Dilly Diner of the Week

There's a funny little restaurant in the North East of China in the town of Jilin which qualifies for this week's Dilly Diner. You see everyone is welcome except for the Japanese. Well that's not quite true because they will serve Japanese guests if they have a proper perspective on history and are prepared to apolgise for Japan's occupation of Manchuria during the years 1931 to 1945.
Mr Tian, the manager, stuck a notice up in his window saying "Japanese people barred from entry" as tourism started to expand in the region but at the same time he came up with an apology policy which would allow them to secure a booking in his restaurant as long as "they can correctly view history". But as for the others who refuse to admit to history then they are forever barred and will have to seek a meal somewhere else.
Many Chinese believe that Japan has never owned up to atrocities committed during it's occupation including the 1937 Rape of Nanking in which it is claimed as many as 300,000 Chinese men, women and children were slaughtered by Japanese troops and so Mr Tian says he " is happy to welcome those Japanese customers who can correctly view history but those who refuse to admit to the sins of their forefathers, well we just don't like them ." Let's hope this idea doesn't catch on elsewhere otherwise some of us with British backgrounds could end up being very hungry on our travels.

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That Was The Week That Was

Are French chefs becoming a little bit less snooty and more down to earth as they seek out new customers for their restaurants? This week a trio of top French chefs took their art into the Paris underground, cooking up a treat for a crowd of commuters in a bid to prove haute cuisine can be cheap and simple. “Sharing our cuisine with people is so great,” said Eric Frechon, who runs the kitchens at President Nicolas Sarkozy’s favourite Paris haunt, the top-end Le Bristol hotel. Frechon was the first of a trio of gourmet chefs, each graced with three-star status in the famed Michelin restaurant guide, to come down to the people with his pots and pans in a makeshift kitchen set up for three days at Mirosmesnil station in the Paris subway. Carrots were Frechon’s dish of the day, “to show people you can cook simple and cheap food.”



Meanwhile the news from another famous French three-starred Michelin chef released this week confirmed what many had been speculating on for many months - Daniel Boulud will open at the Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge London. The announcement follows that of fellow three-Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal opening his first London restaurant at the same hotel next autumn. Boulud will launch French restaurant Bar Boulud in the space of the former Grill restaurant of the luxury hotel. It will be modelled on the Bar Boulud in New York and will offer a French bistro menu with signature terrines and pâtés made on site under the direction of acclaimed charcutier Gilles Verot. Lyon-born Boulud trained in France under legendary chefs Roger Vergé, Georges Blanc and Michel Guérard. He moved to the USA in 1982 and shot to fame a decade later when he opened Daniel, his first and most celebrated restaurant, which last month gained the top accolade of three Michelin-stars.



Heston’s name also popped up this week in connection with another restaurant due to open in London as plans were announced to re-open the revolving restaurant at the top of the BT Tower in London after a closure of 30 years.The 620ft skyscraper, formerly known as the Post Office Tower, closed to the public in 1980 amid security fears. Now BT plans to open the 34th-floor venue and will approach chefs including Heston Blumenthal, Jamie Oliver and Gary Rhodes to oversee the restaurant. Rhodes already runs a restaurant on the 24th floor of Tower 42, once the NatWest Tower, which was London's first building to surpass the BT Tower in height. The revolving restaurant, used by BT for corporate hospitality and company events, is set to reopen around Christmas 2011 with seating for 60 to 70 diners. Sitting on the 10ft-wide revolving part of the floor, guests would take 22 minutes to complete a circuit as they dined. Seems the ideal venue for Heston’s “pie in the sky” cuisine.

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I wish I could bake a decent croissant

There are few things in the culinary arena that I haven't tried my hand at over the years. Like most chefs my natural bias is towards working the stove top, grilling, sauteeing, poaching, stewing, vast bubbling pots of stocks and sauces but occasionally I've ventured into the pastry kitchen with less than stunning although still edible results. But one thing which has eluded me is how to make a decent croissant. Oh, I've eaten thousands of them all over the world, I know exactly what the perfect croissant should be, buttery, flaky and feather light but this pastry chef's work of art is one of the kitchen's supreme tests of skill.
Although something similar may have been already in production, we can pinpoint exactly when the croissant as we know it was invented. As the Turks tried to invade Budapest in 1686 by digging under the city walls, bakers, who were already at their work, raised the alarm and the attackers were chased off. As a reward for their vigilance the government allowed them to sell a speciality at a premium price which was essentially a bread roll which they cheekily shaped like a crescent to mock the crescent moon of the Turkish flag but it was the French who, later in the 19 th century, created the now familiar flaky dough that we associate with the dish.
Some things just haven't changed as far as the modern croissant is concerned, especially in Cape Town . We still pay a premium price for what essentially is flour, fat and water and many of our Cape Town bakers must be of Turkish origin because they still produce croissants which are beautifully shaped but taste like bread rolls and on the odd occasion when you can find one which is buttery, flaky, crisp on the outside, tender and moist in the middle, then you can also find a little bit of kindness in your heart and forgive the French for lots of other sins.

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Adrift in a coracle

I read a lovely piece of writing by the food critic AA Gill last week – as an essay it was very well composed, pithy and humorous, as a restaurant critique it was crap! Dining out is an expensive business and choosing a new restaurant is like venturing into shark infested waters in a coracle (look it up!) so if someone is going to pitch some advice as a service to assist me in making up my mind then for crissakes let it be educated, informed advice about the meal experience not some airy fairy fluff to try to impress one or two intellectuals – just give me the bloody facts.
When Ray Kroc started building what is the largest food operation in the world he based it on 4 simple tenets. They haven’t changed and they apply to every eating establishment from the local burger joint through to the most larney troughs in the land – QSCV. It’s not the name of an obscure Roman Legion and neither is it rocket science. It’s simply what every customer is entitled to, an evaluation of how every establishment scores in those areas and what every food reviewer/critic should spell out. QUALITY, SERVICE, CLEANLINESS, VALUE. Now you can dress it up any way you want but that’s what this average joe wants to know. I reckon AA Gill should go off and write one of those 1,000 page novels or is that market already full of failed food critics?
I think it was the opera composer Verdi who responded to a poor critique by writing back to the reviewer as follows : "I'm sitting in the smallest room in my house with your review in front of me - very shortly it will be behind me."

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Sir Heston

So last night I settled down in front of the telly to watch Sir Heston attack the dragon that is Little Chef, a chain of run down motorway diners in the UK. `There had been plenty of hype and it seemed a new twist of the Ramsay Kitchen Nightmares series. Would snail porridge find popularity with the motoring public or would they stick to greasy hard fried eggs, stringy bangers and soggy toast washed down with sugary, milky tea by the gallon?
Well it certainly was a learning curve for everyone involved especially some staff members who had already suffered 25 years service with the chain although it didn’t look a day over 50. Although Heston’s non confrontational style doesn’t make for as good television as the foul mouthed Scottish git he does do the expected and send some of his minions in to do the job. I look forward with interest to the rest of the series although I already know that celeb chefs only slay their their dragons on the box. As soon as the camera crew packs up Ramsay’s shining successes go into liquidation, Jamie’s school kids revert to turkey twizzlers and chips and Little Chefs crawl back out from under counters to wreak havoc on the traveling public. That’s real life unfortunately but it doesn’t make good reality TV. Despite winning an award from The Good Food Guide a few months ago, which no doubt helped sales of the guide and the diner, it seems that everyone didn’t live happily ever after and standards have now slumped back to the comfortable mediocre crap that both staff and Little Chef habituees revel in. Never mind, there’s lots of more dragons out there to be slain!

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As one door closes...

It’s been a bad year for Eskimos. The global downturn hit Iceland particularly heavily and they’ve been wrestling with all sorts of economic problems for over a year now including the total collapse of their banking system but as my old dad always used to say “ As one door closes….another door slams in your face”
The world's largest fast-food company, McDonalds, announced that all three of its restaurants in Iceland, operated by franchisee Jon Ogmundsson, would shut down on October 31. Now I personally don’t have anything against the odd Big Mac but in many circles this news would have been greeted with whoops of joy. However in Reykjavik noisy crowds, long queues, and traffic jams plunged McDonald's restaurants into a state of siege on Saturday, as the chain served its final burgers. Thousands of Icelanders lined up at McDonald's restaurants to order their last Big Macs before the U.S. fast-food chain abandoned the crisis-hit island at midnight due to soaring costs. Now of course as a franchise company McDonald’s didn’t really pull out of Iceland, it was more a case of the local operator chasing them away as all food supplies were being imported from Germany at a very unfavourable rate of exchange. Plans are already well advanced to relaunch the burger joints under a new brand – Metro, which will no doubt serve something almost exactly the same!

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Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Blackstock versus the Health inspector. This week's clip features Lenny Henry in his role as Chef! verbally jousting with the local health inspector. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

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