That Was The Week That Was

Publicans in the UK were scratching their heads this week as the Government has confirmed plans to let pubs sell beer in two-third pints measures. The changes would also permit sales of wine in measures under 75ml and fortified wine in under 50ml and 70ml. According to the Minister concerned “We are freeing businesses so they can innovate and create new products to meet the demands of their customers. This is particularly important when it comes to encouraging more women to choose beer, as many avoid the traditional pint glass. As a lower strength drink with a wide variety of styles, tastes and flavours, there is no reason why beer shouldn’t be enjoyed in a wider range of measures and glass styles.” Now I’m a bit confused here but not as confused as the poor bugger who has to place an order in a busy pub – “ Four beers, one pint of bitter, half of Guinness, two thirds of lager and a pint of pale ale…or was that two thirds of bitter, 2 pints of pale ale, half of Guinness….no maybe it’s 2 two thirds of Guinness, one in a straight glass and one in a mug…..aw to hell with it just give me 4 bottles of beer and any bloody glasses!”

Visitors to the Consumer Electronic Show in the States were also scratching their heads over a beer related matter this week as electronics company Nvidia revealed it’s latest prototype. At its booth at the show, Nvidia unveiled a water-cooled custom gaming PC in the shape of a keg, which also serves cold beer! The KegPuter is powered by an Intel Sandy Bridge CPU and accelerated with dual GeForce GTX 580s graphics processing units. It serves Sierra Nevada Pale Ale too! Just the gift for a man who has everything.



Meanwhile beer lovers in Charlotte North Carolina were relaxing in the manly atmosphere of a classic American barbershop where they could enjoy a cold beer, watch sports on the TV and get a hair cut and shave. It seems the men of Charlotte were turned off by the environment in the unisex salons that offer women’s services as well and wanted their own place like the corner barber shop their grandfathers enjoyed. Just when it appeared that the corner barber shop was gone for good, master barber, Joe Grondin opened Roosters, a combination of the old-time barbershop with an atmosphere to appeal to 21st century men. Men of all ages are now enjoying a barbershop dedicated to serving their specific grooming needs, backed by Roosters 100% satisfaction guarantee. Clients appreciate the manly atmosphere with large comfortable man-sized leather chairs, flat screen TV showing only sports or news, and reading material such as Money, Sports Illustrated, Car & Driver, Popular Science, Discovery, Golf Digest, and MEN’s Journal. As one satisfied customer put it “I must say Charlotte got it right. This place is great! I love my haircut and the service was perfect. I watched TV, drank a beer and they even had pretty barbers there. (Not old male barbers)”

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The King's new clothes

Everyone is familiar with the fairy tale of the King’s new clothes in which a couple of conmen play on the royal vanity and no-one dares to confess that there are in fact no magnificent garments and that he’s parading about in his birthday suit. Nice bedtime story for the kids, bit of a moral, no animals were killed in the telling of this tale and everyone lives happily ever after.
Only one small problem-we all know the moral but we haven’t learnt the lesson otherwise why the hell are we spending so much money on that contemporary phenomenon, bottled water? When I was a boy we only used bottled water for topping up batteries.
What’s the attraction? It can’t be that municipal water is bad for you. In most parts of the world we bathe with it, wash our teeth with it, cleanse our vegetables with it, cook with it and make most of our beverages with it. It can’t be that it has a better flavour. Flavour, as we know, is the sum of taste and aroma heavily weighted in the direction of the olfactory senses. When was the last time you saw someone sniffing water? So it’s all down to the actual taste bud receptors which are notoriously unreliable – if you don’t believe me try pinching your nose with thumb and forefinger and chomping into a big juicy onion!
This nectar comes in bottles of all shapes and sizes, all colours and delicate hues, all different labels and closures and all different claims and prices. I’ve got a simple rule of thumb when the wrapping paper has received more attention than the present, it’s a bummer, when the packaging costs more than the contents, I feel a con coming on.
I’ve even read that Alain Ducasse offers 32 different labels of water in his restaurant Spoon, “Good evening Sir, my name is Aquarius, I’ll be your water bearer this evening, would you care to view the water list?”
You suit yourself but me, I’m perfectly happy with a chilled glass of Adam’s ale, secure in the thought that you haven’t even taken the trouble to note what happens when you spell Evian backwards.

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Hanging on in there

I love the Jerry Seinfeld lines about the Chinese. “ I really admire the Chinese for hanging on in there with the chopsticks. They’ve seen the fork you know and the spoon. They go out to work in the fields everyday with a spade. You don’t see them trying to plough the fields with 2 pool cues – but still the chopsticks.”
Why are so many restaurants still hanging in there with outdated items of cutlery? When I go to a casual restaurant for a quick meal are they trying to impress me by whisking away my knife and fork and replacing them in a dramatic flourish with a slightly smaller fork and a flat blunt fish knife? I’m a big boy now, I can handle a knife and fork without doing myself serious damage, I’ve never eaten with a fish knife at home why should you think I would want to use one now? Just leave the knife and fork they’re perfectly fine.
Steak houses are even worse. Order your filet mignon rare and the next thing you know they’ve replaced your knife with a weapon that would be of more use to you hacking your way through the African bush. It’s big, serrated, with a profile looking like a still from Jaws and it has a beautiful wooden handle no doubt encrusted with bacterial activity. What’s the message here? Is your beef so tough that a normal knife cannot handle it ? Why do I get a serrated knife with the steak but a normal knife with the chicken ? Is it some sort of throwback to medieval feasting and if I don’t use it are you going to throw me in the stocks and pelt me with those over ripe tomatoes from your salad buffet? Which brings me back to the chopsticks. They should be barred from Japanese restaurants everywhere as there is simply nothing more affected than some bozo trying to dip sushi into soy sauce, wrong side down, as the chopsticks bite into the rice and the sushi crumples like a demolition implosion.

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Endangered species

I’m glad I’m not a pastry chef – I reckon they’re in for a rough ride this year. This whole global obesity issue is a bit like the Spanish Inquisition, after they’ve picked on the obvious culprits like the fast food guys, the snacks and soft drinks manufacturers they’ll turn their sights on the poor pastry chefs.
For a long time they were the Cinderellas of the restaurant business, talented artists but never in the limelight and now just when it seems they are the new stars of the show along comes this obesity thing. Everyone is screaming out for low fat products, low carbohydrate products and this can only lead to a decline in demand for high octane kilojoule desserts and pastries.
We’ve done the painful physical workout and then sweet reward bit but now we’ve learnt that lifestyle does not mean starve and reward it means a regular regime of healthy eating designed to make us look and feel good and so if you’ve got any skeletons of pastry chefs lurking in your kitchen cupboard then now’s the time to get rid of them. No more crunchy, exploding pavlovas, seductive crème brulees or outrageous, silky chocolate mousses, make mine fresh strawberries with a hint of black pepper or better still zap me a smoothie with plenty of blue or black berries to knock those free radicals in my system straight into kingdom come.
Clearly now is the time for the cunning confectioner to radically revise his repertoire of decadent desserts and pander to the precocious pleading of pudding and pastry lovers anxiously avoiding anorexia.

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New Year Revolutions

So, as with everyone else, the reality of the last 7 or 8 days is beginning to sink in and you're feeling a little bit bloated, a little bit tight even in your new Xmas clothes, you really want something simple for lunch today and you're probably reaching for the Coke Lite instead of that bottle of red which you intended to drink today. Congratulations you're no different to the rest of us and no doubt you're in that same crazy frame of mind where the thoughts of New Year Resolutions are rising to top of mind. Forget it ! No resolution will make a blind bit of difference to your weight or girth by the end of the month of January. You don't need a resolution, you need a revolution.
Any diet that you embark on which involves deprivation in any form is doomed to fail - you will naturally concentrate on those food items which you can no longer enjoy. Rather incite a food revolution in your lifestyle and for any good revolutionary there are a few basic rules to follow.
Firstly, you can't have a decent revolution without a Freedom Charter so declare yourself free from automatically eating the rubbish which is so readily available under the guise of convenience foods, buy fresh vegetables, free range chickens and fresh fish - it's cheaper, just as quick to prepare and the difference in taste will immediately prove to you that the fridge is mightier than the deepfreeze. Successful armies have always lived off the land.
Secondly, solitary revolutionaries generally fail. There's strength in numbers so avoid at all costs eating on your own, rather turn each meal opportunity where possible into a social occasion. The physical aspect of fueling the body ignores the more satisfying, communal quality of preparing and enjoying food. Sure, food is fuel but try to appreciate the aromas, the colours, the flavours, the sharing of the moment with family and friends, the feeling of bonhomie. All the great courts and conquering generals fully understood the significance of the dining experience and your own revolution should concentrate on fully exploiting each meal opportunity in a special way, with friends, neighbours, family, eating outdoors, having a picnic, sitting in the car at the coast watching the sun go down or even as simply as discovering, cooking and conquering a new or special ingredient.
Thirdly, revolutions may start with rhetoric but they are brought to successful conclusions with strategy and careful planning. It's only TV Chefs who pop down to the market to see what's available, the rest of us plan in meticulous detail, with fall-back positions and often with secondary meals in mind for any potential leftovers. Make sure your armoury or pantry is always fully stocked with essential ingredients and you'll never be caught short if the fishing boats haven't come in yet.
Follow the usual rules of engagement - they're fairly logical, avoid starches, bread, pasta, white rice etc, cut down on oils and fats, drink wine rather than beer, eat plenty of fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, fresh non processed foods but always remember an army marches on it's stomach and every so often they have a bit of a blow out when they celebrate a victory - don't forget to celebrate your own private victories.

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Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

A night of boozing in the UK normally finishes up at the local Indian restaurant to get a curry to soak up the beer. In this classic sketch Rowan Atkinson gives us an insight from the waiter's perspective. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

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Dilly Diner of the Week

Inching ever closer to a fully robot-staffed restaurant this week's Dilly Diner, the Dalu Robot restaurant in China "employs" a robotic waitstaff. And they don't accept tips! While customers must still reach onto the trays and take their own plates, the robots travel around the restaurant on bikes (!), stopping when they encounter magnets embedded in the tables. The restaurant must employ six humans to actually cook the food, but given the recent advances in ham-deboning robots and pancake-making robots, automated chefs are surely not far behind. The restaurant also features "slightly sinister" female mannequin robots that dance to entertain customers. See the video of them in action

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