OH ENGLAND

I’ve been in England for a spell, doing the kind of things I do in England; eating, drinking, walking, being a writer: it’s not the worst.  I’ll probably do more than one post about my eating adventures but here to start with are three small observations of the English gustatory life.

On my second day in London I had lunch in the Rex Whistler Restaurant at Tate Britain.  This, it seemed to me, is everything a good modern English restaurant might be; a great looking room - in this case with Whistler’s restored mural The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats (1926–7) on the wall.  Hard to beat that.

 The menu has depth, tradition and reinterpretation, a bit of nose to tail, a hint of foraging.  Starters included nettle soup, smoked eel, and devilled kidneys but I went for the “Air-dried Old Spot pork, with celeriac and chervil root slaw” which was a bit more salami-ish than I’d been expecting, though Old Spot is fine by me in just about any form.  Safe to say I’d never eaten chervil root before.  I have eaten and indeed grown chervil but I never even noticed the root; my error, surely.

Main courses were slightly less interesting it seemed to me: spring chicken, Cornish pollock, and black bream, but I couldn’t resist the “Lamb faggot, with minted peas and broad beans.”  If nothing else I knew it would allow me to tell my American pals I had a tasty faggot while in London.  How we laughed.

I also thought the service was terrific in the Rex Whistler Restaurant (though some reviews suggest it isn’t always that way), and it was noticeable that none of the waiting staff I encountered were native English.  Maybe there’s something in this.

On the last day of my visit we went to Walton on the Naze, in Essex, a rough and ready and likable seaside town.  We were in search of fish and chips and we ended up at an anonymous fish and chip shop where the food was decent enough, though the 10p extra charge for mayonnaise or tartar sauce seemed a bit mean.

We sat outside on a patio (“Not for public use”) that was shared with the traditional seaside restaurant next door.  There may have been some commercial connection between the two, but I wouldn’t swear to that.  We were there for a little over half an hour from two o’ clock onwards, and we noticed that in that time nobody went into the restaurant next door, though at one point a woman, a waitress I supposed, or possibly the cook, came out, sat at a table and ate a slice of cake, then went back inside.  
        That was the only bit of business observable until a couple of minutes after 2.30 at which point three middle-aged ladies arrived and went into the restaurant in search of lunch.  A minute later they came out again: they were too late.  The restaurant closed at 2.30 and the woman who’d eaten the cake now reappeared and locked the front door of the restaurant as the three ladies walked away.

         Was this a bit of absurdist drama?  You bet.  Or perhaps Catch 22.  “We’ll stay open until we get some customers and then we’ll close before serving them.”

         There was something thoroughly, familiarly English about this, something that some of us hoped was behind us.  How well we all remember going hopefully into a pub with a big sign outside saying “Pub Grub” only to be told, by a delighted barman, that service ended a few minutes ago.

         Another manifestation of petty spitefulness (or so it seemed to me) was to be found on the napkins in Pret A Manger (which sometimes seems to call itself the less Frenchified Pret).  We all know that Pret a Manger is part of the new breed of eatery that employs largely meaningless words like good, natural, handmade, etc. to describe itself, which is pretty annoying, but to be fair, the Posh Cheddar baguette (above) that I had there was perfectly fine.  It was the napkin (aka serviette) I had trouble with. 

First there’s all that predictable greenwash about avoiding “obscure chemicals” which I guess means that well-known chemicals are just fine.  But it’s that line “If Pret staff get all serviette-ish … please give them the evil eye” that really gets to me; encouraging customers to scowl at staff.  Is that a good thing?  At first I thought there was something quite novel about this, but then I realized the truth is that in England, customers and servers have been giving each other the evil eye for centuries.  It’s called tradition.

I'M AWAY FROM MY POST FOR A FEW DAYS

Meanwhile, enjoy every mouthful ...

THE SORTED SANDWICH

News just in from a website named  “The Local: Spain’s News in English” with the headline “Police arrest man over cocaine sandwich.”  It came with the above photograph released by the Policia Nacional.  The contents of the sandwich, apart from the cocaine were, apparently, cured ham and cheese.

         It happened in Benidorm, the sandwich carrier was a 29 year old Columbian and he had 100 grams of coke in his sarnie.  The subsequently found a kilo of coke when they searched his home.  “We’re gonna need a bigger baguette!”

Elsewhere on "The Local" site another headline reads “Cocaine-filled pineapples seized by Spain.”  The story is that police in Algeciras found a shipping container full of pineapples stuffed with 2,500 kilos of cocaine.  “According to Spanish online newspaper El Confidencial, the seized cocaine would have had a street value of €150 million.”  That must be one very fancy street. 

Here’s the accompanying photo (by Tony Ratcliff) of a masked man with a lot of pineapples, who may or may not have anything to do with the case.

EATING GERMANICALLY

I’m not REALLY on a German food kick, honest, but it so happens I went to another German restaurant last night, The Red Lion Tavern in Silver Lake.  It’s been there since 1959 and claims on its website to be “the oldest German bar and restaurant in the City of Los Angeles that's still in operation” which seems unarguable, and the site goes on to say,  “This L.A. landmark continues to serve up traditional German food and a wide selection of German beer in a cozy Old World atmosphere.”  Well, if you think having a bouncer on the door who checks your ID to make sure you’re over 21 before he’ll let you in is cozy and Old World, then that’s true too.

         To be fair, the place is as authentic as any German restaurant in LA is likely to be: dark, lots of wood, decorative steins, the back of the bar lined with faux barrels, waitresses in vaguely national costume.

There was however some slightly inauthentic live music when I was there; a man with a keyboard, and I was expecting a bit of oomph music, but in fact he played instrumental versions of hits by Lorde and then Robin Thicke.

The food in fact was probably the least interesting things about the place.  It being a Wednesday I ordered the Mittwoch special: “3 German-Style Wieners made of pork, beef, and veal resembling a dense hot dog, served with German potato salad, sauerkraut, and mustard.”

They didn’t lie.  The wieners were just fine, and the sauerkraut was very good, but somehow I wanted something more, something intense, more Germanic.  I was left wishing I’d ordered the Sauerbraten slices of marinated beef smothered in gravy sauce, with red cabbage and dumplings.  I do like my beef smothered.  If I’d wanted to get really authentic I should perhaps have had the pea soup with a wiener in it, (Everything tastes better with a wiener in it: Discuss):

Or perhaps I should have drunk German beer from a glass boot.  But I didn’t.

Returning to the Psychogourmet Research Facility, I dug out The Cooking Of Germany published by Time Life in 1969.  The cover is kind of scary – nothing good ever happens in a gingerbread house, does it? 

And some of the contents are just a little unsettling, these boot-positive military types for instance:

The caption says these are “university students in Munster, clad in the uniform of their student associations” – but for some reason I don’t find that especially reassuring.

The book’s index has citations for udder, preserved beaver legs and Katerfruhstuck, or “hangover breakfast,” which (wouldn’t you know it) they say consists of sausage, ham and goulash, along with a hair of the dog from the night before.  But the most curious thing I found in there was this, Sauerkraut mit Ananas:

 You take two pounds of fresh sauerkraut, boil it in 5 cups of canned pineapple juice till most of the liquid is absorbed, then you mix sauerkraut in with the scooped out and chopped contents of the fresh pineapple, and stuff it back in.  Apparently it’s traditionally served with roasted smoked pork and game birds though I’m sure it would be a meal in itself.  Who knew?  Well, millions of Germans, I suppose.

And here’s a German swastika cake being served to children to celebrate Hitler’s birthday.  The secret ingredient may be love or it may be sauerkraut, but I’m guessing it’s neither.

EATING GOLDENLY

Before we finish with currywurst, possibly forever, my Berlin correspondent Susanna Forrest directed me to an article she wrote for momondo.com.  She writes:  “Currywurst und Schampus in the Saturday Kollwitzplatz market have elevated Berlin's humble signature dish … into something ludicrously sophisticated. The pommes are served with truffle mayonnaise, and my pick, the "Spezial Currywurst" with creamy mayonnaise and raw red onion, is almost too rich to snarf.”  Interesting use of “almost” there.  This is her picture of it:

She continues; “The ritziest wurst on offer is their 5€ Currywurst Gold, spiced with 22k gold leaf. Which is just silly. I don't dare eat it in case the next anti-yuppie demo in the Kiez lobs Molotov cocktails through my bedroom window.”  The internet suggests that there’s quite a bit of gold-inflected currywurst about, like these two:

And if the one in the Kollwitzplatz market is really only 5€, then it’s still cheaper than the gold-free version I had in LA.

I realized, and it wasn’t exactly a stunning revelation, that I’ve never knowingly eaten gold-leaf.  I was going to say I’d never tasted gold-leaf but then I don’t believe anybody has actually tasted it: see below.  In an interview in the Independent Sam Bompas (of Bompas and Parr) was asked about his “store-cupboard essentials.”  He said, “24-carat gold. It costs around £25 for 25 sheets. It doesn't have any flavour, but it makes for the most over-the-top desserts – it sparkles and is quite magical.”  Only a fool would argue with Sam Bompas.

I recall, a long time ago, being interviewed in my horrible, tiny London flat by a journalist from the Yorkshire Post.  A bad idea.  And it so happened that I’d cut out this image out and stuck it up on noticeboard in the kitchen:

 In fact it’s ravioli of scallops cooked by Garry Hollihead of L’Escargot, vermouth whole fresh truffles are also involved.  I still have the cutting to this day, obviously.  And I could see the journalist was fascinated by this, and was writing the piece in his head; “Humble writer lives in squalor but dreams of food covered with gold-leaf.”  This was not true – I’d cut the picture out because I found it so absurd.  But possibly the journalist had something worse in mind, “Humble writer lives in squalor because he’s spent all his money on food covered with gold-leaf.”  This was not true either.  At the time my idea of a lavish night out was a meal at a dodgy Greek restaurant in the Harrow Road.  Gold-leaf was not in evidence there, and even if it had been, I doubt whether it would have been enough to make their moussaka seem magical.