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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…
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 Rosendale, West Dulwich
65 Rosendale Road, West Dulwich, London, SE21 8EZ www.therosendale.co.uk
A big old boozer in sarf lundun
I once heard a food writer say ‘Oh we don’t like chain restaurants’. I assumed he was using the royal ‘we’ but no. Apparently he was referring to some mysterious cabal, the admission criteria being snobbery.
He might have liked it at The Rosendale though, as the clientele has upper middle class written all over it. Close enough to Dulwich to draw in the local wealth, The Rosendale on our night was packed with thick-haired young men and beautiful blonde girls all drawn from the same gene pool and already firmly set on their Life Cruise Control.
Saved from ruin some years ago this lovely old boozer has real character and could well be in Highgate or Islington instead of, technically I think, West Norwood. Renaissance Pubs has done it out nicely in Gastro Pub, the new paint from Farrow and Ball, and it has a decent outside area for smoking, a garden and plenty of space to park prams. One of which is quite important to me. Read more…
Ducksoup, Soho
No expense spared
Is it a good idea to grill lemons? Is it a good idea to incinerate artichokes? Is it a good idea to open a minimalist bar restaurant in Soho?
I like simple griling, frying and roasting but an artichoke subjected to intense heat resembles something saved from a bonfire with a lot of burnt leaves and a subsequent vicious struggle for the tender centre. Grilling lemons adds a pleasant caramilisation but makes the seeds even more bitter in the mouth than usual. The Fritto Misto at Ducksoup, a new London restaurant, might be better named a Fritto Mysterioso, as in ‘why would they do that?’ Read more…
Tea time treats from the London Tea Company
These delicious teas have been sweetening the foetid air of the Foodepedia offices, staffed as they are by people who eat for a living and thus suffer from alimentary gusts and breezes, for a week or so now. It is suddenly like being in a boudoir, or the offices of The Lady perhaps. Even served in our hilarious tea mugs ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps’, the tea’s delicate nature remains undisturbed.
Green tea, it has been recently claimed, may ward off cancer, which is something we should all be trying to do obviously. Not least as there may well be no public health service to wash and bathe us in our autumnal years and green tea is cheaper than selling the house over the children’s heads to afford private care.
It’s the antioxidants that do it of course. Green tea is loaded with them but all too often, for me at least, it actually tastes medicinal. Nanny’s edict that if tastes horrible it is doing you good, never struck a chord with me.
London Tea’s Green Tea is very delicate and one of the few green teas I can actually drink without effort.
Favourite though is the White Tea with elderflower, lemongrass and a hint of apricot. Not only does it taste rather wonderful and smell even better, it has all the benefits of White Tea which is made from the youngest buds of the tea plant.
These teas are part of a large range from a rather cool company. www.londontea.co.uk
Nick Harman 