What the cluck 2 ?

Kentucky Fried Chicken have just introduced a Grilled Chicken offering in the US and to promote it they thought about going on the Oprah show and giving some away. Silly idea said Oprah, let's put a coupon on our web site and let people all over the USA get free chicken. Ahhhh.....silly idea Oprah, cos' now there's chaos and riots at KFC units all over the country.
Her Royal Oprahness decreed "Let them eat chicken" and then the fun began. She offered free downloadable coupons to all of her viewers offering them a two piece grilled chicken meal. The offer is good from now until May 19th, 2009. People have flooded blogs, chat rooms and KFC headquarters furious they cannot log in to download the coupon, and those who did are finding the KFC franchises are electing not to honor them. One blogger wrote "I went over to our nearest KFC a few minutes ago (this was around 42nd and Park)and chaos ensued. Despite the very visible grilled chicken behind the register, the manager told everyone with coupons to leave and that the promotion was over for the day. The people there are currently holding a sit-in and refusing to leave until they get their free chicken...or the cops are called. Racial epithets were being spewed, people who actually wanted to pay for chicken were facing a potential beatdown, and the manager ran from the screaming horde. Oprah, what have ye wrought?" Sometimes it's not a great idea to be such a do-gooder!

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What the cluck is this?

As you are no doubt aware Amazon does not deliver to South Africa due to our inefficient postal system and light-fingered postal workers but I reckon this is not a bad thing. I could think of nothing worse than an unsolicited parcel arriving from the shopping giant containing 6 cans of Sweet Sue Canned Whole Chicken, I mean just how the hell would you explain it to anyone or get rid of it?
This ectoplasm in a can is available from Amazon.com Grocery for $49.99 per 6 cans and is described as -
" One whole chicken, ready for soups, stews and quick dinners. Great to have on-hand in your pantry for emergency dinners."
Emergency dinners? It looks to me as if it's more likely to create a bloody emergency! Who in their right mind would want to market whole cooked chicken in a can and stranger still, who the hell would want to buy it? It's not as if it's a particularly difficult food to source or prepare. Amazon obligingly records that customers who bought this produce also bought Canned chicken breasts in water, tinned sausages and Spam - why am I not surprised?

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The burger guy

Sometimes you've just got to ask why?.....but other times maybe it's better not to spend too much time on it. In the case of Carl Ehrlich,well he's one of those guys you should read about, dismiss as a bozo and move on rapidly. But there is something intriguing about someone who has been eating the same burger almost every night for the past four years: a double cheeseburger with pickles, two packets of mustard and two packets of ketchup.
When two friends opened a new burger joint at Harvard in Boston they came up with a novel competition to get publicity. The restaurant, called b.good, asked their customers to come up with an essay as to why they would make an ideal "cousin" to the burger joint and the featured burger "Cousin Oliver" ( I did warn you to move on rapidly). Carl Ehrlich was the winner and is entitled to free burgers from the Dunster Street joint for the rest of his life. “Winning the burger thing might have been the highlight of my freshman year,” Ehrlich says. “I went there every. waking. second.” He swore to the Crimson reporter covering his burger bonanza that he’d eat 1,000 by the time he left Harvard. Four years later, Ehrlich is getting ready to graduate and he’s made good on his promise. After hundreds of burgers (despite a few periods of b. good breaks), Ehrlich has gotten the routine down to a science. He has a set beverage: diet Coke topped off with real soda to trick his tongue. And he has a set condiment routine: “I take the mustard, and I move from left to right, up and down like this,” he motions on the table, “ and make little, you know, sinusoidal curves. Then I take the ketchup, and I start at the same point I started the mustard, and I do the complete inverse. And then I turn it 90 degrees and I do the same thing.” He chuckles, “It just happened one day, and it occurred to me that it was perfect.” Well there you have it, that just about explains everything.

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Out of the box

Don't you get fed up with those bloody glib management mantras trotted out by the great forward thinking visionaries which are swiftly seized upon by people who don't quite grasp the concept but what the hell, it sounds catchy and is bound to impress people? The one that I'm getting really sick of hearing is " What's required here is some thinking outside of the box ". When it comes to the catering business I'm not so sure because there's quite enough chefs thinking outside of the box, I reckon it's time we gave a lot more thought to what's in the box !
Playing around with food is great fun and I'm all for experimentation but do it with your own money, in your own time. When I come to your restaurant to part with some of my hard earned cash I don't want to be a guinea pig just as when I go to watch a theatre show don't call me up out of the audience to participate, I've bought a ticket, I've come to see you entertain me not be the butt of your jokes. It seems to me that we should spend more time perfecting what's in the box, cos' that's what I've come for, that's what has attracted me to your restaurant in the first place. I don't need whimsy menu descriptions, tutorials from waitroids on how to eat a particular offering "The chef recommends that you chew the coffee bean, suck the sugar cube and then squeeze the tube of condensed milk onto the front of your tongue" -does he now, well tell someone who cares. It's time to get back to basics - how's that for a catchy mantra. Give me food that I can eat without an instruction manual, service which is quietly efficient and prices for food and wine which are realistic and you have earned the right to paint restaurant,(from the Latin, come to me and I will restore you), above your front door. If you can't get those basics right then perhaps you should hitch up your wagon, ride off in the distance and peddle your travelling smoke and mirrors show somewhere else.

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Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Another delicious clip from those masters, The Two Ronnies. We've all heard those horror stories about diners who have the temerity to send food back to the kitchen, I even know names and dates, but that's for another time, anyway Ron and Ron give us their take on the situation. FeedBlitz subscribers will have to visit the site to view.

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Dilly Diner of the Week

This week we go to the home of gastronomy, France, to visit a Dilly Diner. Au Bout des Doigts (At your fingertips) in the heart of Old Lille is all about surprise. The dining room is set in an old piano warehouse where the space gives play to the asymmetrical furniture and the invigorating colours. The menu concepts all challenge your assumptions. Here’s the nub: Au Bout des Doigts serves every complete meal without knives, forks or spoons. You choose plates of meat, fish or a combination, veg, dessert and chef Fabrice Vermuse creates combinations of flavours to delight the palate, combinations of familiar flavours and more unusual ingredients. Eight to twelve bites make a meal and the whole table can share in the feast. This is a concept that works terrifically well with groups of friends, but also very well with working lunches or dinners as there’s no service interruption every five minutes. Eat, brainstorm, enjoy. And yes, there are fountains where you wash your hands.

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That Was The Week That Was

Big news of the week has got to be the swine flu epidemic that is reputed to be sweeping the world and getting everyone into all sorts of states of preparedness despite the fact that as of yesterday the World Health Organisation has only attributed 7 deaths in Mexico to the outbreak - by comparison 1,000 people die annually in South Africa of influenza and it's never seemed to bother us up to now. In Mexico City the government has forced a mandatory closedown of restaurants although take aways are still available. Most operaters seem to be using the enforced downtime to catch up on maintenance and service training. Perhaps we could do with a bout of springbok sickness here to perk up our local diners.



Meanwhile on to swine of a different type. The owner of a restaurant in the normally genteel town of Bath in the UK has insisted he will carry on serving foie gras - and has criticised protesters who have picketed his premises. A demonstration outside Minibar turned nasty when campaigners confronted customers. Chef and co-owner Alex Grant claimed the protesters swore at his customers, and admitted he pushed one of the campaigners in a row over the picket. The campaigners from the Bath Activist Network have denied being aggressive, swearing or blocking the door and have said they were simply trying to educate people. I reckon he should have force fed them.



Not far away, also in Bath, is Hugh Fairly Dipstick's latest venture, the River Cottage Canteen. The man who charmed his way across our TV screens whistling "How're we gonna keep 'em down on the farm" seems intent on setting up his own little empire and whilst he will never become the King of Chefs he stands a good chance of being King of the Allotments now that Jamie has stopped digging for victory to concentrate on mass attraction High Street Italian trattorias. Hugh Hunter Gatherer is becoming quite the capitalist with farms, restaurants, books, television shows, cooking schools, shops… he'll soon be catching up with his arch enemy Tesco. Anyway back to the River Cottage Canteen - apparently the food is crap!

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