Dilly Diner of the Week

Today's Dilly Diner is one of a new breed of "Robin Hood" restaurants where diners pay what they can afford -- and what they think the meal is worth. The SAME (So All May Eat) Cafe in Denver has a mission that is unapologetically altruistic. "Our philosophy is that everyone, regardless of economic status, deserves the chance to eat healthy, organic food while being treated with dignity," explains Brad Birky, who opened SAME with his wife, Libby. Customers who have no money are encouraged to exchange an hour of service - sweep, wash the dishes, weed the organic garden - for a meal. Likewise, guests who have money are encouraged to leave a little extra to offset the meals of those who have less to give.
What makes the SAME Café such a unique concept is the lack of a set menu as well as the lack of set prices. Instead of a set menu, daily selections are made using fresh, seasonal, mostly organic ingredients. These selections include a variety of salads, soups & pizzas. Instead of set prices, patrons find a donation box where they can leave whatever amount they feel their meal was worth. By adopting this "pay what you can" philosophy, it is hoped that those who can afford to leave a little more will do so, which will help to offset the meal costs of those who can't afford to leave as much.One man has regularly come in and left money on the counter without eating, stating "I was blessed today so I though I'd pass it on." He's homeless.

That Was The Week That Was

It took only 12 months for Capetonians to tell Gordo to get on his bike and concentrate on his TV career cos the food’s not that great! This week the latest restaurant in his stable to fold is Maze at the One and Only hotel in Cape Town following the departure of his Exec Chef and a terse announcement from hotel management - “We can confirm that Gordon Ramsay Holdings Ltd.’s engagement as a consultant to One & Only Cape Town has terminated,” the hotel said “As a result, the restaurant at One & Only Cape Town no longer trades under the Maze brand, but the restaurant will remain owned and operated by One & Only Cape Town. All employees who worked at Maze Cape Town are employed by One & Only Cape Town and will not be affected by the transition.”



Meanwhile unperturbed, His Gordoness was whooping it up at a party for celeb follower Kelly Hoppen in London.With so many celeb mates, Kelly Hoppen's birthday bash was always going to be a starry affair. But her pals weren't just there to party.. they had to lend a hand, too.
The interior designer got Victoria Beckham on vodka-jelly-making duties, roped celeb chef Gordon Ramsay in as toast master and had Emma Bunton and Duncan James getting a singsong going.And for the evening's comedy entertainment, Kelly had TV's Chatty Man Alan Carr and Pineapple Dance Studios star Louie Spence. As the champers flowed at her West London home, guests tucked into a spectacular selection of seafood. Tasty treats included black cod, salmon sashimi, tobiko, salmon nigiri and soft shell crab hand roll. Talk about Nero fiddling while Rome burned!



Of course nowadays the money all comes from TV and Gordo’s new show launched this week in the US. Ramsay is a staple on Murdoch's FOX network, with his other reality shows, Hell's Kitchen and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, popular with American viewers, but on MasterChef they see a different side of the expletive-tossing British chef.
He shows off a gentler side to the amateur contestants, rather than dishing up harsh nicknames and firing off four letter tirades at the professionals he deals with on his other shows. "That wouldn't be fair, you have to keep in mind that these are not professionals," Ramsay said. I think it’s more likely that he wants to continue his work on TV and realises that the best way to do that is to start cleaning up his act a bit since his f’ing and blinding was becoming very one dimensional.

Eau de tap

I’ve never been to Beijing but when the opportunity arises my first port of call as a loyal card carrying tourist will no doubt be a visit to The Beijing Museum of Tapwater. Now I’m an avowed imbiber of tapwater, when the beer runs out that is, but what the hell were the Chinese thinking when they came up with this bizarre museum? Of course there is a perfectly logical explanation in a Chinese sort of way – the Party issued an edict in 2001 that 150 new museums be opened in Beijing by 2008 in time for the Olympics, a bit like the silly things that FIFA required us to construct for the World Cup and the museum curators had to scrape the water barrel in some cases. In addition to the rather splendid Beijing Tap Water Museum there are also museums devoted to honeybees, red sandalwood and goldfish! So there are some really mind numbing artefacts on display like vintage water coupons and a stethoscope used to listen for water leaks but unfortunately the one really important thing missing is fresh tap water since due to old pipes the water in Beijing is distinctly unpalatable.

Slurp down your stompies

I can't even begin to think why anyone would come up with this crazy idea. Bottled water sales are huge for some reason which escapes me. They've tried every type of marketing gimmick under the sun, ad nauseum - we've had still and sparkling and every station inbetween, every colour of water possible, from rivers deep and mountains high, even from melted polar ice caps, all types of additives, flavours that I didn't even know existed, so many shapes and sizes of bottles that even a bull in a china shop wouldn't know where to begin smashing them and not content with that trail of confusion some bloody ponytail has come up with the idea of nicotine flavoured bottled water.
Who in their right mind would even contemplate gargling on water that was akin to old stompies floating around in a pool of cold liquid ? Where's the market for this revolutionary innovation ? Fancy a nice refreshing glass of stompie juice ? Not on your bloody Nelly ! The California based distributor (where else?) says that although the water contains nicotine it is totally non addictive. I believe him. I can't imagine that anyone would get past the first sip! "We have global interest," he said. "We're having an overwhelmingly positive response." The water, touted by the company as the world's only nicotine replacement drink with "a hint of lemon," is intended to give smokers their fix in airports, restaurants and other public buildings where smoking is banned. I suppose the other great advantage of the product is that no-one will suffer from the effects of passive smoking, unless of course you happen to throw up all over them.

Which came first the chicken or the loss?

It seems if you want to choose a country to be a really successful restaurant brand in, then it’s best you DON’T choose the UK. Homegrown fast food chain Nando’s has taken the UK market by storm. The young hip market just loves the brand and are happy to say so – as are other, more stately celebs, including David Beckham, Mary J Blige, Oprah Winfrey, Ricky Gervais and Jay-Z (who asked for Nando's chicken on his rider at the Brit awards). The company won the Sunday Times Best Place to Work (Big Companies) category this year and in 2009 Nando’s UK was awarded Three Stars (highest accolade) in the Best Companies Annual Accreditation Awards – the only entrant in the large companies’ category to achieve the three star rating. Wow ! It’s all fantastic news for our local heroes, we really showed them we knew why the chicken crossed the ocean or did we? The franchise made a loss of £23 million on sales of £167 million in the 36 weeks to February 2009, according to documents filed with Companies House. The performance was worse than a year earlier when the business recorded a deficit of £20 million on turnover of £187 million. – that’s over R500 MILLION loss in two years ! Nando’s directors declared they were ‘satisfied’ with the results, but said inflation had eaten into profits – jeez guys I’d find somewhere else to be a roaring success if I was in your shoes.

Don’t touch me on my eggs

I’m a fairly easy going sort of a guy and have a few little pleasures in life, some worth mentioning, some not and generally speaking I’m quite tolerant of Americans reasoning that they’re fine in small doses provided they don’t get in the lift, sorry elevator, alongside me – there’s something quite oppressive about confined spaces and verbal diarrhoea. So when I read about Kraft USA taking over Cadbury chocolate, a great British icon, I wasn’t too fussed as long as it didn’t impact on me directly. Now I’ve learnt that the new American owners of Cadbury have been hit by an exodus of key staff since they took over six months ago. A total of 120 out of 170 managers and executives have quit since Kraft took control of the 200-year-old company in February after a bitterly fought £11.5billion takeover battle. There have been departures among creative, design and marketing specialists – and even the creator of the award-winning drumming ‘gorilla’ advertisement has left. Unfortunate news but these things happen after such a massive deal takes place. But here is where the Yanks are beginning to piss me as they would so eloquently put it. A vuvuzela blower has claimed in a email that the company is considering using powdered Milka chocolate from Germany in some products, and reducing the size of the popular Dairy Milk bar. Now they’ve ruined a friendship since one of the affected products is one of those little aforementioned pleasures of mine, the Cadbury’s Crème Egg! You can argue about quality chocolate until the cows come home, to contribute to it’s production of course, but no-one can convince me that the Cadbury’s Crème Egg isn’t the most delicious chocolate confection in the world so watch out Mr Kraft otherwise I may be forced to switch my allegiance to All Gold Tomato Ketchup.

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

It's maybe not the best idea to send Kramer out to buy pizza as we see in this classic clip from Seinfeld. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.