The end of an era

Well, last night’s Italian experiment – a dish combining fennel and lambs’ kidneys – didn’t really produce a sense of culinary excitement, so there isn’t really much to report on that front.

If I manage to cook much this evening, it’ll be late and simple: in other words, probably pasta.

The reason for this is that after a little swap to help out a fellow bar steward, I have a shift in the staff bar this evening. Not just any old shift, though: my final full shift before we all move to a bright and shiny new building with a café-bar that will be run by the same people that currently run the ‘deli bar’ here and will running a rather more ambitious food service over the road.

The new kitchens are incredible – I had a chance to look around a couple of weeks ago. And it will certainly give the team vastly improved facilities. Having just a single hob at present is ridiculous.

But I remain sceptical, and not vastly encouraged by scatty little back-slapping comments on a company Facebook page about the new ovens meaning that they can bake bread and cakes: for goodness sake, they cannot currently ensure that the slices in a bag of factory bread are not stale when they get them out to make a sandwich! And they spread pizza bases with marg – a piece of knowledge that makes me tremble in horror every time I recall it!

I feel a kind of guilt complaining about the canteen, because I don’t want to seem to be ‘nasty’ to the staff, who are themselves close to being colleagues.

But that’s actually rather poor, because however well-meaning and pleasant they themselves are, the service that they provide is generally pretty dismal. I did raise much of this in a survey that I mentioned here last year, but have had no feedback on that and have seen no indication of positive change.

And it’s not just me. A colleague observed earlier today that she won’t even have a basic sandwich from there now as they’re so poor, even when made in front of you, while another colleague noted recently that, if one of the staff goes to open a new bag of bread to make him a sandwich, he asks for the third and fourth slices down in order to avoid the stale ones that invariably seem to be at the top.

If things really do not improve, then complaining will have to happen.

But back to my bar shift. I may have an odd hour to do next week when we bid our final farewells to the bar with a couple of big socials, but this is the last time that I will spend three and a half hours (if I have customers!) playing my choice of music.

This is often an eclectic selection, ranging from pop/rock at the beginning of an evening, when I’m more conscious of what the majority will appreciate, to show songs as sobriety recedes and bursts of Wagner, played loud, as an aid to clearing the place at closing time.

For anyone who has not been visiting this part of cyberspace long, here’s a little description of a typical Friday night in the bar. It gives a useful flavour, I think.

So we will miss the place – and have to find ways to put our stamp of bonkerness on to the blank, corporate space that awaits.

In the meantime, tonight I shall blast the air full of a variety of tunes – including some that possibly should be classed as ‘guilty pleasures’. But I shall do so with nary a note of embarrassment – armed with a bottle of proper Czech Budvar close to hand.

Adventures in the lunchbox department

After the start of the new year gave me more opportunities for whinging and whining about the standard of grub I can get during a working day, I finally hauled myself off my proverbial and did something about it this week. In fact, I did two things.

Frankly, I’m a bit bored with Pret. And I’ve made more than a few complaints here about what’s available in the ‘deli’ at work.

But back in December, a survey came winging it’s way to all of us in the building, asking our opinions on the catering.

I leant back in my chair, arms outstretched, hands linked, palms facing out, and prepared to respond.

Were I the sort of person who was lured into conspiracy theories, I would question whether what happened next was a pure accident.

I could not access the survey. It turned out that nobody else in our department could manage it either. Ah yes: someone forgets, yet again, that not everyone in the building is using PCs.

A colleague emailed the IT desk, explaining that we all having an issue. By the time she returned from her Christmas holiday, there had still been no reply.

She tried again – and at this stage, I also fired off an email.

Eventually, the technical issues were sorted out. Earlier this week, I was able to lean back in my chair, arms outstretched, hands linked, palms facing out, and prepare to respond.

One of the questions was whether we’d all eat in more often if they had a specific ‘healthy option’. Ah. So your other dishes are unhealthy, then?

Who decides what is “healthy” or not? And why patronise adults by assuming they’re not intelligent or educated enough to know what constitutes healthy food without a great signpost gesturing at it?

More generally: please stop trying to make over-complex dishes. That day, as it happens, there was a boeuf bourguignon on the menu.

As The Other Half (generally less cynical than me when it comes to the deli’s food) said: “I wonder how much red wine it’s seen – never mind how much Burgundy?”

I didn’t attempt to find out. And nor did I try it, a day later, when it turned up as the day’s star jacket potato filling.

There is nothing wrong with simple food – why not make something like pasta with a decent tomato sauce, for instance?

And I did mention that, when we move to the new building, the catering staff need better equipment: a single, solitary hob in a professional kitchen is ridiculous.

Anyway, I wait to see what their response is. But in the meantime, I have actually made my own packed lunches this week.

After Sunday’s roast chicken, I chucked some meat into a container, added some green olives stuffed with anchovies, a chopped, roasted red pepper and some couscous, and then a bit of seasoning, some oil and a little raspberry vinegar. That did for Monday and Tuesday.

Okay, but far from perfect. It was all a bit too dry and a bit too dominated by the bit too dry couscous.

On Wednesday, business took me away from the office and I didn’t have to cater for myself.

But on Wednesday night, I had a little mull. This time, I peeled and boiled three medium potatoes, then drained them well.

By this time, balanced rather precariously on my lunch box, was a just-open tin of sardines, with the fishy-flavoured olive oil dripping out. Once that had finished and the potatoes were fully drained, they went into the box and were gently tossed in the oil. Being floury ones, they broke up quite nicely, absorbing the oil.

I drained some pickled baby beets, cut them up roughly and added those, together with some more of the green olives with anchovies. The sardines went on top. Some seasoning and a bit more virgin oil finished the job.

Now it doesn't look very impressive, but it's been seriously tasty. And if we were to consider such things, it's pretty healthy too and not exactly expensive.

As it happens, I have an online order in for bulk stuff from Waitrose, which will arrive this weekend. It now includes loads of tins of sardines, including ones with chili and garlic olive oil. Yummy.

And I finally got around to finding out what the difference between waxy and floury potatoes is. You'd be shocked at the bloody great swathes of total culinary ignorance I have.

King Edwards, like the ones I used for my lunches, get a six on the floury scale, according to the Potato Council, which is high. As such, they're a great all-rounder and particularly good for chips, daupinoise potatoes, roasties and mash. Which makes sense when you do what I hadn't done previously – and think about it.

Waxy potatoes are idea for salads. So I've also ordered some Charlottes, which will be ideal for future lunch box adventures next week.

And it wasn't really difficult at all.

Company that owns Piccolino responds

Some of you may remember reading about the nightmare that was Piccolino Bristol. A couple of days later, I explained that I had decided to print off my post and send it to the company that owns the entire chain. And I promised to let you know if I received a response.

Well, a response has arrived – delayed by the snow and and glut of bank holidays.

The company's guest communications manager has asked me to call her so that she can "personally apologise" to me. All my comments have been passed on to the restaurant's general manager and operations manager for "further investigation".

And I have been invited to enjoy a complimentary meal for two at one of the Piccolino restaurants in London.

There's a side of me that wants to refuse the complimentary meal. Not out of some sort of bad grace or anything, but partly because I was hardly the only one who was affected by the Bristol experience and also because, when I wrote that piece and when I sent it to the company, it wasn't because I wanted some sort of compensation beyond what the manageress had given us the day after.

I wanted – I hoped – that I could have some small impact; that they would perhaps rethink what they're doing and see if there are not improvements that they can make so that those problems don't occur again.

If I take up their offer, does that compromise this blog? That might sound a bit daft, but as much as I can, I want this to be an honest and up-front endeavour. There's really no point in doing it otherwise.

On the other hand, let's see if they can do better on the food front. In terms of the letter from the company, I was impressed with the attitude shown. That's certainly a good start.

But the moral of this little story is that complaining works.

A tale of two restaurants

If Christmas can be the best of times, it can also be the worst of times – and not least for the culinary arts.

This has been The Week of Festive Lunches: both Tuesday and Wednesday saw us quitting our desks early for mellow afternoons of food and drink.

In a quirk of timing, Tuesday also saw me get my new teeth, so I was looking for easy-to-eat food by Wednesday when I decided to make my first proper efforts at eating with said gnashers.

On Tuesday, our small (but perfectly formed) editorial team headed to Da Mario in Covent Garden, to be wined and dined by our major external supplier.

A family-run Italian trattoria, it offers decently-priced, enjoyable, simple Italian food.

I had a starter of deep-fried goat’s cheese and roasted red pepper sauce, served with a shredded salad or raw white and red cabbage. The cheese was very mild and I half suspect – perhaps completely unfairly – that it had been bought in, ready-crumbed. But it was comforting, nicely presented and not unpleasing.

Next up for me was a dish of pappardelle, with Italian sausage, broccoli, garlic and chili. Comforting and enjoyable – although I couldn’t get any taste of garlic or chili. It was well cooked, with both the pasta and broccoli nicely done, while the thin but meaty sausage remained moist.

Dessert was a large ball of lemon ice cream, with frozen Limoncello liqueur inside, and covered in crushed meringue: it looked unspectacular compared to everyone else’s dessert (that’s The Other Half’s semifrodo in the background), but was a really zingy delight.

So, a definite success.

And so to yesterday afternoon and lunch with the full unit at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street.

If it had only been called ‘The Cheshire Cheese’, someone would have had to change ‘The’ to a ‘Ye’ and add an ‘Old’. With an ‘e’.

Now it’s fair to say that nobody (that I know, at any rate) goes to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese for the grub. You go for the atmosphere; for the knowledge that, after a previous incarnation was destroyed by the Fire of London, this place was rebuilt in 1667. That’s right – re-built. And almost 350 years ago.

Our party was in the Chop Room, where a portrait of Dr Johnson hangs over one bench, with a brass plaque stating that this was his favourite place to sit. Next to the fire – a sensible man. It’s the sort of thing to give a literary fan like me a certain frisson.

In a frame in the same room there’s a copy of a first edition of Charles Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities, which includes a scene in a pub that is clearly Ye Cheese. Dickens certainly visited more than once. And of course, while it’s a rather limited view of Yuletide tradition in the UK, the Dickensian Christmas looms large in the collective psyche.

So this, in other words, is a very big cheese amongst London pubs – and not least during this jolly season.

Which is all quite enough for me to conclude that the atmosphere alone is worth the visit.

But at what point do you then say that the standard of the food is irrelevant?

To get a private room, we’d had to guarantee 25 people. That was at £30 a head. In other words, the owners made a guaranteed (paid up front) £750 – which didn’t include any drinks at all or even coffee at the end of the meal.

There was a limited choice of four wines – two red, two white, none named specifically and none under £18.

With the need for softish food fairly high in my mind, I started with a terrine of salmon and smoked trout. It was okay, but a tad salty.

Then I went for the steak and kidney pud – a really traditional dish. The first thing I speared was a tiny piece of kidney. I nearly whooped in delight, imagining that if that was the first thing I’d found, it wouldn’t be the last piece of velvety deliciousness to pass my lips (it always irritates me that steak and kidney pies and puddings seems almost devoid of one of those essential ingredients).

But my nearly whoop had been too soon. It was the last piece of kidney I found, amid some reasonable steak, a middling gravy and a ton of slightly soggy suet. The roast potatoes were hardly the stuff of legend, while the sprouts and carrot batons were undercooked. Nothing was piping hot – and although the room had an open fire, it would have had to be roaring rather more than it was to really spread any warmth further around the room than Dr Johnson’s chosen space.

For dessert, I went for a poached pear, served with an orange marmalade ice cream. It would have helped to have a dessert fork as well as spoon for what was arguably the most successful of the courses. In Italy, they might be able to fillet a sole with a spoon, but I cannot easily eat a pear with a spoon alone.

Now our party was not full of what you’d term foodies, but even some of those for whom food would not be a major issue have since voiced their disappointment.

On the other hand, the view has also been put that: ‘Well, it’s Christmas and what else can you expect?’ as if it’s actually unfair or unreasonable to expect better.

But the more I think about it, while I certainly wouldn’t expect haute cuisine in such an establishment – it’s not what you’d want there anyway – is it really unfair to expect a better standard than what we got, particularly when we were hardly paying peanuts in the first place?

It is, I suspect, another aspect of that very English attitude of not complaining, of ‘putting up’. And perhaps it’s also that big con again – the belief that quality in food is beyond the reach of most people’s pockets, so that we have to put up with a lesser quality because it’s what we can afford.

As Da Mario showed, food doesn’t have to be over-ambitious to be good. You don’t have to over-stretch yourself just because it’s Christmas.

And steak and kidney pud isn’t called ‘steak and one bit of kidney pud’ – so put more kidney in it!

All of which brings me back to Harrison’s, the Bloomsbury gastro pub in which we had our festive lunch last year. Another team went there this time around and reports have filtered back to me.

Quite apart from whether a pineapple soup is really the best way forward for a venue that was struggling to cope with simpler fodder last year, serving a chocolate tart with Greek yogurt must be a form of blasphemy in most people’s book.

I’ve no desire to be unfair to cooks who are working damned hard to give people a good culinary experience – and cooking’s no soft-option job. But perhaps we all need to sharpen our critical muscles – and stop simply accepting and excusing food that isn’t up to what it should be and which, frankly, constitutes something of a rip off. Regardless of whether Dr Johnson held court there or Dickens felt a touch of inspiration while quaffing a tankard of porter.

Complain, complain, complain

Complain, complain, complain. That’s what it feels like today – a non-stop complaint. But at least there are various flavours of complaint here – and you, my readers, come out of it glowing like something that’s escaped from Sellafield.

To start with, I must have been tempting fate. On Tuesday, I mentioned that my culinary aims for the weeks ahead (and particularly this weekend) include things that involve foie gras.

Then, in yesterday’s Guardian, the excellent Oliver Thring was
considering the issue of that gorgeous treat.

It's an interesting piece – but some of the comments that have flowed forth since are utterly hilarious in their absurdity and vitriol.

It seems that food is becoming one of the new religion substitutes – which rather begs the question of whether the original is preferable to the substitute, as say, in the case of butter and margarine, which brought Mr Thring’s writing to my attention.

Let me share with you a soupçon of the idiocy on display. One poster asserted: “Humans who enjoy eating foie gras may as well just eat their young children after torturingly overfeeding them to the point of their most deliciousness, especially if they realise the despicable reality of this and do it anyway.”

Have you seriously ever read such utterly hysterical, hyperbolic rubbish?

Another poster stated with religious certainty: “No decent person would eat this foodstuff. No moral, decent, pleasant-natured person would consider it.”

Wow. The entire being of anyone (myself included) can be judged, over the internet, on the basis of a foodstuff that I enjoy, which others disapprove of. It’s a view that was voiced by a substantial number of posters.

I can’t help musing that these are probably the self same cretins who ride their bikes pavements and claim that it’s my responsibility, as a pedestrian, to get out of their way while they’re breaking the law.

But then that’s just one of my little bugbears – I have no evidence on which to base such a leap. Just as they lack any basis for assuming that, because I eat foie gras, I’m akin to a really, really evil mix of Hitler, child abusers and generally all-round bad eggs (although obviously, when eating unborn baby chickie-wicks – and I do love them soft-boiled – I try to avoid the bad ones).

But what also riled me was the Puritanical decrying of pleasure: one poster claimed that they enjoyed their food, but they ‘ate to live, not lived to eat’, and detested those who take serious pleasure in food.

Now on that basis, one must be able to decide on and recognise a line in the culinary sand over which one’s pleasure doth not stray.

Which is a pretty bonkers idea, when you think about it. And that's without asking just what is actually wrong with pleasure? There's a certain religiosity in objecting to people taking pleasure in pleasurable things – a bit like claiming that all sex should be for the purposes of procreation alone and that the 'sex-for-pleasure mentality', as I once saw it described, is something beyond the pale.

Of course anyone's completely within their rights to dislike a particular foodstuff on whatever grounds – and to say that. That doesn't get to excuse them from displays of ultra-stupidity, though.

And so such stupidity is complaint number one in today’s litany of Sybaritic whinging (and trust me, writing it down is proving very pleasurable).

Complaint number two is the announcement that I have printed off my Piccolino post – and am sending it, with covering note, to the company that ultimately owns that chain, with a request for a response.

Let’s see what they have to say for themselves – I’ll let you know.

Complaint three is nothing to do with food – although the English reluctance to complain properly about anything (no, complaining over a pint in your local doesn’t count) is a serious point and includes complaints about food and service, such as the Piccolino case.

I got to the Angel on my bus this morning and then got a 476, which was apparently heading for its usual end-of-journey destination at Euston.

Then, outside the old Thamesmead station, we were all informed that it wasn’t going any further and that we’d have to get off.

Now, I know it was only three further stops until my usual destination (I walked), but that’s not the point. The point, as I, err, pointed out, is that this has happened before (I always take care to check the advertised destination before boarding a 476), and I wish to know why the bus company feels that it is entirely acceptable to break the contract that it makes with me, as a customer, unilaterally and without warning.

Because breaking a form of contract is what it amounts to, when I pay for something on the basis of the service advertised and then, for no understandable reason (such as an accident or break-down etc), the terms of that service are changed before what I paid for has been realised.

I await a response.

Now, that’s quite enough complaining for one day.

But wait – I’ve forgotten to mention why you, my readers, come out of all this complaining so well.

It’s simple: whatever any of you may feel about foie gras, none of you would dream of making such ignorant and crass comments as the kind that I quoted above.

I’m lucky to know you as readers.