Fixin' n' Mixin'

There seems to be no end to the list of products that can be customized, and now UK company Alchemist Dreams have launched what they believe to be the world’s first custom liqueurs, made to order using organic grain spirit. Ruth Ball, an “artist and activist with a scientist’s mind” left university with a degree in chemistry and a dream to “start something fabulous”, and so Alchemist Dreams was born. Every bottle is blended by hand to order, from a range of handcrafted flavours made in small batches. The concept aims to give fans of experimental mixology the chance to concoct their own liqueurs, simply by selecting ingredients on the website. A blend starts with a choice of one or two fruity base flavors, followed by adding two or three “accent” flavors which are herbs, spices and generally subtler flavours. Users must then choose from a selection of seven hand-blown bottle shapes and sizes ranging from GBP 15 to GBP 30. Finally the bottle is tied up with a red ribbon, sealed with black wax and a personalized, hand printed label is attached. Now I know it may solve a gift problem for the person without any real imagination but as far as serious imbibers are concerned we’ve been doing this mixin’ for years – we call it cocktails!
(via Springwise)

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Ground control to Major Tom

I've never had any dealings with outsourced call centres but then even if I had I probably would never know anyway. I suppose the secret of running a really good call centre operation is to keep complete anonymity and make me believe that I'm talking to someone in Johannesburg who is going to solve my problem when in fact I'm talking to someone in Mumbai who not only sounds like someone in Johannesburg but, working from a carefully researched script, can even pass a comment on the weather here in Cape Town. It's all fiendishly clever and perhaps a little confusing because our call centres are in India and call centres dealing with UK service related problems are in Cape Town.
Well here's a new twist of this burgeoning industry. McDonalds say they are looking into the possibility of using outsourced call centres to take customer orders in their drive throughs. They believe that call centre professionals with very strong communication skills could be just the answer to boost order accurracy and ultimately speed up the time it takes customers to get in and out of the drive throughs. Now just pause for a second and let that sink in. What it means is that when you go to the first window there presumably will be something for you to activate and speak into and by the time you have got to the second window where you pay, they will have placed your order from a remote call centre. That's pretty incredible !
When you get to the third window, they will have expedited your order, wrapped it securely and you will have saved possibly 3 seconds. Unfortunately if the call centre is in fact in Mumbai, your car may by now be stinking of a Big Mac Mc Vindaloo.

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Whose food is it anyway ?

It used to be the rich and famous who dined in fancy restaurants and now it's fancy people who dine in the restaurants of the rich and famous - celebrity chefs have certainly turned the tables. And that's what their business is all about, turning tables, getting bums on and off seats but what expectations do you have when you walk into one of their hallowed culinary citadels? You don't expect to see Mr MacDonald firing up the burgers so why should you expect to see Mr Ramsay or others of his ilk, sweating over a hot stove, working the tables in the dining room, bidding you a fond farewell at the door as he mentally adds up the night's takings. No, the only reason that you are paying more than your first working month's salary cheque is not to experience the skills of Mr Ramsay but rather "food in the Ramsay style"
I think that's bullshit. If I'm paying top dollar I expect the top dog. And that goes for every other restaurant that they build around a personality whether it's Joe's Diner or Alphonso's Pizzeria. If it's Joe's night off then close the bloody restaurant or charge me Thabo's prices, commensurate with his skill, experience and how much I want to sample his food. It's got bugger all to do with "food in the style of", it's an experience I want and I want all of it, for the inflated price I'm charged. What is so unreasonable about that? If I go to a concert to see Elton John then he's the man I'm paying for, I don't expect some compere to stand up and say "Sorry guys it's Elton's night off" or "He's recording a TV show but not to worry we've got all the lights and backing tracks and the band are here so we'll just play the music." Different situation you say, I don't think so. If I buy Elton's latest CD for a hundred bucks I don't expect him to pop round and croon Track no 2 outside my bedroom window, likewise if I buy a frozen TV Dinner in the supermarket I don't expect the grinning bozo on the label to jet into my kitchen on his Vespa scooter and cook up a storm but when I'm paying good money for a very special experience and bragging rights for the rest of the year, then Mr Bloody Celebrity Chef better be there, otherwise the air will be peppered with a few variations on the F Word which even he hasn't heard yet!

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Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Sometimes when it comes to food you're just lost for words to describe the experience like Hugh Fairly Dipstick in this clip. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

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Dilly Diner of the Week

A posh restaurant where visitors can enjoy the cozy atmosphere of a typical Russian jail is this week's contender for Dilly Diner of the Week.
Barred windows and ceiling, lamps designed as police flashlights, barbed wire and excerpts from the Russian Penal Code are significant parts of the interior design at VIP Zone, Magnitogorsk. You can have a seat on a plank-bed (there are comfortable chairs for the more delicate) and eat your food with an aluminium fork. When you have finished, waitresses dressed in striped prison wrappers will bring you a bill dotted with fingerprints.
VIP guests are taken to the " chief’s office " - a room in crimson with heavy furniture and portraits of Soviet dictators like Stalin and Beria, and walls covered with maps marking all the Russian prisons. In spite of the grim interior, the food is nothing like prison meals. However, you can order authentic chifir - a popular Russian prison drug made from tea. And if a visitor drinks too much, the person is driven home in a police car.

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That Was The Week That Was

This week President Obama’s favourite chef opened up shop in London. Austrian-born chef Wolfgang Puck, creator of the designer pizza, yesterday opened his 26th fine-dining establishment, yet his first in Europe. Cut at 45 Park Lane in London comes almost three decades after Mr Puck, 62, opened his first restaurant, Spago in Los Angeles. Back then, the chef's ambition was to bring French haute cuisine to the American market. He was hugely successful, but now the challenge is to bring Americanised European food back to Europe.


Of course it is entirely possible that President Obama has a new favourite chef. This week as he was winding down the hugely successful World Cooks Tour Against Hunger in Johannesburg, Chef Bill Gallagher was delighted to receive a personally signed letter and photograph from Barack thanking him for his leadership and bringing together chefs from around the globe to combat hunger in South Africa. The nationwide campaign raised nearly R8 million to feed hungry children.


Meanwhile one particular chef, George Georgiou, was making sure that no-one could complain about being hungry as he set about cooking for 36 hours non stop to set up a Guinness World record. George spends the majority of his days cooking up a storm at the Silverstar Casino on the West Rand where he is the executive chef at the Black Cherry restaurant as well as at the Silverstar hotel restaurant. But what makes Georgiou different from the millions of other chefs around the globe is that he’s just become the only chef in the world to have cooked for 36 hours non-stop. The cook-off, which started at midday last Thursday, continued until midnight on Friday during which time Georgiou cooked a total of 202 different dishes from oxtail with beans to ostrich curry and a range of pastas and biryani, to name a few. Besides beating a world record, Georgiou was also able to raise close to R16 000 for charity. All the proceeds from his dishes, which were sold, went to children’s feeding schemes as part of the Bidvest World Chef’s Tour Against Hunger initiative.

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Whiter shade of pale

Napoleon III has been blamed for many things so I suppose it won't matter too much if I vent my displeasure at him regarding the block of solid yuck wedged in the back of my fridge. I have no idea where it came from and I am confused by the marked reluctance my better half has in disposing of it, preferably where it can't be traced back to us. I'm referring to a block of virgin, untouched margarine which my wife apparently believes "will come in useful one of these days"
Napoleon offered a prize in 1869 and margarine was developed by a French chemist as a direct result. In a country dedicated to fantastic dairy products and the finer things in life, this strikes me as quite "incroyable" Seemingly the first margarine was manufactured from suet and milk although modern methods rely on vegetable oil and a host of strange ingredients. The Americans took a much stronger stance against this fatty goo and backed by a strong dairy industry successfully retarded the development of the margarine interlopers for many years, in fact right up to the 1950's. Tactics were very restrictive and included marketing margarine only under it's rather daunting title of oleomargarine. Restaurants had to serve it cut in triangles as opposed to the more familiar butter rectangular pats and in many states it could only be sold in it's natural,unappetising colour of white which reminded consumers of lard. Some states in fact provided little packets of yellow dye, along with the margarine, to mix into it at home.
Now I'm particularly disappointed that these ingenious impediments have fallen by the wayside and resulted, at least in my own particular case, with an unwelcome squatter occupying a prime position in my fridge and I believe the time is right to encourage the margarine manufacturers everywhere to get back to basics, to remove the offending dyes from their products and to present margarine in it's natural, pristine, white shimmering state. They could even fashion their marketing campaigns on those of the other great friends of the consumer, the soap companies - how about "Oleo's marge, makes your toast whiter than white!" ?

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