Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Two of the great icons of British humour during the 60's and 70's were Morecambe and Wise- Eric and Ernie to their friends or Eric and " the short fat one with hairy legs " to their very good friends. One of their classic sketches was preparing breakfast to
the popular tune "The Stripper" Timeless comedy - enjoy.

I'm reading: Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Dilly Diner of the Week

Lucky Cheng's in New York is this week's candidate for Dilly Diner of the Week. If you're looking for a run of the mill Chinese restaurant then you've definitely come to the wrong place because Lucky Cheng's is wild and proudly boasts that it is the drag queen capital of the world. It's a great venue for corporate parties, birthday parties, hen parties and maybe somewhere to take your granny for her 80 th birthday celebration. There's outrageous drag queen cabaret, comedy, karaoke and fun for all with delicious, reasonably priced Pan-Asian cuisine. But behind it all there's a sad story because it wasn't that lucky for poor old Cheng.
I don't know how true it is but the story goes that the restaurant tried many concepts with each one being less successful than the previous driving the owner to drugs and drink. Then along came Cheng who started out as general dogsbody. He wasn't particularly well turned out, he always seemed untidy and unkempt and his English wasn't that great but he was left in charge by default. Cheng did have one attribute, he got along well with people and was very easy going so when one of the barmen started coming to work in drag he wasn't bothered. When extra staff were hired and they also pitched up in drag he didn't mind.He hired a Chinese friend as chef and a legend was born - Chinese food and transvestites! The place boomed but Cheng wasn't so lucky because the owners sobered up and the next thing was his untimely departure. If it's not true it should be.

I'm reading: Dilly Diner of the Week

That Was The Week That Was

It may have been Bye Bye Bulli this week but the fickle fastidious gourmet diners already had their sights set on Noma. After announcing on August 4 that Noma would be taking reservations for the month of November - the earliest tables are available - 22,000 people logged onto the restaurant's online booking system for a chance to snare one of just 264 tables, tweeted chef René Redzepi on Thursday - a sign, perhaps, that gastronomes are now turning towards the Copenhagen restaurant to fulfill their ultimate culinary fantasy. "I'm very sorry if we are disappointing you. We have 3 people answering phonecalls, and 22.000 people logged on our online booking system," he apologized.


It's no coincidence that Redzepi helms a two Michelin-starred restaurant also built on reinventing the culinary wheel. Redzepi is a protégé of the El Bulli kitchen, as are many of today's most successful restaurateurs. Chefs like Grant Achatz, who heads the Alinea and Next kitchens in Chicago; José Andrés, this year's James Beard award winner for outstanding chef, and Andoni Aduriz of Mugaritz also in Spain have all been schooled by Adrià and reunited to help prepare the restaurant's last supper Saturday.


It was a coincidence however that Heston Blumenthal, fellow crusader of molecular cuisine, also closed his restaurant this week although for entirely different reasons. The celebrity chef's Dinner at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel will be shut for three weeks for planned essential maintenance work and refurbishment. Planned essential maintenance work ??? Only six months after opening? Some plans! It was partly modelled on a 16th-century kitchen so it was perhaps inevitable that there would be a few snags. The kitchen will be closed for most of next month - and no bookings had been taken - for necessary repairs and alterations. It will look the same and not have extra covers. "The only way to do it was to shut completely," said a hotel spokeswoman. Alternatively they could have done it right in the first place!

I'm reading: That Was The Week That Was

Return of the Samurai

A month is a long time when you're suffering from sushi withdrawal but in a few short hours I'll be staring in awe across the counter at my favourite samurai. The samurai were warriors and scholars, gentlemen of high personal standards and unshakeable self discipline with no use for self indulgence - seems to me that Alan the sushi chef is a natural heir to that samurai tradition. He may not sport the telltale hajimaki or knotted headband but there is no doubt about the razor sharp edges of his weapons or the seriousness of practising his craft.
I've spent a month dreaming about raw tuna and warm sake, about seasoned rice at just about blood temperature and hot miso soup, about crinkly dark green nori seaweed and hot as hell, pale green wasabi. I was never in favour of Alan closing down for a month and taking himself off on holiday but I've got over it now and in almost no time I'll be admiring once again the deft knife strokes and glistening colours of ultra fresh fish flesh as it is pressed atop a bed of starchy rice, into a variety of hand moulded shapes. There'll not be much conversation, there never is, in fact I doubt if I'll even discover where he went to for that long month, but come to think of it I don't really care. The important thing is that the main act's back in town and sushi is on the menu again.
I'll pre-order of course so that my favourite platter, the A4, is standing there at the appointed time, perfectly laid out and with only the sashimi to be thickly sliced at the very last moment as Alan dictates. I simply couldn't stand the thought of joining a queue to wait for my sushi, so near but so far away. This last month has also given me the opportunity to mull over one of Alan's serious flaws. There's no doubt that he's a talented sushi chef par excellence, a gifted craftsman with a magic touch but I think tonight I must try to impart a few management skills to him starting with one of the most important - in future no leave will be taken unless a leave application is filled out in triplicate and personally signed off by me.

I'm reading: Return of the Samurai

You've gotta' walk your talk.

Nowadays chefs, in common with most of the rest of the population, are paying more attention to what they are eating and trying to get some exercise in pursuit of a healthy lifestyle so the stereotype of the fat, perspiring chef, toiling over a hot stove, is rapidly declining. Perhaps the old saying " never trust a thin chef " is losing it's validity and shortly we may turn it around to " never trust a fat chef - if he could do this to his body, just think what he could do to yours ." I suppose the same holds true in other professions where health is often the focus, for example I don't think you would be too enamoured about being lectured on the dangers of smoking by a doctor with an ashtray on his desk top and a packet of Dunhill poking out of his shirt pocket.
So it came as a little bit of a surprise to hear of a prominent psychologist who has been on national television in the States and written many newspaper articles collapsing in a supermarket aisle under suspicious circumstances.Her field of interest includes self esteem and she is considered to be an expert on eating disorders. It seems she may suffer from a slight disorder herself. She said in a statement to the police that she had no idea what happened before she passed out between the flours and baking ingredients although witnesses pointed out that she had in fact inhaled the propellant from 3 cans of whipped cream. Now I've heard of aerosol whipped cream being used for all types of activities which the manufacturers had never envisaged (or maybe they did because it certainly has no culinary uses) but I didn't realise that the gas in the can was nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas. Maybe it escapes on a regular basis from the cans because anytime I see someone with a can of aerosol cream in their hand it certainly reduces me to a fit of giggles. But the bottom line I suppose is that I hope our glue sniffing street kids don't read blogs otherwise on your next trip down to Mr A's emporium of fine foods you could be ambushed between the self raising flour and the glace cherries.

I'm reading: You've gotta' walk your talk.

Life's not fair!

It took me a long time to warm to tuna. I only started eating it when I discovered sushi and I found it irresistable, certainly a totally different taste sensation to the brown sludge that they sold in cans. But it was still many years before I tried grilled tuna steaks, after all when they were cooked they were the same colour so I reasoned that they must surely taste like "hot brown sludge". Well of course I was completely wrong and I soon became hooked. Life was good ! - when fresh tuna was being landed, Salome, our local fishmongeress (sounds more sophisticated than fishwife) would phone and tip us off and it was straight onto the grill, full of colour and flavour, in fact it made better sushi than our favourite "all you eat sushi for only R 75, Wednesdays and Fridays 7 to 9 . Conditions apply" Japanese restaurant. But now I've been side swiped by a double whammy.
Firstly, in the constant battle to dupe the customer, fishmongers (not Salome of course) have learnt from their buddies the butchers that it's the bright red colour in meat that attracts us and so if that's what the customer wants then thats what the customer should get. Butchers achieve it by adding nitrites to the meat which retard that dull red colour in beef which would truly indicate quality and age and they have managed to con us that bright red = quality and freshness. Dealers in tuna, constantly battling to get their fish to the market in a pristine bright red condition, have discovered that a spray of carbon dioxide works whether the fish is frozen and subsequently defrosted or fresh, and only starts to fade to a pink colour after a few days. Now they're only doing this in the States at the moment but don't forget that's how McDonalds started.
My second knock back was reading about the mercury content in fresh tuna. I'm advised to avoid fresh bluefin tuna, the type they use for sushi and to restrict my consumption of tuna steaks to 1 meal per month. They've placed tuna in the same category as shark which I have always avoided, swordfish ditto and orange roughy which I wouldn't know if it came up and slapped me round the gills. In fact we've almost gone full circle because now it appears that the brown sludge has the lowest mercury levels of all fish and I should be wolfing it down. Life is not fair.

I'm reading: Life's not fair!

Restaurant Highwaymen

It's always very amusing to listen to someone trying to defend the indefensible. The more they try to justify their position the more ridiculous their arguments become. Eventually I suspect they feel a little bit like a mouse caught in a never ending treadmill desperately looking for some way to get off. A favourite topic of discussion that crops up every 3 or 4 months in the local media is the subject of tipping and service charges in restaurants.
It starts quietly enough when a diner in a city restaurant questions whether he is expected to leave a tip or was it not necessary since there is a 10% service charge. He reasons that service charge meant a charge for the service he had nominally received. "No" the waiter complains "We don't get the service charge". The bemused customer invariably enquires of the restaurateur exactly what the service charge was for, if not for service rendered. Then all hell breaks loose, calls to talk radio stations, protestations from restaurateurs that the only way they can earn a crust is to have customers subsidise their wage bills, staff training and staff transport. Even the local Chairman of the organisation representing the restaurateurs has in the past had his own preposterous take on the situation "Well it's OK to charge a 10% service charge to cover these extra costs but maybe it would be a good idea to share it with the waiter, perhaps 5% for the restaurateur and 5% for the waiter" Are these people all bloody loopy? What makes the restaurant business any different from any other? It's not rocket science - establish your costs including labour, put your mark up on and make your profit. Don't involve the customer in your dubious accounting practices. Charge a straight price with no additional hidden costs and let the market decide, with their feet, whether they want to make you rich or not. Next thing you know the bloody doctor will have a glass of coloured water on his desk with a decrepit label saying "Tips", the girl at the supermarket checkout will be adding a 10% service charge to your bill and even the bloody traffic cop will be demanding a tip when he stops you for a speeding ticket - oh no, they already do that!

I'm reading: Restaurant Highwaymen