Archive: 23 August – 29 August 2010
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Friday 27 August 2010
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Shaka Zulu restaurant, London, where the menu is most definitely nothing to do with cannibalism.
To my gallows amusement, rumours abounded early this morning of an alleged "cannibal restaurant" soon to open in Berlin and based on the Wari culture of endocannibalism, the respectful consumption of a member of one's own society after they have died.
According to this video interview with the restaurant's supposed owner, it was to have been his second restaurant, the original, Flimé, being located in Brazil near a Wari reservation. The illusion was bolstered by this website where members are presented with a health questionnaire and asked to decide which body part they want to donate.
Despite laying themselves wide open to accusations of crass insensitivity, the people behind it have scored a major publicity coup around what would have been the ultimate theme restaurant. In fact, whether there's any substance to this story or not, the reality is in many ways even worse. Just what is it about this curious subset that appeals to restaurant-goers? Continue reading...
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The Oxford skyline. Photograph: Chris Andrews/Corbis
It's a weird one, is Oxford. It's home to a lot of clever, cultured people who earn plenty of money and therefore, logically, you would expect it to be full of great places to eat. Yet, like Cambridge, it has developed a reputation as something of a gastronomic black hole. It's almost as if Oxford is too posh and too clever for good food to thrive.
The academics are too absent-minded to eat and the students are too busy being students to care. Throw in the tourist hordes who are just happy to be anywhere built before 1960, and you have the perfect recipe for a torpid restaurant scene.
However, on the evidence of my latest budget eats guide for Guardian Travel, Oxford is not as bleak as it is sometimes painted. Continue reading...
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A queue outside a restaurant. Photograph: Simon Reddy/Alamy
A couple of weeks ago we went out for dinner at a well-reviewed, newish restaurant. Though we arrived at a reasonable time, we were forced to queue for just over an hour, packed shoulder to shoulder with jostling punters. I had to fight my way to the bar while busy staff forged their paths through the crush. We drank quite a lot of their wine and at no point did I receive anything even resembling apology.
Am I, you're probably asking, going to use the next seven hundred words to publicly revenge myself for this outrage to my dignity? Am I hell - I had a bloody marvellous time and I'm going back next week to be treated just the same.
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Thursday 26 August 2010
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Tea is young and funky once more. Photograph: Junophoto/Getty Images/fStop
Tea is the UK's favourite hot beverage, but - considering the profusion of cafes struggling for space on every high street and side street - where are the tea bars?
Some pioneers have attempted to bring our collective panacea into a modern social setting. Manchester's Mumbo, with it's fabled wheel of tea and balmy roof garden lasted roughly one year, and Glasgow's Tchai Ovna is currently fighting the threatened redevelopment which would concrete over its beloved restorative garden. This famed haven in the west end of Glasgow is a serene contemplation zone with space set aside for an authentic Japanese tea ceremony, offering 80 varieties including the (nicer than it sounds) Tibetan spittan – a twiggy blend traditionally drunk in monasteries.
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Plain and simple perfect pasta. Photograph: Felicity Cloake
Commiserating with a friend recently over a break-up, we ran dutifully through her ex's faults – his insensitivity, his collection of three-quarter length trousers – and then, becoming increasingly worked up, she dropped a bombshell. "He didn't like pasta." There was a silence, followed by an explosion of incredulity. How had it lasted so long, we wondered? A person who could digest wheat, and yet didn't appreciate pasta – well, that was clearly never going to work.
Garibaldi relied on the power of macaroni to unite Italy, Sophia Loren famously claimed she owed her voluptuous figure to spaghetti, and chef Giorgio Locatelli reckons every Italian is two-thirds pasta. Despite a lingering fondness for "hoops", even Britain has embraced proper pasta in recent years. These days we know our pappardelle from our penne, and we're beginning to get the concept of different shapes for different sauces, although we're still more likely to reach for whatever's in the cupboard come Sunday evening, and if it's bow ties and pesto, then so be it. But the idea of making our own is still entirely foreign to most of the nation.
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Wednesday 25 August 2010
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Chef Mark Hix. Photograph: Jason Lowe
How the acclaimed chef and British food enthusiast answered your questions on all matters surf and turf
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Stella Artois Black.
Curious news from Stella Artois. This autumn, Stella's parent company,AB InBev, will launch Stella Artois Black, which isn't - much to the consternation of beer blogger, Pete Brown - a dark lager, but rather a 4.9% Stella deluxe for, what Marketing Magazine, calls "posh" drinkers.
Brewed in Belgium, as opposed to the UK, where (despite the continental branding) standard Stella Artois and its 4% variant are made, this new recipe, golden beer will also be matured - or lagered, the process that imbues lager with flavour - for longer than normal; a fact which will be central to the SA Black marketing push.
The lack of transparency, however, is laughable. Continue reading...
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Tuesday 24 August 2010
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99 Flake ice-cream. Photograph: foodfolio/Alamy
When I was growing up, I always assumed that the 99 Flake was so called because it cost 99p. Indeed I think it did for most of my childhood, in what seemed an unusually sensible way for grown-ups to have done things, and perhaps also a nifty reminder of how much to cadge off them to get hold of one.
I doubt there's a single British child that hasn't lapped at the sweet spumy lather of a 99 Flake. It's welded to our youth like chicken pox and bullying. The gentle jingle of Greensleeves from a garishly converted van, a beefy-armed vendor, crisply anaemic cone, turdy curly ice-cream and chocolate spike: it's all a happy reminder of sandy summers and shrieky, milk-smeared faces.
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Monday 23 August 2010
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Italians shop in a food market in Tuscany. Photograph: Alamy
Due to the incredible power of the internet and an editor who can't quite grasp the concept of 'holiday', I'm writing this under an umbrella in France. To be more precise, I'm writing it from a cafe terrace overlooking the Pont Du Gard. Many of you will have been lucky enough to visit this place, many more will have seen it in pictures or on video. It's a staggering piece of Roman civil engineering, built by enslaved Gauls and richly deserving of its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
It stands to reason. Like so many other monuments and natural features the combined bridge and aqueduct is part of our international history and culture; it belongs, in some way, to the whole world, and we should all help look after it.
Strange, then, to be told in such a lovely place that the Italian government is pushing to apply UNESCO World Heritage Status to "the Mediterranean diet". Yes, if the vote goes through in November this year, fresh fruit, veg and grilled fish will join the UN's special list of "intangible cultural heritage".
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Horseradish. Photograph: Getty Images
As we discussed a couple of months ago, most of us, even the most ardent food lover, have at least one food that they just can't bear. Offal is a common culprit (though I suspect a lot of that is about the idea of it, rather than the taste), as well as fish that's too fishy and the much-maligned sprout.
The flavour and fragrance of coriander is disliked to such an extent by some that it is capable of turning otherwise gastronomically adventurous types into overgrown toddlers, clamping their mouths shut and making scrunched up faces at the very thought of a sprinkling on their chilli con carne.
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