Fugu you too

When you’ve done all the trendy restaurants and are still hungry for the culinary Holy Grail the next logical step is the underground or pop up restaurant. Dining by invite only, in strange locations, with even stranger people, a faint whiff of danger giving an edge to the appetite since the local Environmental Health Officer could burst in at any moment to stage a “bust”. Of course in reality there’s absolutely no chance of the EHO putting a damper on your evening since he doesn’t even put in an appearance at licensed premises from one year to the next but at least you feel as if you are living dangerously. But I suppose if you really wanted to up the stakes a bit you could try to get an invite to a new dining experience, The Secret Fugu Club, bringing Japan's most notorious and deadliest fish delicacy, the tiger blowfish, to the UK which launches at the end of this month. Fugu is not permitted for sale in the European Union, but a new venture, Fugu Supper Club, aims to circumvent the rules by serving it to private diners, who can register their interest on its website. They will subsequently be informed by email of the time and location of their sitting. Two chefs are involved in the venture but, at least until the first supper club meeting at the end of this month, their identity remains a secret. No doubt they will find enough idiots prepared to fork out about R3000 per head “donation” but the real risk of succumbing to the fugu are fairly remote. Two or three people do die from the poison every year but they are fishermen eating their catch and there is only one record of a fatality in a restaurant and no-one is sure whether it was the fish or the bill which caused it!

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What's it like? Not bad!

It seems to me that you've got 2 options when you go into a restaurant for a meal. You either try to control the meal experience or you let the chef control the meal experience. The higher up the larney scales you go in search of culinary nirvana, the less control you will have over the meal. So if you happen to get into Noma, The Fat Duck or elBulli you've got to accept that it's the chef who is calling the shots.You sit in your seat,strap yourself in and do what you are bloody told.The chef will dictate what you will eat,in what what order you will eat it, how it will be prepared and often the waiter will instruct you in which order to consume the different elements on the plate in order to achieve maximum taste sensation.Now that's really quite bizarre when you consider that you are paying the bill not the bloody chef.I'm afraid I still much prefer the type of restaurant where I control the meal.If I choose to have two starters and then a dessert that's fine,if I want my salmon cooked and not underdone in the centre then that's the way the chef will prepare it,if I happen to like a lightly chilled red wine with my fish then no bloody waiter is going to raise his eyebrows in shock and tell me it's not the way they do it here.Jerry Seinfeld reckons there's a thin line between what is great and what sucks and when people tell him "You've got to go to this restaurant, it's great, it's really incredible" then he knows it's one to avoid.His favourite type of restaurant is the one that people describe as "Not bad" - "Have you been to this restaurant?" "Yeah last week". "What's it like?" "It's not bad" "Not bad eh? That's the one for me" And that's the one for me also!

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Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Here's a powerful presentation by Chef Francois on how the macho man makes his Irish Coffee. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

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Dilly Diner of the Week

An apple a day keeps the doctor away so I don't think you'll find too many of the medical fraternity frequenting this week's Dilly Diner, passionate about food... and passionate about apples. Minutes away from the Parisian department stores on Boulevard Haussmann and the Saint-Augustin Church, Pomze welcomes you to the warm and refined ambience of a newly established restaurant with apples as the central theme.
Special attention is paid to the cider list, with over thirty quality ciders directly sourced from selected producers from all regions of France and apples take pride of place in all menu items : Britany crab and apple ravioli, Pommeau marinated boar terrine or Chestnut cream soup, apple dices flambé with calvados,...Warm duck foie gras, Beef filet with marrow, mushrooms fricassee and pommeau or Roasted pike filet with honey and apple sauerkraut,...
And of course a special focus on apple desserts : French toast with caramelized apples marmalade and vanilla ice cream, Pomze sweet assortment of home made flavoured stewed apple creams or Melted caramelised apples and chestnuts with chocolate fondant and chestnut ice cream. You can get too much of a good thing sometimes.

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That Was The Week That Was

Call anything the world’s most expensive and you have immediately got most people’s attention,God alone knows why! This week a chef called Andy Bates created the most expensive kebab in the world.The dish moved on from being a humble doner kebab to include saffron-infused flat bread, milk-fed lamb from the Pyrenees and even edible GOLD. The aptly titled 'King of Kebabs' uses gold leaf for a finishing flourish and champagne-infused mint and cucumber yoghurt completes the luxury — no wonder it costs a whopping £750. Andy said: "It took a fair bit of time to source the best possible ingredients to ensure that this kebab was the most exclusive one out there but I loved every minute.” I say he’s possibly the world’s most stupid tosser.


Speaking of stupid tossers this week saw the release of a trailer for a new romantic comedy. A Twitter user branded it "the most awful trailer you will see this decade". Another tweeted "Worst film of the year so far?" It stars potty mouthed tosser Gordo playing himself, (doesn’t he always?) alongside two super stars Dougray Scott and Claire Forlani - no I haven’t heard of them either! Another Ramsay Nightmare?


And continuing with the theme, what stupid tosser would want to make their very own most expensive kebab with the most expensive braai in the world as unveiled by BeefEater Barbecues. This over the top braai is plated in 24-carat gold and will set you back £100,000. Everything but the cooking plates on the hand-built BBQ is covered in the precious metal, making users feel like they have a Midas touch. Summing up the potential customers for its gold creation, BeefEater Barbecues said the grill was meant for people who 'want to make a statement with their barbecue and have the money to burn' And no brains they omitted to add.

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Just one cornetto....

The first hint of summer and the Brits go dilly.It must be those long cold winters or maybe it’s just some strange mutation in the national psyche but they feel an urge to do something really daft. David Mountfield a stand up comedian and fulltime nutter won a competition to live out his dream and so if you frequently find yourselves craving ice cream while sailing, you could be in luck… because the world's first amphibious ice cream van today set sail on the River Thames.The bizarre vessel - which has a top speed of five knots and chimes Rod Stewart's classic 'We Are Sailing' - has been fittingly been dubbed the 'HMS Flake 99'. This morning David captained the amphibious ice cream van along the famous London river, much to the surprise of commuters on the riverbank… though non seemed desperate enough for an ice cream to swim over to him. The 'HMS Flake 99' was specially commissioned by Fredericks, makers of Cadbury's ice cream to mark National Ice Cream Week (30th May - 5th June) and will now go on a nationwide tour of Britain's beaches. A spokesperson for the firm said: "We are now considering taking the remarkable vehicle across the Channel and onto the canals of Venice to champion Britain's beaches and give our continental cousins the ultimate taste of the British summertime." Just one cornetto as the old tune goes……

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Another slice of beer ?

Another slice of beer ? 2007-Jun-27
I'm a pizza man and I have been known to enjoy a beer or two, in fact I've even enjoyed the two together, pizza and beer that is but one thing I've never contemplated is pizza beer. Tom Seefurth, on the other hand drank what he called "lawn-mower beer" for years - mass-produced, canned brew best suited for drinking while mowing the lawn.Then he tried a small Oregon brewery's dark, rich stout and everything changed. He became a convert to real ale and he turned part of his garage into a mini brewery. Nothing too unusual there, most of us who didn't have train sets in the attic have had a brewery in the garage at one time or another. He added a refrigerator, some brewing equipment and it could have become just somewhere to hang out in the evening but then he came up with something quite revolutionary - pizza beer.
Now it's a smooth brew, no lumps of pizza floating in it or strings of mozzarella cheese dragging over the edge of the glass but the beer does include ingredients and an aroma generally associated with marinara sauce: tomatoes, garlic, basil and oregano. He markets the beer as Mama Mia Pizza Beer and no doubt suffers a lot of ridicule from people who believe that the colder a beer is, the better it tastes - individuals commonly known as idiots. I'm not sure that I'd want to go too far along the path of discovery that Tom is gouging out in a a movement he calls " culinary brewing " as he experiments with salsa beer, curry beer and oatmeal cookie beer but I admire anyone who thinks outside the glass. Just for the record herbs such as oregano and basil were among the flavors in beer for hundreds of years before today's most common flavor, hops, was added, in part because hops act as a preservative.

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