Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

I'm sure we've had this one before but who cares since it is well worth seeing again. It's the classic Two Ronnies and the rook restaurant sketch. FeedBlitz subscribers will have to visit the site to view.

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Dilly Diner of the Week

Underground restaurants are becoming more and more prevalent especially as the recession bites and people are looking for a fun dining experience without paying excessive bills. This week’s Dilly Diner is based roughly in Toronto. “Charlie’s Burgers” is an underground “anti-restaurant” in Toronto that hand-picks its guests and has nothing to do with burgers.
Prospective diners who want to experience a Charlie's Burgers dinner must first apply for an invitation, a process that involves filling out a survey about their interest in food. If they're lucky, they'll then be sent an e-vite to the next Charlie's Burgers event. Neither the identity of "Charlie" nor the location of the event is disclosed, however; rather, on the evening of the dinner, invited guests are directed to a public spot—such as a newspaper box—to pick up directions. The five-course meals are priced at CDN 110 including cocktails, wines, dinner and dessert, and the menus are reportedly a far cry from what the name would suggest. "Duck in a Can"—a signature dish brought in from Montreal's Au Pied de Cochon—is commonly featured, according to reports; also included in a dinner earlier this spring were an elaborate cheese tray, Malbec poached Bosc pear, and almond and walnut ice cream. While only 30 or so guests are served at each four-hour event, applications can number as high as 250. Adding to the value of the events, of course, are the feeling of exclusivity—sure to generate status stories galore—the uniqueness of the experience and the off-the-beaten-path culinary possibilities. Yet with zero to little overhead required and virtually limitless creative opportunities, an underground restaurant could become an increasingly attractive option for chefs wanting to start their own business.
( via Springwise.com)

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That Was The Week That Was

Amy Winehouse said this week that she’ll return to her home in London — as long she can find a St Lucian chef to move to the UK and cook for her. The troubled singer — who has been living on the Caribbean island while she works on her eagerly-awaited third album — has already started asking native cooks to move back to London with her. One of Amy’s favorite things about St Lucia is the food and she’d love to have that as a reminder of the island when she is back in the UK a source told British newspaper the Evening Standard. She has said there’s no way she’ll come back unless she can find a chef she likes and who is prepared to move country. So far she hasn't had any luck in recruiting her personal chef and it seems there are many in London who hope it stays that way.


Meanwhile back in London the controversy concerning a top Japanese chef and blue fin tuna continues as protesting actors, pop stars, models and socialites have started a celebrity backlash against the A-list's favourite restaurant Nobu for selling the endangered fish. Sienna Miller, Charlize Theron, Jemima Khan, Sting and his film producer wife Trudie Styler are among 31 signatories of a letter to the Japanese chef Nobu Matsuhisa appealing for him to remove bluefin tuna from his global restaurant empire so that they can "dine with a clear conscience". The model Elle Macpherson and the actors Alicia Silverstone and Woody Harrelson are also supporting the protest, which follows news that Nobu refuses to stop serving bluefin – a fish on the brink of extinction in the Mediterranean. Instead its two restaurants in London are advising diners to ask for an alternative.


In New York Nobu was also coming under pressure from Greenpeace as members of the group made reservations for six tables on Saturday night, and once there, planted fake menus listing dishes made with endangered animals--blue whale whale tongue and rack of mountain gorilla alongside the bluefin--and asked servers to answer questions about fish sourcing and sustainability. The fake menus were also posted in the toilets and some handed out directly to other diners. They were in there for an hour and a half, and at no point did they get satisfactory answers about bluefin or other unsustainable seafood, or even guidance as to which menu items they should order.

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Something old, something new

Despite what many people claim there is absolutely nothing new in cookery, it’s all been done before and possibly much better. Heston and Adria may put on spectacular smoke and mirror shows but none compare with the truly unbelieveable feats performed by chefs at the great courts of the world without I may add, the benefit of modern gadgets although they did have the same slave system that modern day maestos adhere to, with their curious addiction to the quasi employment of stagaires – but I digress.
What I wanted to comment on was the fact that when I started out in the kitchen you would never see a microwave and it was dismissed as a housewive’s toy. Chefs would decry it as representing everything that was terrible in cooking and no-one would ever admit to having one, much less using one. I heard the same sentiments espoused by so-called “Master Chefs” who raised their hands in horror at the very thought of having a deep freeze in their kitchen. Then a strange thing happened this week as one of the wunderkinds of the avant garde school of cookery, none less than Michelin starred Wylie Dufresne of the famed WD-50 restaurant, came out of the closet as it were and demonstrated to the press his latest thinking. "I think microwaves are pretty neat," Dufresne said before an inhouse demonstration. The chef uses three standard microwaves in his kitchen and has been testing out a new model for the last three weeks. "We realized we could poach in the microwave," he said. But it takes time ... 29 minutes to be precise. He uses the microwave for eggs, vegetables, foie gras and he revealed that his mentor Ferran Adria was equally enthusiastic about the microwaves at El Bulli. It’s strange how ideas and techniques do the rounds in the culinary sphere and equally strange how it takes a Wylie Dufresne to add credibility to a microwave and not a Nigella Lawson. It’s also strange why one would want to poach an egg for 29 minutes precisely when you could achieve the same effect or possibly better using the same techniques as those medieval cooks!

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Froupies

This whole food business is starting to get out of hand. I was delighted at the increased general interest in food, recipes, chefs and restaurants. I was happy to see some really good and some absolutely terrible food personalities and celebrity chefs flit across my TV screen. I was bemused by the plethora of coffee table gastroporn magazines and amazed at the number of new cook books being published on a daily basis. But it seems though that we are rapidly heading for a culinary saturation point which will undo all the good work and send us back to 50's style prawn cocktails, greek salads, and so on, because people will just get fed up with too much "in yer face" food, as it were.
I blame the "reality TV craze ". Years ago we were happy to listen to our favourite artists on disc and occasionally go to a live concert, we were fans who had no desire to get any closer, we were not groupies. It was much the same with restaurants. We were happy to eat in the temples of gastronomy but had no real desire to see some chef lopping around the restaurant pressing the flesh, pulling up a chair at certain tables and fishing for accolades - get back in the bloody kitchen where you belong and don't screw up my steak ! I mean, what would happen if Elvis just played a tape and came down and sat beside you in the auditorium. You came to hear him sing not listen to a tape!
There's a foodie organisation I believe in New York called Culinary Insiders - I reckon they're food groupies. Their aim is to organise dinners in new restaurants before they open, to meet top chefs in intimate surroundings and to fawn all over them (OK I made up that last bit). Where are these people's heads ? The last place you want to be is in a restaurant on opening night, it's chaos and the food and service diabolical, in fact the only reason anyone is there is because they're not paying the bill ! So who would want to eat in a restaurant before it even got to the chaotic stage ? Who would want to eat in a restaurant when it was pure bedlam ? Only a food groupie I think.

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Too late for organic

If you're still struggling to come to terms with organic produce then forget it ! It wasn't the brightest of ideas in the first place since the certification processes were seriously flawed and often you ended up sort of half pregnant. Take away the high moral ground attitude and all you really get are dirty vegetables which are priced well out of the reach of most family budgets. Anyway, as I say, forget about it - it's really last year's news. If you want a drum to beat and a parade to follow then turn your sights to sustainable.
More and more consumers with too much money in the bank, too much time on their hands and too little to concern themselves with, are becoming increasingly alarmed about how much of the earth's resources are being expended to create a particular product. Take your average pack of cornflakes for example, how much water was used to grow the corn, how much fuel was used to transport it from the field to the factory, to the wholesaler and ultimately to the store where you bought them, how many " food miles were involved " ? We're not talking organic here, the new buzzword in our vocabulary is "planet saving".
We've done the " low fat", " heart healthy ", " organic ", " fair trade " crusades and now it's time for " sustainable". Now there's a bit of a dilemma here because in order to use less resources eg water, we have to grow corn that consumes less water, that is drought resistant, that is, dare I utter it in polite company, genetically engineered and therein lies the rub as they say.
The other more practical problem is that the cornflake packets will require bigger side panels to give us all the new ecological info that we will require to make a purchasing decision, this in turn will require us to cut down more rainforests and we will continue to agonise as we eventually disappear up our own backsides - on the other hand Darren, we could purchase less food, eat less food, throw out less food. Or is that too simple ?

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It couldn't happen to a nicer bloke

Poor old Gordo has finally admitted what the rest of the industry was speculating about for months – he was sailing bloody close to the wind! There was talk earlier in the year that he hadn’t paid up what was owing on a ten million pound loan and a half a million pound overdraft with the Royal Bank of Scotland. The revelations highlight the motivation for Gordon Ramsay Holdings giving up control of its restaurants in Paris, Los Angeles and Prague to the hotels they are housed in.
Ramsay has revealed that his restaurant business came close to collapse and that auditors at KPMG – called in by RBS - had recommended putting GRH into administration after discovering that the business was losing millions of pounds on its overseas expansion plans. A separate investigation by HM Revenue & Customs found that the company owed £7.2m in taxes . KPMG wanted to take control of GRH to “cherry-pick the winners and say goodbye to the losers”, Ramsay said.
Other steps included reducing the number of covers in other restaurants, sacking a quarter of the staff at the London head office and Ramsay and GRH chief executive Chris Hutcheson sinking £5m of their own money into the company. They used the cash to pay off debt and most of the £7.2m in outstanding taxes.
“It’s been very painful,” Ramsay said. “It’s taken several million pounds of my own money but I’m still standing.”
(source The Caterer and Hotelkeeper)

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