Froupies

I reckon a lot of people get this whole food scene all wrong. I' m all for the food enthusiasts although I think it's best to keep them at arms length until their motives are perfectly clear, but it's the froupies that really get on my nerves. You know the ones I mean, they've always been to the latest restaurant opening, they demand to see the chef just to impress on him how important they are and that they move in the grandest of restaurant circles, they always have their holidays based around the latest Michelin Guide. They proudly wear labels and never seem to have any kids. If you met them out for their early morning jog you'd be impressed with their matching tracksuits, in fact 20 years ago they would have had their christian names emblazoned on the windscreen of their BMW , Nigel and Dolores.
But that's not what it's all about. It's about the enjoyment of the moment, not the bragging about the experience. It's about the tastes, flavours, quality and freshness of the seasonal foods, not the size of the wine glass, the price of the main course or the cute waitresses. It's about sharing your table, the results of your labours, either physical or financial, with people that you really want to be with. It's about converstions long into the night fueled by copious amounts of red wine, it's about appreciating the difference between fueling and breaking bread with friends. God preserve us from bloody froupies.

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Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Ladies always like restaurants where the waiters offer a little extra as this week's clip shows. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

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Dilly Diner of the Week

I haven't seen Dutchman's Dip on local menu's in recent years perhaps due to the new sensitivity in the country and it probably is no longer considered a particularily PC dish but this week's Dilly Diner actually claims to be the originator of the prototype, The French Dip Sandwich, although I suspect that chefs have been enjoying the delicacy for as long as they have been roasting meats, in fact I'm surprised that the Chaine des Rotisseurs does not have a special class of membership exclusively for " dippers of bread in hot gravy ".
Anyway, Philippe's, in Downtown Los Angeles, claims to be the Original home of the French Dip Sandwich since 1908.
The story goes as follows : Established in 1908 by French immigrant named Philippe Mathieu. Philippe the Original began as a delicatessen and sandwich shop. In 1918, Philippe was preparing a sandwich for a policeman and accidentally dropped the sliced french roll into the drippings of a roasting pan. The policeman liked the sandwich and came back the next day with some friends to order the sandwich "dipped" in the meat pan. From that day forward, a new sandwich was born--the "French Dip," so called because of Philippe's French heritage, the french roll on which the sandwich was made, or because the policeman's name was Officer French. Nice story but as with all good sandwiches should be taken with a pinch of salt.

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That Was The Week That Was

Everyone was going crackers about cheese this week. A 'cheese wedding cake' expert in the UK was hoping to smash the world record for the largest cheese sculpture with her half-ton cheddar crown. Chef Tanys Pullin spent 90 hours crafting it out of a 1,322lb block of Farmhouse Cheddar. She carved the sculpture in the shape of a crown to mark the anniversary of the Queen's Coronation on June 2. 'I'm elated but it was very daunting,' she said. 'Can you imagine being given a massive round cheese and told you have to go into a fridge on one of the hottest days of the year to carve it? I was given a 600kg block of cheese. I spent about eight days carving the crown and did 12-hour sessions which did get a bit chilly in the fridge. 'Now it weighs just below 500kg which blows the current record out of the sky.' To achieve the Guinness World Record the crown sculpture needed to weigh in excess of 290 kg (101lbs). With over 100 kg of offcuts friends are getting a bit sick of toasted cheese sarnies.



Meanwhile runners and spectators met at Cooper’s Hill near Brockworth, Gloucs, to carry on the 200-year-old tradition in which competitors chase a 7lb wheel of Double Gloucester down a 200-yard incline. This year’s event had been banned by the Cheese Police but everyone simply said “ Stick it up your Cheddar Gorge” and continued regardless. Fans held an unofficial contest and hundreds ignored warnings to attend this year’s event. The contest still attracted about 300 people from as far afield as Holland. The event was axed after 18 people were injured last year — 10 of whom were spectators. In 1997 at least 33 people were injured. Seems like you can’t keep a good cheese down or up the hill in this case.



Big cheese Marco Piss Pot was creating a stink of his own as he was fined this week for polluting a stream with sewage. A gastropub co-owned by celebrity chef Marco Pierre White had to cough up £30,000 for pollution. Neighbours complained after the Yew Tree Inn released the waste into a nearby stream. The restaurant pleaded guilty to five counts of polluting a water course between November 27, 2007 and January 15, 2009. Andrew Parton, a proprietor and shareholder in the restaurant, also pleaded guilty to five similar charges during the same period.
The Environment Agency brought the charges against the two defendants after conducting tests on the stream. Marco wasn’t in court himself as he was appearing as Yasser Arafat, complete with trademark dishcloth, in a cooking show.

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RIP Kisses

You remember Canada don’t you? It’s that place above the USA, not quite the North Pole but in many respects just as boring. Well it seems they don’t want to lose their hard earned reputation for being boring as this week they forced a restaurant to change the urinals in the gents’ loo for fear that someone might be offended.
The Honest Lawyer in Hamilton, Ontario, bought the urinals, which have big, glossy red lips, in Europe and installed them in the loo three years ago for a bit of fun, but it didn’t get any negative attention until recently when the women’s rights groups got hold of them, the restaurant owners, not the urinals, and claimed that they were sexist, that’s the urinals but possibly the restaurant owners. Of course this was just too good an opportunity for the local politicians to miss and the Mayor also got in on the act, not in the urinals of course, he had his own chain of office. Sadly the bogs had to go but at least one local saw the funny side as he drew a tombstone where the loo’s formerly occupied pride of place – “RIP KISSES 2007 – 2010”

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Shaken by stirrers

In a world that’s crying out for a decent cup of coffee how’s this for a really dumb idea – coffee on a stick! The Yanko Design site recently published the work of one Heo Jeong Im. Im has created a coffee stick that partly dissolves in hot water to leave a stirrer. The coffee sticks would come in various options including Cappuccino and Americano. When you place the stick in a cup and stir with hot water, a coffee drink will get created.
Now apart from getting a really crap cup of instant coffee made from from dehydrated, reformed gunge the next step would presumably be plonking one of those ridiculous sugar crystal stirrers in also, what happened to the good old teaspoon I ask you. You may think it’s only a storm in a coffee cup but in one fell swoop you get crap coffee, overpriced, over manufactured and over packaged stirrers in excess and if I were an eco warrior I’d be pretty pissed off!

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Eau for crissake !

People are beginning to get over the bottled water crap. It’s beginning to sink in that there is nothing wrong in most cases with good old tap water, especially not here in Cape Town and all the posing with fancy bottles doesn’t impress anyone except perhaps other cretins who drink designer water. In fact it was almost safe to go back into the water! But no, cue those familiar throbbing, jarring strings of Jaws because the danger is not over yet. Now they want to sell you sea water in a bottle.
Let’s just examine this for a second. Seawater, broadly speaking has a salinity of between 3.1% and 3.8% depending on it’s proximity to run offs from freshwater rivers and melting glaciers. It covers nearly three quarters of the earth’s surface and is relatively easy to harvest if you don’t mind getting your socks wet. Now some bloody bozos want to persuade you to buy it in bottles, not to drink, but to cook with. Regular people use an old fashioned method called adding salt to boiling water but now you can have a ready mixed saline solution, just the thing for those busy housewives. Chefs eager to enhance the authentic taste of their bisques and bouillabaisses will soon have the opportunity to buy purified sea water from the Outer Hebrides. The marketing bozo de luxe says "For those who like food done the proper way this is going to be a great product, for the sort of chef who gets up at 5am in the morning to go and source proper mushrooms, for that high-end restaurant market, it's going to be a must-have. The water can also be sprayed on salads and used to cook vegetables as a healthy alternative to salt." Sounds to me like a Salty Dog story.

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