Archive
Bacon buddies. Two Americans have created a Bacon Salt that is even kosher
Addiction ahoy
Are you old enough to remember when crisps only came ready salted? The vast range of flavours now available were but a gleam in Gary Linneker’s eye, we were just grateful we didn’t have to search for those cute little blue bags of salt anymore.
Sometimes you got more than one, sometimes you got none, it all depended on the whim of the packing machine or possibly Doris on the production line ‘oop north.
When flavours did arrive one of the first was Smoky Bacon. To a young boy’s taste buds it was quite delicious and the best bit was tipping up the bag to fill your mouth with salty bacony dust after you’d eaten all the crisps. I tell you, we really had to make our own amusements back then.
Second best, for me at least, was the dust from Salt n Vinegar crisps, so a box arriving on my desk containing virtuously Natural Malt Salt, as well as proudly artificially flavoured Bacon Salt, made my day. Off with the lids and in with the tasting spatula, well ok a biro. Created by two friends, Justin and Dave, with the help of $5000 loaned by Dave’s 3 year old son (long story) these salts have savour. Read more…
London Oyster Guide by Colin Pressdee
Go buy the book
‘We’re all going to die!’ screamed the Daily Mail headline warning us of the dangers of eating oysters. Well okay it didn’t quite say that but their general gist was that oysters were very bad for you indeed.
Piffle, balderdash and a fluffy finger up to that, as Stephen Fry might say. Oysters are lovely and oysters from reputable suppliers are as safe as safe can be, having been purified before they get to us.
So forget the scare stories and cuddle up to an oyster or six, it’s one of life’s greatest eating pleasures and an example of how simple can so often be the very best. Lift the lid on a briny bivalve and tip it into your mouth, bite gently to release the flavour and then swallow. No, Stephen Fry did not say that, although he might.
Colin Pressdee is an oyster aficionado as well as a fine foodie. He was born in the town of Oystermouth, an oyster fishing village dating back to the Romans, so it was perhaps inevitable he’d be a mollusc muncher all his life. Indeed he once opened a restaurant called the Oyster Perches.
This book, created together with the Shellfish Association of Great Britain, looks at over 150 restaurants, bars, markets, merchants, retailers and producers to be a definitive guide to getting your oyster fix in London. From an intro that explains the difference between Native and Pacific, the seasons for oysters, how to open them (easier than you think) it goes all the way on to how to present them. But why bother when so many restaurants will serve up a glistening plate for you?
Shell out
And so Colin is off, exploring all areas of London for the best of the briniest. Clear address details, nearest tube station and brief description of the restaurant make the guide easy to use. Each restaurant entry also carries a price guide and suggestion for wine.
As you eat your oyster, pull the book out of your pocket and mug up on the author’s guide to the different styles and tastes offered by the various UK oyster producers; they are all very unique and terroir shines through. And if you do buy a bag to take home, there are recipes in the book to make the most of them. While any oyster eater will tell you raw is best, simply slipped from the shell, there are cooked oyster recipes in the book that offer unusual and interesting pleasures.
If you are already an oyster eater, then this book sells itself. If you are still, as some people amazingly are, horrified by the thought of oysters then perhaps Colin’s infectious enthusiasm will encourage you to give an oyster a go. Packed with goodness, undoubtedly good for you and very much a UK product to be proud of, oysters open up a whole new world of taste and pleasure.
{ISBN:1905582560}
Copita restaurant, Soho
26 D’Arblay St, W1F 8EP copita.co.uk
An establishing shot
A veritable armada of new Spanish restaurants has been sailing into London in 2011, their weapons the twin battleships of modern and classic tapas and all aimed straight at our guts. Iberica has opened a new place in the beating heart of Canary Wharf, Jose Pizzaro has occupied Bermondsey without resistance, The Opera Tavern has given Covent Garden a whiff of garlic and Omar Allibhoy has struck camp in Bluewater. I’m assuming the latter must know what he’s doing, and didn’t just sail up the wrong bit of river.
Copita, its name derives from the Spanish for a type of sherry glass, is from the mothership of Barrica in Goodge Street and has berthed further south in D’Arblay Street, Soho. Its sober frontage doesn’t exactly holler for attention but thankfully neither does it go for the faux craphole look which is now getting rather boring.
Inside it’s all about tall stools and high tables with tiles up the walls and along the floor and it’s a nicely judged balance of rough and smooth. Balanced precariously on a stool myself – I can never be truly comfortable on those things, they’re not quite sitting and they’re not quite standing – I’m finding it rather cosy and so is my wingman J. Packed in the evenings, Copita is currently nicely calm at lunch. Read more…
Breakfast at The Arts Club, London
The Arts Club 40 Dover Street London W1S 4NP
Pretty as a picture
I am not an artist, never been one, although the lifestyle certainly appeals; the birds, the booze, the brawls, the South Bank shows and the lovely cottage in the Dordogne, what’s not to like? And if I was an artist I could then become a member of the Arts Club in Mayfair and enjoy a breakfast like this every day.
Founded in 1863 by, amongst others Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope, the Georgian townhouse is unremarkable from the outside, as is right and proper. In fact all you really see is your reflection in the gloss black of the door. Inside is a subtle reception, stylish people man (men?) the desk and the latest iMac, surely not actually needed not just for reception, has its imperious designer back to you. It looks good of course, this is not a place to have a Dell on display after all. What artist ever used a PC? Read more…
Burn baby burn.Hot Headz chilli sauces on test
Ow, that stings!
‘Bloody hell!’, ‘Jesus Christ!; ‘Aaagh!’ are about the only printable comments we can make after trying the hot sauces we were sent by Hot-Headz the chili specialists.
The ladydeez sensibly wanted nothing to do with our taste test and retreated instead to a safe distance while we chaps bragged about our capacity to withstand any amount of scoville scorching and made vulgar jokes about lavatory paper. This was going to be a pushover.
We didn’t have any food to add to the sauces, and anyway it would have taken away from the pure scientific nature of the product, so instead we laid on some slices of cheap white bread (starch can be an antidote to chili, while water just makes it worse) and decided to dip cocktail sticks in the bottles to ensure minimum on the tongue, after all we had five to choose from.
Scoville (SHA) units are of course the scientific measure of a chili’s heat or capsaicin content, although it is measured by humans not by electronics. What a job that must be eh? The scale runs from 0 to over 200,000 units and presumably above that the tester is either carried out dead or insensible so no reading is ever noted. Read more…
The Bratwurst, Soho
38 Berwick Street, Soho, London W1F 8RT www.the-bratwurst.com
Wurst pic ever?
When I was a kid, my dad and I once watched a group of Frenchmen swim out to a rock, pull teaspoons from their scandalously skimpy swim trunks, and proceed to eat sea urchins fresh off the rocks. An elderly German gent watching, the same age as my dad and so also a war veteran, shook his head and turned to him and said ‘Ve should nevair haff fought!’
If we had one thing in common with the Germans back then it was a suspicion of ‘foreign food’ and a glum delight in our own. Since then we’ve seen a revival of our country’s food fortunes but Germany still languishes under a perception of meat, suet and sauerkraut as the only food available. Read more…
The Rookery Clapham
69 Clapham Common South Side, London, SW4, 9DA www.therookeryclapham.co.uk
New York in Clapham?
I may have said this before, as I get older I find I tend to repeat myself, but there really is no place for cameras in restaurants, unless for celebrations. You give the waiter your camera, show him where the shutter button is, and then grin grin, flash flash. Job done.
Which is why when the student at the next table actually got out a giant dSLR and, after taking lots of pictures of the cruet, stood up, bent over his table in order to get a straight down view of his plate and began firing off shots like a machine gun, I was not at all happy. He did this every time a new dish arrived and he did it for a very long time.
I suppose you can’t expect even basic good manners from today’s younger generation, Lord knows you could barely expect any from mine. No doubt between bursts of bad photography he was also Tweeting ‘stupid old diner at next table giving me dirty looks lol’. Read more…
Eating the truffles at Refettorio
Spaghetti heaven
It’s that time of year again, albeit a bit later than usual owing to poor crops in Italy, when foodie noses twitch to the aroma of truffles in the air. So expensive, so delicious and as they are only available for a short while, so important to hunt down while you can.
Refettorio is where we like to get our truffle fix, because it’s a Locatelli place and Giorgio knows what he’s doing even if he isn’t in day-to-day control. Head Chef Alessandro does the day-to-day work instead and he’s a great Italian chef, delivering a regular menu of classic with modern touches and pasta of sublime silkiness
Refettorio’s truffle tasting menu may sound expensive at £125 a head and of course no one can deny that sort of cost is not for everybody. But if you’re on the right side of the great UK rich/poor divide, then actually it’s not bad, as Refettorio have kept the cost the same as last year, despite truffles being more expensive owing to the poor crops. As Alessandro tells us though, the upside is that those truffles that have arrived are more concentrated in flavour as a result. Read more…
The Passion of Plaimont. Wonderful wines in South West France
A barrel of laughs
The bids are coming in thick and fast and the French auctioneer is sweeping his fringe out of his eyes with one hand and waving his gavel about with the other as he struggles to keep up. A thousand euros bid soon becomes two thousand and then ‘best of order’ has to be asked for as it hits €3000 and the crowd gasps Gallicly in astonishment.
At €3200 the hammer finally comes down and Didier Vinazza, a man who rather resembles Father Dougal in a Gascon beret is surrounded by congratulations. He’s just sold a quarter barrel of his best Pacherenc for the equivalent of over €50 a bottle. More in fact, when you consider the American buyer now has to pay the commission, the bottling, labelling and the shipping costs on top. An expensive sixty bottles of wine but definitely worth it for such nectar and the money that’s been raised will be going to good works around the area. ‘I took a risk harvesting in late November but I knew my pebbly clay terroir would be good for the Petit Manseng grapes and they were exceptional,’ he says above the din.
50cl of sex in a bottle
The Pacherenc auction at the Château de Crouseilles is one of the high points of the year for the Plaimont wine growers co-operative in Gers, France. Each previous year around 30 winemakers set aside small parcels of their vineyards to raise a special grape crop and about 16 of them have been judged to have produced an individual expression of Pacherenc good enough to be included in the 2011auction. Since daybreak prospective buyers, have slurped and spat, met each winemaker and then had a welcome break eating the local Black Pig cured ham and drinking Jeroboams of Plaimont Madiron red. And it’s not even 11 am yet. Read more…
Lunch at Roux at the Langham
A bit posh
Lunch in London is how knowledgeable foodies get their fix of the best around. A meal that might cost upwards of £70 a head in the evening can be less than even half that if you cannily go for the set lunch option.
And it’s not a question of having to compromise either. The good chefs put a lot of thought into lunch ‘prix fixe because it’s seen as a chance to break away and to make best use of what’s available in the markets on the day.
Head chef at Roux at the Landau at the Langham Hotel is Chris King, an impossibly boyish looking chap whose appearance belies his experience. He worked at Le Gavroche over the past five years, has cooked at Per Se in New York, and was Sous Chef at Roux Parliament Square. Clearly the Roux Bros think highly of him and he joined me for a chat after a Landau lunch that was a perfect mix of French style, mixed with a touch of the exotic and a seasonal selection of market must-haves.
The Landau set lunch is three courses for £37.50, or £47.50 with a half bottle of wine from a short but punchy list. To eat at this level, in that room and for those prices is good value, and the number of people I could see in the room taking advantage rather proved it. Read more…
Nick Harman 