go take a look. I'm sure it will date pretty quickly but right now it's a lovely thing to browse, and, best of all, in a clever folded up front cover sort of way, the dust sleeve unfolds into a map. Useless, but kinda cool. Yes, I was sceptical about the Conran thing too, but I got over it.

I'm finding it progressively harder to find cook/food books that I'd actually want to buy these days, I'm finding the whole celebrity chef/restaurant cook book a bit hard to swallow. There are plenty of very pretty new books out there by Matt Moran and Tom Aitken and thier ilk but on close inspection, i.e a quick flick through them in the bookshop and I'm tired and bored within a few pages. People make out these are manifestos, that these some how encapsulate something about these chefs and their restaurants, I'm not so sure. Do I really want to spend forty quid on the Bouchon cook book, when I've already forked out for Antony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook? I went to Bouchon. It reminded me of Cafe Rouge. At least Bourdain cracks a few gags.

The other annoying thing is the seemingly endless run of book based on seasonal produce. Kitchen diaries, My year in the kitchen, A year in my pantry, A year of mindless boredom. I'm all for seasonality and the like but, Christ on a bike, do I really need to know how wonderful you find radishes in May? It's just plain lazy and the irony is half of these books are based in other countries. I mean here we are being told that Umbrian cucumbers are lovely in June with no possible way of getting hold of them in wet and windy South London. It's culinary navel gazing and food porn of the worst kind, masturbatory and pointless. Then again, masturbatory isn't so bad, it's the fucking smugness I can't stand. Smug fucker who lives a lifestyle 90% of the planet cannot afford goes on about his lunch.

Oh, shit...

Wine Wanker

2007-03-28T16:49:00.000+01:00

Two posts about wine in the space of a week? There’s something afoot you might think. Old MG’s addictive personality has found something else to latch on to since he gave up the smokes and he’s figuring himself a wine buff, you’d say, he’ll be holding forth on screw tops and phylloxera by the end of the week. You’d be somewhere near the truth.

I think you are meant to have a wine epiphany when you taste one of the greats, some grand cru sends you spiralling into lust for old vintages or a life long hunt for the rare and bizarre. You’re meant to become a bit of a bore and get a great splotchy red nose and use the word oenophile. I’ve tasted some of the greats and liked them all well and good. A fair few years ago the very generous father of a girlfriend I had opened his cellar with startling regularity and even more startlingly, he would open the good stuff on a even more regular basis. I had the good fortune to enjoy his hospitality and his Petrus, Margaux and Haute Brillion on more than one occasion. This was serious stuff. He was attentive and receptive to comments but somehow the experience terrified me and I don’t really remember that much about it. I really didn’t get it I don’t think. I’ve enjoyed wine since then, read the odd book, talked with the old man. I’ve found things that I liked in Millroy’s in Soho or more recently in Green and Blue’s in East Dulwich or leisurely leafed my way through the Corney and Barrow catalogue but it’s never really gripped me.

Until recently that is. The trip to Napa and environs seems to have been the catalyst for some serious interest in all things grape related for me. The epiphany came slowly over the course of day and then hit like a train over the week. The wine lists in restaurants like Aqua and Incanto in San Francisco had me rapt and on my return I’ve been eagerly browsing the wine books in Waterstones and signing up for vintners news letters left and right. I think I was primed for it by a competitive wine tasting I went to at Milroy’s about a month ago. I was on the money in terms of recognising grape variety and country of origin with a fair bit of consistency and I’v e always been a bit of know it all. I still know fuck all mind you, but it gave me a bit of confidence that my taste buds still worked after the years of smoking, high strength beer and recreational drug use. My liver is shaking in its boots in fear at what all this means. It probably means I’m getting old.

Anyway, here, as promised, are the wines that led to my coming of age and my acceptance that I’ll be buying pipe, slippers and leather elbowed cardigan at the weekend:

Gary Farrell 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon, Sonoma County
Arista 2005 Pinot Noir, Sonoma County
Sapphire Hill, Winberrie Vineyard 2005 Zinfandel, Russian River County
Davies Family Vineyards, Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
Cuvee de Trois, Joseph Swan Vineyards, 2004 Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley

Now, you’ll probably be hard pressed to find most of these in the UK as they are relatively small production wineries but having said that they were excellent examples of their type and indicative of what you can expect from Sonoma and Russian River; the Cabs and Zins a combination of big fruit, berries, chocolate and vanilla with just a little restraint. The Pinots were still big on the fruit, just a little more sophisticated and not as weighty, a touch of spice and a hint of leather and tobacco.

Things my father taught me.

2007-03-27T13:18:00.000+01:00

My father retired at the end of last year and came to the end of 40 years of working in restaurants in London. From his arrival in the UK in 1966 to the end of 2006 he worked as busboy, sommelier, waiter, head waiter and maitre’d in some of the biggest members clubs in the city.

He served royalty; the Prince and Princess of Wales at various times in their marriage and during the aftermath. He tended to the Queen, the King of Spain and The Sultan of Brunei was a regular. He counted a hundred stars of screen and stage as punters, Richard Burton and Yul Brenner being a couple of his favourites. Cubby Broccoli was around a great deal and as kids we reaped the benefits of this particular relationship in the form of days off school to see the press shows of new Bond films. He knew spooks from both sides of the iron curtain, CIA and KGB types regularly getting together for a night of serious slush fund abuse. He still wears a Russian sable hat of dubious provenance.

He’s smuggled star crossed lovers and adulterous husbands out of the back door as equally adulterous wives came in the front. He’s seen silly money spent by idiots who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing and he’s seen people with more money than Croesus enjoy a bowl of soup in the kitchen with the porters and I’m probably doing him a disservice by attempting to tell any of his stories at all. He tells them a hundred times better than I could, despite the fact that I have heard them a hundred times myself. You’ll hear a collective groan from many members of my family when my father pipes up in his thick Spanish accent, “A client came into the restaurant…” It means an interminable story in which my father outfoxes some ignoramus, Dad the hero of the hour who knew that ’49 Cheval Blanc was better than the ’50.

He worked hard and the work was hard on him. He’s diabetic and his knees are shot, the two inextricably linked to working in the restaurant game and despite the fact that, as is often the case with fathers and sons, we have rarely seen eye to eye, I have learnt a great deal from him, not of all it strictly accurate or even true, but gems nevertheless.

From him I know how to make paella, how not to make coffee (he’s awful at it) and the best way to make an omelette. From him I learnt how to make old school classics; Waldorf Salad, Caesar Salad and Salade Nicoise. Also, thanks to him I can muster a mean Steak Tartar and a kick ass Steak Diane. I also learnt that it was perfectly acceptable to put banana in a salad as long as someone at the table is under 15. The taste of sliced banana in vinaigrette is one of the most evocative I know. I learnt a great deal about Spanish and Italian wine, how to play poker dice, backgammon and dominoes, how to make a sherry trifle (he loves English desserts) though he insists on using jelly.

I learnt that money rarely buys class, that the best people never forget where they came from. I learnt never to put your wine glasses in the dishwasher and that some bread, some cheese and few sliced of ham and a glass of wine is best lunch you can have. I learnt that eating a pear can be a magical thing. I learnt that sometimes you can just sit and eat together and say nothing and that sometimes a man should heed his own advice!

He’s a difficult man, like his sons. There are times when I would gladly throw him off Waterloo Bridge. Yet, he has given me a sense of history, a disdain for the showy and the brash and he’s cursed me with a love of good things to eat.

Happy Retirement, Dad. I’m thankful for the lessons, the hard ones best of all.

5 things about me

2007-03-22T23:00:00.000Z

This meme came my way via the very lovely site Lobstersquad. Go have a butchers at the very lovely illustrations that Ximena adorns her site with and read about eating, drinking and drawing in Madrid. To be honest she meme'd me up for this weeks ago...

Anyway casting my eye over the many posts that this meme has resulted in and at the confessions, admissions and revelations that have emerged, I figured I would do what I do best. Make something up. Only one of these statements is true.

1) I played one of the henchmen in Bugsy Malone on the West End stage. You know the guys who sing "We coulda been anything that we wanted to be...". I was the fat one.

2) The strangest meal I ever ate was at the River Cafe in Hammersmith with Vivienne Westwood.

3) I know all the words to Bat out of Hell by Meatloaf and once sang the entire thing to a stunned audience of old ladies in a trailer park in Mexico.

4) Sammy Davies Jnr sang Happy Birthday to me on my 5th birthday in the back room of a casino in Mayfair.

5) I have six toes on my right foot but only 4 on my left.

So there you have it. Which of these strange facts is the real Monkey Gland...

Napa Valley Blues and Reds

2007-03-21T17:15:00.000Z

It’s amazing how quickly the landscape changes after you have crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. A few miles of the curving, undulating 101 freeway, mere moments after the childish thrill of driving over the mist wreathed bridge and a few quotes from Dirty Harry and Kojak have passed and you are amongst green and sun dappled hills. Slowly, but steadily, the vineyards appear and then everywhere you look is covered in the orderly ranks of gnarled vines and every quarter mile seems to offer the possibility of utter alcoholic surrender.

Our initial destination was Yountville, about half way up the Napa Valley and only about an hour and a half from the middle of San Francisco, for our date with Mr Keller’s kitchen. The wider aim was to drink wine, with as few quotes as possible from the movie Sideways and perhaps even to have a drop or two of Merlot. If they were still actually making any.

We’d come utterly unprepared, as ever. We knew we wanted to go wine tasting and even knew that we should probably try the odd Pinot. We weren’t quite prepared for the vast number of wineries that we would possibly have to contend with. We weren’t quite prepared for the sheer size of the hangover that The French Laundry would provide us with. So in the end it boiled down to us, one full day’s tasting and in the best traditions of the A-Team, a plan. And it came together. Sort of.

Cannily, we asked someone who actually knew a thing or two about the area some advice. Don, at Napa Wines on Taylor Street and O’Farrell in the city, had kindly turned our enquiry into how far away Napa actually was (tourists, huh!) into a full blown dissertation, with visual aids, of the Napa Valley and Russian River. The Russian River Valley is part of Sonoma County and nestles to the west of its more illustrious cousin and being less well known, was full of undiscovered gems. Also, they didn’t generally make you pay for tastings like they do in the high falutin’ Napa Valley. We were sold.

Heading towards Healdsburg in the heart of the Russian Valley you take the Petrified Forest Road just after Calistoga near the top of the Napa Valley. Two rather sleepy but very American tourist attractions break up the journey. The eponymous Petrified Forest and the Old Faithful Geyser. These have a melancholy charm, a sense that both had seen busier days, the ghosts of a million family holidays from the 1950’s wafting through them. The Geyser was true to its name, though the promise of “Amazing Fainting Goats” turned out to be a pen of very sweet but generally very upright kids. The Petrified Forest was oddly unsatisfying.

Healdsburg is a very pretty, very high end sort of place. Like many of the towns we passed though in the area it seemed to be filled with restaurants, galleries, wine shops and a whole host of places you could drop some serious wedge. We were pondering where the hell we were going to find a Target whilst munching cupcakes and drinking coffee in the gardens of the town square (I’d run out of clean t-shirts). The provisions came from The Downtown Bakery and Creamery, a stunning little place full of great bread and lovely looking cakes, just across the street. We were winding down from our utter failure to navigate and the circuitous route we had ended up taking. Luckily, despite the fact we had used up a significant portion of the morning trying to tally up the three of four terrible maps we had with the universally terrible street signage, there were a few wineries on our list right there in town so we could re-plan our route and still take in many of the gems picked out for us by Don.

I’ll come to my pick of wines later in the week, but I just need to point out how little I know about wine. No, that’s not strictly true. I know enough about wine to embarrass myself in front of people who do know something about wine. So here goes. My general impressions of the Russian River were that I found the Pinots fussy and troublesome, a bit too much like hard work and needing a great deal of attention but once you got there, they were ace. I had much more luck with some Cabernet Sauvignons and Zinfandels and fell in love with a fair few Sauvignon Blancs and even the odd Chardonnay. I found myself liking the wines that were very New World in style a great deal and not liking the European styled wines very much at all. Sadly, I didn’t taste a single Merlot. Like I say I reckon they’ve stopped making it after than damn film came out, probably got some left in Napa though.

The French Laundry

2007-03-15T23:29:00.000Z

There is a higher law. There are some things that should never be done, some things that are simply bad ideas, things that civilisation has taught us are a mistake. Land wars in Asia are one, making a pass at your mother in law is another. Throwing up in Thomas Keller's garden is yet another. But to be honest, that's a whole other story.

When I'm lying on my death bed and thinking back to those moments when I was happiest, when I felt most content, most at one with my surroundings, a few choice moments will spring to mind. When Wimbledon FC won the FA cup in '88, that first kiss, the sun rising over the Serengeti and the myriad stars shining in the Outback. A hundred meaningful, stupid, hilarious moments. One such moment will be eating Oysters and Pearls at the French Laundry. It wasn't so much the dish itself, the whimsical and endlessly dissected pearl tapioca topped with caviar and oysters, it was a sense of having found something nearly perfect, an expression of something very profound on one hand and on the other, utterly ridiculous. It was a sense that I could stop looking. I had found as near perfect a meal as I could ever wish for. It was a liberation, the knowledge that it couldn't get any better and nor would I want it to. A homecoming.

What does the French Laundry mean? The same question applies to the Fat Duck or El Bullis. What is it's purpose? It is just a restaurant after all. It is the single best restaurant I have eaten in, from the food, which obviously was wonderful, to the service, which was the best I have ever encountered; wit, charm and ease, a sense of equality and belonging, but at the end of the day, why go? Is it a bench mark for what is civilised? No, you can get that in a greasy spoon on the Old Kent Road. Is is nothing more than a Thomas Keller theme park, a fantasy land, just smoke and mirrors? No, that would be churlish and frankly a insult to the hard work that goes into the place. I think what it offers, to me at least, is certainty. You might baulk at the expense, you might think the whole thing fanciful and overblown but there is a sense of purpose there, a love of doing things well, a fuck you if you think we'll do this any other way, a sense of ease with who they are. A sense of having nothing to prove. They had me from the first mouthful.