Four courses of European restaurant news

Over the past few weeks, I’ve read some inspiring articles about restaurants and their chefs.

Allow me to present them as a four-course menu.

Amuse bouche: the growing number of British Michelin-starred restaurants

Michelin-starred restaurants are popping up all over the United Kingdom.

At the end of an article about the 2023 National Chef of the Year competition, held by the Craft Guild of Chefs, The Times tells us (emphases mine):

Scotland contributes 12 of the UK’s 188 Michelin-starred restaurants while Wales has nine on the list, and three are from Northern Ireland.

That is an amazing number.

The article mentioned Scotland first because, this year, the winner and runner up of the National Chef of the Year are both Scots:

Mackerel guts, offal dolma, and for dessert, chocolate and beetroot. It is the eclectic combination that has won Alex Angelogiannis, a sous chef working in a Perthshire town, the award for Britain’s top chef.

He was followed in second place by another Scottish-based chef, Matthew Smith, who prepared pumpkin and squid to start, lamb and blackcurrant for the main, and a dessert of chocolate and seaweed.

Smith, head chef at Inver Restaurant in Argyll and Bute, and Angelogiannis, senior sous chef from the Glenturret Lalique Restaurant in Crieff, in Perth and Kinross, will enjoy a luxury food outing in London and Liverpool, along with a two-day tour to France and a £500 cash prize.

The competition has been running since 1972, when British food was, in general, nothing special. Five decades on, however, our nation can be pleased with our culinary progress, particularly over the past 25 years.

Starter: Laughing Cow cheese, one chef’s guilty pleasure

On Thursday, November 16, The Times interviewed Gregory ‘Frenchie’ Marchand, a Michelin-starred French chef who got his start in London.

His eponymous restaurant, named after the nickname Jamie Oliver gave him, is located on a tiny pedestrian street, Rue du Nil, in Paris. It has a Michelin star.

According to Tripadvisor, it’s well worth the wait, as reservations are hard to come by.

The interview was revealing on a few levels.

First, a tough start in life does not preclude later success:

I grew up in a “child house” [orphanage, Marchand’s father died when he was six, his mother when he was eleven] in Brittany. It’s not like Oliver Twist, it wasn’t that bad. Some weekends we had cooking classes with the chef. I started to cook a little bit, without knowing that it would become my job. I decided to become a chef at 16. I did four years of cooking school and then I moved to London at 20. It wasn’t a passion at first, that came later.

He began work at the sumptuous Mandarin Oriental hotel in London, then went to Hong Kong. He returned to London to work at the Savoy, no less, then worked in Marbella before heading back to London, where he joined Jamie Oliver at the now-defunct Fifteen.

After that:

I moved to New York [at the Gramercy Tavern] and then back to France when my wife [Marie] was seven months pregnant.

Frenchie is located in a gentrified neighbourhood, one that was still undergoing redevelopment when he opened it:

I brought my banker, lawyer, my wife and my friend and I said: “Here we go! This is where I want to open my restaurant.” And they said: “Are you f***ing mad?” But the fabric shops started closing up, and then wine shops, a cheesemonger, a bakery, coffee roasters and a bean-to-bar chocolate maker all opened up.

In 2009 it was the beginning of the bistronomy movement, which is basically great food served in bistro-style with the freshest and best products. I was in the right place at the right time. Alongside Septime and Châteaubriand restaurant, Frenchie became one of the bistronomy movement references. Now we own a farm 40km outside of Paris. All our veg comes from there, twice a week.

Secondly, unlike many Michelin-starred chefs, Marchand enjoys cooking for his friends at home:

We often invite people for dinner. I’ll go pick up [groceries] on Rue du Nil and spend the afternoon cooking. I like to make something in my Staub cocotte like blanquette de veau [French veal stew] and serve it family-style in the middle of the table. A starter is usually something like fresh oysters or sea urchins. Recently I made fresh frog’s legs with garlic butter and parsley as a little apéro on the bar table. Usually it’s a party that goes on until two in the morning and often ends up [with us] dancing to classic Eighties French pop music.

This is what his guests request the most:

My friends always ask for crispy British-style roast potatoes in duck fat, with rosemary and garlic.

Thirdly, Marchand enjoys processed cheese:

It’s probably a childhood memory but I love Laughing Cow cheese. It’s great in a grilled cheese sandwich.

I haven’t had La Vache Qui Rit in decades. I’ll have to try it as he suggests.

Main course: Italy’s imaginative Massimo Bottura, a three-star Michelin chef

Several years ago, pre-pandemic, Britain’s MasterChef: the Professionals sent their finalists to Osteria Francescana, the three-Michelin-star restaurant in Modena, Italy, that has twice been voted the best in the world.

Massimo Bottura taught them how to prepare and present his own dishes, which look out of this world. He was painstaking yet patient with the budding chefs. His efforts with them produced outstanding results.

On November 1, The Times interviewed him and his American wife Lara Gilmore when they visited London recently.

Bottura comes across as creative in print as he does when he’s in his own kitchen:

… don’t make the mistake of telling the chef-patron Massimo Bottura that you loved the eel (the €80 starter is actually called “An eel swimming up the Po river”) or the fish (the €110 roasted cod in Thai-inspired sauce is called “If I’m wrong I’m right”) or even a €13,500 bottle of Montrachet 2013 Romanée-Conti.

“It’s never about simply the eel!” Bottura insists, looking scandalised. “Our menu is written like an opera. You have the overture, then the adagio and the allegro” — I should point out that, at this point, Bottura is conducting an imaginary orchestra, albeit without a baton — “then the minuetto and the grand finale. This is a whole emotional experience of the heart. You can never say it is just the eel or the wine, or you don’t understand our philosophy.”

He and his wife have just opened a new restaurant with a boutique hotel:

Casa Maria Luigia, the formerly derelict 18th-century manor house that they refurbished and opened as a boutique hotel in 2019. Not only does the place they call “Casa ML” serve Bottura’s extraordinary food but its common spaces and 12 bedrooms are filled with art, music, exquisite home furnishings and Bottura’s collection of Italian sports cars and motorbikes …

In the barn there are 16 Ferraris, Maseratis and Lamborghinis, not to mention Bottura’s collection of a dozen Ducati racing motorbikes. And non-petrolheads can retire to the “music room” and listen to one of Bottura’s 7,000 vinyl records.

Bottura told the interviewer about some of his guests, household names, who have stayed at Casa ML. He is a passionate man.

Like the aforementioned Gregory Marchand, Bottura got his start outside of his home country:

Bottura was born in Modena and learnt to cook at his grandmother’s side. He met the Washington-born Gilmore in New York in the early Nineties while gaining experience working in a Manhattan trattoria. Bottura returned to Europe to do an internship with Alain Ducasse at his three-Michelin-star Le Louis XV restaurant in Monte Carlo, then moved back to Modena to open Osteria Francescana. The day it opened, he rang Gilmore in America and proposed.

“We’re getting married, right?” he asked her. Gilmore said she’d have to think about it, largely because it was 8am and she was still in her pyjamas drinking coffee. But she soon flew to Italy and Osteria took off.

How romantic!

Lara picks up the story:

“Massimo said, ‘I want Michelin stars,’ and so we spent 17 years winning three of them,” she recalls. Gilmore is slightly ethereal and softly spoken, a corrective to Bottura’s firecracker intensity.

Bottura explains modestly:

“Oh, I’m crazy,” he says. “Lara has all the patience, vision and logic.”

Bottura is passionate about the food from his region:

The pair do things their own way and you can see that in a book they’ve written about their hotel called Slow Food, Fast Cars. The “slow food” bit showcases painstakingly curated produce local to Emilia-Romagna, such as the region’s Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. Before meeting Bottura I watched a YouTube video of him showing an American reporter how to cut open a wheel of this delicacy. First his assistant hit it with a little hammer with his ear next to it.

“What’s he listening for?” the reporter asked.

“Perfection,” Boturra replied, before adding: “Obsession, obsession is the secret to success.”

He is not wrong.

We learn more about his star dishes:

Bottura’s mind seems to go from 0-60 and in multiple directions in about two seconds. Perhaps that’s what has given rise to famous dishes like “Oops, I dropped the lemon tart” (his bestselling dessert, which is served upside down and smashed to bits) and “The crunchy part of the lasagne”, his legendary pasta course (“if children pick at the crunchy part, it’s because it is the best — so why make the rest?”).

It sounds rather mad, but when MasterChef‘s professionals were under his tutelage, they raved about the end products.

I’ll never have enough money to spend on one of his meals — €1,000 per person — but the dishes sound marvellous. That said, I checked Tripadvisor and most of the recent entries rated Osteria Francescana as disappointing in food, service and ambiance. Let’s hope it’s temporary.

Dessert: Giles Coren goes to The Ritz London

It’s always gratifying when seasoned restaurant reviewers who have seen it all and eaten it all give an enthusiastic thumbs-up to one’s favourite dining establishments.

On Wednesday, November 1, The Times‘s Giles Coren wrote about his experience of The Ritz London. He had lunch with one of his cousins and her niece.

He loved it every bit as much as my friends and I did:

… “Who is the Ritz for?” is easy. It’s for my first cousin once removed, Linda Agran, unquestionably the most successful and glamorous of the wider Coren family, whom I had owed lunch and a bottle of Corton-Charlemagne for yonks, promised a slap-up nosh at the Ritz and booked in for mid-September 2022. But then the Queen died, and her funeral was scheduled for the week of our lunch, and Linda simply wasn’t having that …

So we moved it, and then for one reason and another it got shunted a full year on, to just last week. And let me tell you: it was worth the wait.

Ooh, it’s grand. And they’re all so nice … and there in front of you are the grand doors to this Versailles among restaurants, the sun streaming through, as it once did upon the Sun King [Louis XIV] himself …

My cousin Louise, Linda’s niece, arrived, and we swept into … the table in the corner, best seat in the house … And it was beyond lovely. Waiters dressed like Toscanini at Bayreuth were in no way standoffish or tricky, but relaxed, funny, engaged, absolutely part of the fun.

“I used to come here with David Niven,” said Linda, one of the great television producers of the last century, as I yodelled for lobster, veal sweetbreads in madeira, turbot for Linda (who toucheth not flesh) with little pucks of cucumber piled with imperial caviar, and a roast duck in two servings for Louise and me, which was carved handsomely at table, a bottle of the Corton, a bottle of red burgundy and a tokaji for dessert.

“Speaking of which,” said Linda to the waiter, “do you still do the crêpes suzette on the trolley at the table?”

“Absolument, madame.”

And so we ended with that, flames leaping from the pan, sugar caramelising, Grand Marnier splattering the chandeliers, everyone laughing, and I won’t tell you how much it all cost because I’m not claiming it off the paper and seeing as Linda and Louise’s menus didn’t have prices on, there’s no reason why yours should.

How nice that they give menus with no prices to the guests. That must have been Giles’s request, because our foursome have always had menus which include the prices. It’s just as well, because I would not wish to cost our host too much. The Ritz is always his treat.

All I can say is go, go, go to The Ritz London. Reserve six weeks in advance and that table in the corner can be yours. We had lunch there this year.

Moral of the story

It’s so important to learn how to cook competently at home.

My better half and I have been able to avoid spending a fortune on dining out by knowing where to source all sorts of ingredients, the kind that top chefs have.

I also have a number of cookbooks, including the one from The Ritz London. With practice comes perfection.

As Massimo Bottura says:

Obsession, obsession is the secret to success.

Dining well, whether at home or in a good (not necessarily expensive) restaurant, demonstrates the best use of — and respect for — God’s edible creation.

Ingestibles news: food, drink, tobacco

Many news items about ingestibles have appeared in recent weeks.

Here are but a few, arranged by category.

Drinks

Who knew that England’s wine production was such a success, despite our rather damp and cool summers over the past two years.

Coloured glass

Before going into England’s wine success, however, it should be noted that coloured glass is back in fashion.

However, this is not your grandmother’s transparent coloured glass selection of cranberry or teal green goblets. The new high-end glasses and containers happen to be opaque.

I wonder if this opacity is a short cut, obviating the artistry of traditional methods of colouring glass.

On October 22, 2023, The Guardian reported on the trend for coloured glass in general. The article includes photos of the new opaque glass (emphases mine):

After years of minimalist, clear wine glasses, tumblers and dishes, colourful glassware is making a comeback. Brightly hued glass pieces such as purple goblets from the 1970s and coral-pink 1930s candlesticks have seen sales rise 30% since last year, according to Narchie, an app for buying and selling vintage homeware.

And on the high street, John Lewis says that sales of drinkware in shades of damson, amber and cobalt have risen 71% on figures from the same week last year. The department store’s Confetti range – a modern collection decorated with flecks of colour – has gone up by 20%.

It’s a similar story at Ikea. “Customers are daring to introduce new energy and shades into their table settings,” says Paul Kinnen, home furnishing business leader for kitchens at the Swedish furniture retailer.

The opaque coloured glass did nothing to raise my appetite for a glass of cold water or a cocktail. Sometimes the old ways are the best.

That said, the article did cover something more interesting, which is the history of traditional transparent coloured glass dating back to ancient times:

“Coloured glass goes back to the bronze age,” says Dr Sally Cottam, secretary for the Association for the History of Glass. “Well, glass is naturally coloured a bluish green and you decolourise it using different compounds. In the Augustan period, you had vessels in every colour of the rainbow – some really quite tasteless, but fabulous in their own way. Then the Romans went crazy for colourless glass in the later first century. It became the norm, probably in part because the level of glass production increased and also because it lets you show off the colour of your wine.”

And decorative glass has never completely disappeared. Enamelled glass was very popular in the Islamic world; the Venetians rediscovered Roman polychromatic glass in the 15th century and the Victorians also loved it – “particularly cranberry and Bristol blue”, according to Cottam.

Fortunately, ancient traditions are once again in the ascendant:

A Bristol-based glassmaker has revived the Bristol Green shade, manufacturing it in the city for the first time in 200 years. This colour is famous in Europe and North America, and is the origin of the traditional dark green wine bottle. When wine-makers started using clear bottles, Bristol lost its glassmaking industry …

Award-winning designer Tom Dixon’s new collection of tableware and vases, called Bump, uses borosilicate – better known as lab glass, which is strong and withstands heat – and comes in a calming emerald green.

“Made from easily available, unlimited materials and completely recyclable, glass has served us for millennia,” says Dixon. “It is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget how extraordinary it is as a material, as packaging, as a precious object.”

Lovely. Enjoy some nostalgia, if not Granny’s, then something new that’s transparent yet coloured.

English wine

English winemakers are going from strength to strength.

I have tasted some of their products which certainly rival French wines. That was not the case 30 years ago.

On October 19, The Guardian told us:

Many English winemakers say they are expecting to harvest their biggest ever crop over the next few weeks as a combination of favourable weather conditions and expansion boosts production.

Gusbourne, the Kent-based producer and one of the first major wineries to complete its harvest, said it had gathered its largest ever crop, up 25% on last year.

The company, controlled by former Conservative party chair Lord Michael Ashcroft, said the warm growing season last year meant vines emerged from winter in a healthy condition and then enjoyed favourable weather during the flowering period between April and June this year, producing “an abundance of fruit”.

The big brands Nyetimber, Chapel Down and Ridgeview have all said they are expecting their largest ever crop as a result of the weather and investing in additional acreage.

Most production goes to sparkling wines, which will not be available for at least two years, but still wines made this year could be on shelves in the spring.

Ned Awty, the interim chief executive of the trade body WineGB, the national association for the wine industry in England and Wales, said: “This year is shaping up to be a high volume and high-quality harvest. We’ve had reports about impressive bunch size and weight and ripe fruit from all across the country.”

Andrew Carter, the chief executive of Chapel Down, which is two-thirds of the way through its harvest, said he was expecting its output to be “materially larger” than last year’s, and the brand’s previous record, set in 2018.

The group, based near Tenterden in Kent, has added 200 additional acres to take it to 750 under production. Carter said the weather had also been a factor in producing high-quality grapes.

“The weather this year has been truly exceptional,” he said. Carter said the wet July and August had helped vines stay healthy and had not led to problems with disease because the weather had remained cool, and then the warm, sunny September had helped to ripen grapes. “The balance of sugars and concentration of flavours in the grapes is a joy to behold,” he said.

Southern England is blessed with favourable conditions for wine production:

Britain’s winemaking industry is concentrated in Kent, but vineyards in Essex, Hampshire and Sussex also supply independent retailers and UK supermarkets. British wine is sold overseas and the industry has estimated that exports could be worth as much as £350m by 2040.

Winemakers have been expanding – more than doubling in the past decade – as financial investors bet on a market that has been helped by the changing climate and production becoming more professional …

There are now 943 vineyards across Great Britain, according to WineGB. The industry produced 12.2m bottles in 2022, a big step up on the 5.3m bottles in 2017 as investors have piled into the growing market.

Production is expected to reach 25m bottles by 2032, with 7,600 hectares (18,800 acres) of vines planted – almost double the 4,000 hectares (9,900 acres) under production at present.

Excellent news!

English sake

An even more amazing development is that of sake made in — who would have guessed it? — England.

On October 27, The Telegraph‘s Joel Hart wrote about the boom in sake in Great Britain, ‘How British sake became the calling card of the country’s hottest restaurants’:

Picture 10 drinks on tap, ranging from a light and crisp, aromatic brew with notes of apricot and almond to a luxurious pour delivering notes of lychee and cereal. No, these are not the latest beers to hit the market, nor are they wines – this is a line-up of “craft sake”, a new take on Japan’s famous fermented drink. 

At Kanpai, which was the UK and Europe’s first sake brewery and taproom when it opened in 2016, rice – rather than hops or grapes – takes centre stage. Sourced from paddy fields across three prefectures in Japan and fermented with water, yeast and koji (rice grain cultivated with a “magic mould” that kick-starts the yeast fermentation), the rice is transformed into drinks that have distinct styles for each season – and deliver a subtle nod to their surroundings. 

“The local London water has been making [our] delicious drinks for many years,” says Kanpai’s co-founder Lucy Wilson. “The hard water enables us to brew fuller flavoured styles of sake. [Its] minerality is fantastic for fermentation as it excites the yeast,” she explains, producing “lots of fruit-forward, delicate aromatics and bold, luscious flavours”.

Sake’s flavour profiles certainly give grape-derived wines a run for their money. With five traditional brewing styles, versions range from dry to sweet, elegant to complex, unfiltered to crystal clear, with still, sparkling, aged and ume-(plum) and yuzu-infused iterations now sold all over Britain. 

Sake pairings are becoming popular, especially with seafood:

The current vogue of omakase restaurants has also had a role in enhancing the drink’s image. The trend of yielding control to the chef (omakase translates as “I leave it in your hands”), diners can enjoy styles of sake tailored to the sushi they are served. “The rich umami flavours present in both Japanese sake and seafood make them a perfect match,” explains Endo Kazutoshi, a third-generation sushi master and executive chef/owner of Endo at the Rotunda in west London. “The pairing is not merely a chemical coincidence but [based on] wisdom passed down through centuries from master to apprentice.”

The article tells us about various British restaurants that showcase sake.

Ultimately:

For sake bars, it is important to showcase the drink on its own, so while it isn’t uncommon to find sake in cocktails, there has been a shift away from seeing it as an ingredient for mixologists …

When you enter the bar, bottles are displayed on the wall, from mildly sweet to dry, and from light and aromatic to rich and savoury. There’s a sake flight for those who want to explore different styles.

England is a perfect place for manufacturing sake from Japanese rice:

Dojima opened at Fordham Abbey in 2018 with the intent of restoring an ancestral family tradition dating back to 1830s Osaka. Having brewed in Japan, Korea and Myanmar, the family relocated to the UK and settled on the Cambridgeshire estate for their new site.

“We knew that the UK would be a great place to set up if we were to make sake more globally recognised, as London sets trends for food, drink, fashion, arts and music,” explains Kumiko Hashimoto, a family member and the company’s PR and marketing director. “We could have perhaps just imported our family sake from Osaka, but we wanted to do more than that. We wanted to make sake in the UK using local water and the best rices from Japan.”

A sake produced from the well water of Fordham Abbey might be fresh and elegant (the Junmai Dojima) or honeyed and umami-rich (the vintage Cambridge version), but there are yet more styles in production within the county with the Sparkling Sake Brewery established there in 2021. It all points to a fizzing UK sake scene, where the first sip is unlikely to be your last.

How true. I had sake only once, in the United States, and that was 35 years ago. I must try it again.

The article ends with links for sake lovers and novices. There are even sake pairings with cheese, of all things (italics in the original):

Sake can be bought online at Kanpai and Moto, as well from shops including Sorakami and Tengu Sake.

A sake and cheese hamper curated by Erika Haigh can be purchased at La Fromagerie.

How extraordinary!

World Cheese Awards, Norway

Speaking of cheese, on Friday, October 27, the results of the World Cheese Awards held in Trondheim, Norway, were announced.

On Saturday, October 28, The Telegraph‘s Tomé Morrissey-Swan reported:

Delicate, creamy, buttery and soft, with mild peppery blue veins, Norway’s Nidelven blå, a pasteurised cow’s milk blue cheese made on a small farm two hours from Trondheim, was named the best cheese in the world at the World Cheese Awards on Friday.

At the event, held in Trondheim itself, the home favourite trumped a record number of entrants – 4,502 different cheeses submitted from across the globe – to be crowned supreme champion in front of a partisan home crowd. The winner beat a Belgian morbier-style cheese into second place, with a Swiss Alpine entrant coming third.

“This is really great,” said Moren Gangstad, the winning cheesemaker. “All of us who work in the dairy are here today, and we did not expect this. But it’s fantastic.”

Hmm.

I hadn’t heard of the World Cheese Awards until 2022, but the event has been running for decades:

Celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, the World Cheese Awards, run by the Guild of Fine Foods, has risen to be one of the world’s most respected food events, beamed online to viewers around the globe. Winners often see sales spike, with cheese buyers rushing to stock their product. 

Morrissey-Swan was there as a member of the judging panel:

In a huge gymnasium in Trondheim, which is well used to smelling this funky, 100 oversized trestle tables laden with around 45 cheeses each were prepared for the global judging panel of experts.

Despite this being my third year on the panel, I’m still not used to that smell. It’s the first thing that hits you – all the beautiful sweet, salty, musty notes blended with sweat and mould. Around 20 people watched from the stands, a bigger crowd than any football match I’ve ever played in …

Cheeses are evaluated on four categories: their look (is the rind appealing, is the colour consistent?), body and texture (they are squidged to assess moisture and fat content – harder to do with a cream cheese), aroma (does it small as expected? Ammonia can be good, but it shouldn’t smell off), and, most importantly, flavour and mouthfeel – it should be balanced and complex, with no bitter off-notes.

My table was stellar … We argued over the merits of paprika-smeared goat’s cheeses, smoky cow’s cheeses (is the smoke artificial or natural?), and a particularly beautiful cheese aged in sandstone that smelt just like roast mutton …

Each table awards products bronzes, silvers and golds, and one super gold, to be taken to a small panel of elite judges who, almost unfathomably, eat a hundred or more cheeses throughout the day. We dished out 12 golds on our table – others struggled to find one.

Being a French then a British cheese aficionado, I was desperate to find out how my two favourite countries fared.

Unfortunately, France won only one award in the top 16 cheeses. It came in at 13th with:

Goustal La Bergere from Société des Caves, FRANCE

The UK fared comparatively better, with two, in 12th and 16th places, respectively:

Sinodun Hill from Norton and Yarrow Cheese, UNITED KINGDOM

Wigmore from Village Maid Cheese, UNITED KINGDOM

A British cheesemaker explains why but says it’s good news in the long run:

… London-based cheese and cider expert, and World Cheese Awards veteran, Sam Wilkin thinks the range is becoming increasingly diverse. Indeed, judges hailed from all over, as did cheeses …

“We’ve become very anglo and eurocentric about cheese, but when you come to an event like this, you realise these cheeses are being made everywhere,” said Wilkin. “There are people doing delicious things, traditions being upheld, innovations happening, it’s really very exciting. I tried a camel cheese from Kazakhstan, and a viking cheese that, though certainly not to my palate, is a delicacy here in Norway and exemplifies that cheese is really just a way to preserve milk”…

It might not have been a great year for Britain, but British cheeses have won on 11 previous occasions, almost a third of the total winners, with Cornish Blue and Bath Blue winning in recent years. Cornish Kern, a more intense, longer-matured relation to the nettle-wrapped Cornish Yarg, was the most recent winner, picking up the top prize in 2017. Last year a gruyère earned top spot at the event in Newport, Wales.

Wilkin predicts the prize could be transformative for the winning dairy. “You hear wonderful stories of really small-scale cheeses winning the World Cheese Awards, and their businesses are transformed literally overnight. There are people I know waiting on the phone.” Nidelven blå isn’t currently sold in the UK, though around 300 shops in Norway stock it. Expect that to change soon.

My commiserations to France. They have not done well at the World Cheese Awards in recent years, which is disappointing.

French cuisine world’s best

After my disappointment at France not receiving more World Cheese Awards, I was encouraged to read an article in The Telegraph which appeared the following day on Sunday, October 29, ‘Ignore the statistics: French cuisine is the best in the world’, in which Anthony Peregrine told us about the new labelling law concerning restaurant food made on the premises:

… clearly this move is a good thing. Though the 175,000 figure includes bars, pubs, take-aways and even some bakeries, 4 per cent, if correct, remains unimpressive. It’s also a measure which the French catering business should have seen coming, following the flop of a similar, but voluntary, scheme introduced in 2014.

But it needs nuancing. French restaurants, like restaurants everywhere, have had a torrid time of late. Covid shut them down, staff subsequently proved unfindable, and prices have rocketed. An estimated 4,500 French restaurants shut down in 2022.

As one Languedoc restaurateur said: “We’re being strangled. The only way through for some is to buy in some dishes and trust that nobody minds. Which, generally, they don’t.”

Peregrine then listed ten categories in which France reigns supreme: truffles, oysters, cheese, choucroute, Charolais beef, mushrooms, foie gras, charcuterie, wine and bread.

I discovered the history of Camembert and Roquefort in his section on cheese:

Where to start? Camembert, obviously. South-east of Caen, the most famous rural hamlet in the world hosts tastings within a good little museum set-up. It explains, inter alia, how a priest on the run from the French Revolution taught local lass Marie Harel the rudiments of soft cheese making (maisonducamembert.com; £3.90). Then Roquefort, another titchy place (population 550), near Millau in the Aveyron. Legend suggests that a shepherd boy around there spotted a beautiful shepherdess, dumped his cheese sandwich in a damp cave and lit out to woo her. He failed, returned to his sandwich which, in the meantime had grown mouldy and, he discovered, delicious. Voilà Roquefort, still refined in those caves. Visit the Roquefort Société for £6.50 (roquefort-societe.com).

The bread section was also revealing:

This year’s best traditional Parisian baguette is made by Tharshan Selvarajah, a 37-year-old who arrived in France from Sri Lanka in 2006 – and is, apparently, allergic to flour. In the annual comp, last May, Mr Selvarajah’s bread topped 175 rivals. Among other perks, he now gets to deliver 30 baguettes a day to the Elysée Palace from his Au Levain des Pyrénées premises in the 20^th arrondissement (lepaindetharshan.fr).  Best bread nationally is from Gourmandises & Traditions in the village of Beaulieu, near Montpellier. I’ll say no more. There are already quite enough people ahead of me in the queue (boulangerie-gt.com).

Amazing.

Hazelnut shortage

I’d always thought that Italy and France produced the world’s hazelnuts.

Apparently not. It’s Turkey.

On October 10, The Times reported that 2023 was not a good year for one of my favourite nuts:

Christmas chocolate is in jeopardy … there is a looming hazelnut shortage. Crop levels of the favourite festive nut are lower than usual in Turkey, the world’s largest producer, due to bad weather and damage from wildfires. That means your Christmas choc — Ferrero Rocher or a bar of gianduja, depending on where you sit on the taste spectrum — is under threat.

Not to mention Nutella and imitations sold by other companies.

Oh, dear.

The article lists a number of other nuts that are equally ‘good for health’ but does not warn about the subsequent weight gain. It is all too easy to sit in front of the television with a bowl of nuts. I have been there before and gained weight that took a long time to shift because of the ageing process!

Drinking apple cider vinegar

This is another health experiment I tried after I lost weight after gorging on nuts: drinking apple cider vinegar.

Do not do it unless you have signs of diabetes. Well, I did not know that at the time. Mine was a short-lived experiment and I do not recommend it.

On October 28, The Telegraph posted a warning about drinking apple cider vinegar, but in the middle of the article:

… A summary of findings from a range of studies revealed a significant reduction in blood glucose and insulin in people who consumed vinegar compared with a control group. Again, it’s worth noting that this was vinegar in general, not specifically ACV, so it’s likely due to the acetic acid content rather than any special ACV magic.

Most of the research in this area has involved healthy volunteers, but there have been some small studies in people with type 2 diabetes that suggest that a shot of vinegar can be an effective way to reduce blood sugar following starchy carbs. So, does this mean everyone should be drinking vinegar shots with their meals? Crowe [Dr Tim Crowe, dietitian and host of the podcast Thinking Nutrition] has this advice, “No. If you don’t have diabetes, then your blood glucose is being regulated just fine.” Crowe goes on to advise that simply having a shot of vinegar wouldn’t be enough to counteract Type 2 diabetes. 

Crowe also says that he is not convinced that apple cider vinegar burns fat:

There have been several taste studies done that found that drinking vinegar in general can induce a slight feeling of nausea and a lessening of appetite. That does not negate that apple cider vinegar may have a small benefit on weight loss, but the mechanism here is that the ACV is probably making the person feel a little ill and reducing their appetite.

I can vouch for that.

Vinegar also has an adverse effect on teeth and prescription drugs:

Apart from the fact that drinking vinegar on its own is not exactly pleasant, there are some other drawbacks, as Crowe explains:

“ACV has a pH of around three, so it can dissolve the tooth structure when it comes into contact with the teeth. One study monitored dental erosion over 8 weeks and it went up 18 per cent in those taking vinegar. So, if you still want to take a daily shot of apple cider vinegar or any other type of vinegar, please dilute it first.”

Additionally, ACV can interact with certain drugs, such as diuretics and diabetes medications. If you are taking any medications, it’s a good idea to talk to your doctor first.

The most sensible way to ingest vinegar is via salad dressing:

… make up a tasty salad dressing by mixing it with olive oil, mustard, honey and dried herbs and enjoy it that way instead.

Eco-friendly restaurant charges

Moving on from health to restaurants, I was appalled to read this in The Telegraph on October 27, ‘Diners hit with “carbon footprint charge” on restaurant bills’:

Diners are being hit with carbon footprint charges on restaurant bills to “counterbalance the environmental impact” of meals.

Customers have reported charity donations for a scheme called Carbon Friendly Dining being added to restaurant cheques, on top of service fees.

The scheme, an initiative backed by retail consultancy Lightspeed, aims to tackle global warming by charging each cover £1.23 to pay for fruit trees to be planted in developing countries.

Carbon Friendly Dining’s website says the charge “helps counterbalance the environmental impact” of diners’ meals and “also help some of the poorest communities on the planet”. Celebrity chefs including Marco Pierre White and James Martin are among a number of restaurant owners to have signed up.

The cost of the donation is added on to the bill at the end of the meal. Diners can ask for it to be removed and staff are given instructions on how to take off the charge.

As with every other social cancer, this started in the United States:

The trend has previously caught on with climate-conscious eateries in California, with a similar scheme launched in 2018 adding a 1pc surcharge to bills to help farmers decarbonise.

Hilton hotels was also recently reported to have added a climate rating, similar to calorific ratings, to menus to let diners know the carbon impact of each dish.

It comes after this newspaper revealed how restaurants are increasingly adding optional charity donations onto bills, with psychology experts saying the trend was leaving people facing the prospect of social embarrassment when asking for the extra fees to be removed. 

A Carbon Friendly Dining spokesman said that the charges were “highly visible” and “completely optional” and that diners were given leaflets explaining the initiative’s goals.

I neither want nor need a lecture — or a ‘voluntary’ contribution to anything. I go to a restaurant to eat for enjoyment — and pay for the privilege of doing so.

One British diner told the Telegraph about his experience:

… one diner, who had noticed the additional fee when paying for a meal at a Cubitt House pub in London, said: “It really made me laugh when I spotted it, I thought adding 15pc service charge was cheeky but this takes the biscuit.

“If they are so concerned about the environment, why don’t they just stop selling meat? The sum was too small for me to bother complaining about but it’s very sneaky.”

Dozens of restaurants, pubs and hotels across the UK and internationally are listed as being signed up to the carbon offsetting donation on the scheme’s website …

Cubitt House was approached for comment.

Splitting the bill

On October 15, The Telegraph‘s veteran restaurant reviewer William Sitwell explained, ‘Why I’d rather pay the whole damn thing than split the restaurant bill’:

Hell is a busy place these days. But, wrote restaurateur James Chiavarini this week on Twitter: “Hell needs a special room for those who split the dinner bill item by item.”

And I couldn’t agree more. Indeed, if not a room then an annexe, an extension, or an entire wing. Chiavarini, whose family Italian restaurant Il Portico has traded in London’s Kensington for more than 50 years, posted his utterance having presided over yet another frustrating bill-splitting episode. 

“A table of 20 on a busy night,” he tells me, struggling to maintain his composure.

Interestingly, the restaurateur blames Tony Blair’s 2007 smoking ban, at which point diners traded in their cigarettes for more mobile phone interaction:

“I think I can trace this behaviour back to 2007,” says Chiavarini, “when the smoking ban came in and everyone starting bringing their phones to dinner. It changed human behaviour and micro bill splitting is a part of it.”

As he suggests, if you bring your phone into a restaurant you can’t leave the problems of the world on the other side of the restaurant door, so the romance of the dining experience lessens. People became more inward looking, more selfish, more mercurial. Bill-splitting goes mad.

And so it does.

Tony Blair has a lot for which to answer, the smoking ban being one of them that changed the UK forever — and not in a good way.

Smoking: Rishi Sunak as the heir to Blair

At the end of September, I about flipped when I saw on the news that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wants to bring in an incremental New Zealand-style smoking ban.

As if that will stop our cost of living crisis or the migrant boats or the general social division that pervades the UK.

No, none of that is important to Rishi. Nor can he solve it, apparently, which is why he is turning his attention to cigarettes.

It should be noted that we are in the low double-digits when it comes to smoking rates, which explains why Britons have become fatter over the past 20 to 30 years.

On October 8, The Telegraph‘s Melanie McDonagh, a practising Catholic by the way, was equally appalled, contrasting Rishi’s faux conservativism with a freedom-loving artist in ‘Smoking David Hockney is a truer conservative than killjoy Rishi Sunak’:

If smoking has a bullish face, it is painter Sir David Hockney’s. From his farmstead in Normandy, the great man has surfaced to denounce Rishi Sunak’s proposal to ban the sale of cigarettes gradually.

Well done, that man.

Hockney gives his reasons for not giving up cigarettes anytime soon:

This, he says, “is just madness to me. I have smoked for 70 years. I started when I was 16 and I’m now 86 and I’m reasonably fine, thank you. I just love tobacco and I will go on smoking until I fall over”…

As he says defiantly, “Many artists have smoked. Picasso smoked and died at 91, Matisse smoked and died at 84 and Monet chain-smoked and died at 86. He smoked and painted at the same time. I can’t do that. I don’t smoke while I’m painting. I light a cigarette every 15 minutes when I stop to check what I’ve done … Why can’t Mr Sunak leave the smokers alone?”

I couldn’t agree more.

Ditto Melanie McDonagh:

Here, I say, is the authentic Conservative spirit. This is a man who has taken on board the health warnings and decided to ignore them all. He has calculated the risks, set them against the benefits and decided that he’s going to carry on with smoking because he likes it and it helps him paint …

When the New Zealand government, under bossy Jacinda Ardern, announced that it would be phasing out the sale of cigarettes, many Tories thought this is where progressive policies gets you. I wonder how they’re handling the prospect that a Tory PM will be introducing the same measure.

It’ll be an unwhipped free vote for Tory MPs – but will almost certainly be passed with the enthusiastic support of Labour. Sir Keir doesn’t need to worry about being called the nation’s nanny – the PM has taken that role on himself.

Compulsory clean living isn’t really what people vote Tory for, is it? I had reservations about Mr Sunak when, as chancellor, he aligned duty on drink in proportion to its strength, so port took a bigger hit than girly prosecco. But Mr Sunak doesn’t drink. Or smoke.

If he wants to be seen as the successor of Mrs Thatcher this is a funny route. She drank; Denis smoked. It’s come to a pretty pass when the heir of Churchill isn’t a Tory PM but David Hockney.

Yes, David Hockney, who probably never voted Conservative in his life, is more conservative than the PM, at least in this respect.

Countries that allow indoor smoking

On October 9, following on from the great Sunak proposal on banning cigarettes, The Telegraph‘s Chris Moss had an article in the Travel section, ‘The surprising countries where you can still smoke indoors’.

Bhutan is the biggest surprise of them all:

… not every country is clamping down; in some nations, the mood music around public smoking is reversing. In 2010 Bhutan was lauded all over the world for being the first country to ban tobacco sales and smoking in public places. The ban lasted for over a decade but, somewhat ironically, the Covid-19 pandemic “compelled policy makers to change course” and the sale of tobacco was legalised again. Dedicated rooms in bars and discotheques are once again free-to-smoke zones.

Excellent news. I wish Bhutan well in showing common sense.

Chris Moss summarises the varied — and surprising — smoking patchwork around the world:

Interestingly, there’s often no obvious connection between a country’s social values and its attitude to smoking. Albania completely bans smoking in bars and restaurants. Italy doesn’t. South Africa allows up to 25 per cent of a bar or restaurant to be set aside as a designated smoking area, though stricter laws are in the offing.

In Japanese restaurants and bars, smoking is permitted in all areas (although in practice many such places restrict or ban smoking). Danes can still enjoy a cigarette in smaller pubs, but most direct smokers to the streets. In Benin, meanwhile, smoking is banned in all indoor spaces.

In the US, the law changes from state to state, and can vary between neighbouring towns and districts. Economics as well as attitudes to freedom is a factor. Many Las Vegas casinos continue to allow smoking indoors. It’s also permitted in bars, taverns, and saloons where minors are prohibited or that don’t offer food service, in strip clubs and – as you’d expect in business-friendly America – on some floors at tobacco-related trade shows.

So common are smoking bans, these days, that it can be quite jarring when you walk into a restaurant on holiday and realise that smoking indoors is still permitted. I remember going to Porto about a decade ago, when smoking was already a social sin in the UK, and my astonishment on seeing a gutter below the counter in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant absolutely brim-full of cigarette butts.

Of course, an indoor smoking ban doesn’t always happen quite as planned. Some German states have banned smoking in bars, restaurants and sports stadiums, but according to the NGO coalition, the Smoke Free Partnership, compliance across the country is limited where laws do apply … 

If you are looking for a smoke-free holiday, South America is the destination for you. In December 2020, when Paraguay approved anti-smoking legislation, it became the first major region to achieve full smoke-free status. New Zealand is also on course to become an effective smoke-free nation. At the other end of the spectrum, the WHO calls out India, Tanzania and Indonesia as countries that only protect a small percentage of their populations with smoke-free zones.

Moss gave up smoking some time ago, but he still has fond memories of it:

As an ex-smoker I have to say I broadly – if begrudgingly – approve of the Sunak proposal, but can’t let go of some fond smoking memories. I still see two InterRail trips I took in the Eighties through the romantic haze of cigarette smoke on railway platforms and can still recall the pungent perfume of black tobacco – exotic, European, a bit dirty.

I started smoking in the Eighties, too. It brought me my best relationships, including marriage, and my best jobs.

With that, I’m off for a ciggie break. See you tomorrow.

Restaurant news: a glimpse behind the scenes

Recently, I collected a number of bookmarks on the world of restaurants.

Whilst these apply to the United Kingdom and France, readers around the world will be able to apply the same criteria to their own dining establishments.

Chain eateries: the good

On September 29, 2023, The Guardian‘s food critic Grace Dent wrote a comfort food homage to chain restaurants, ‘A moment of dependable zen on a helter-skelter day’ (emphases mine):

… there is a side to eating out that is rarely celebrated, and that thrives on providing a moment of comfort: the chain. Come as you are, come dishevelled, hungover, heartbroken, alone or with a rabble. We’re not going on a culinary journey; rather, this is a culinary cul-de-sac where you’ve been doing a three-point turn for the past 20 years … A trip to Pizza Express or Nando’s will never rock your world, but the fact that you can visualise exactly how your butterfly chicken with macho peas will look before you’ve even walked through the door will bring a moment of dependable zen to a helter-skelter day.

… we choose the chain because it rarely seriously angers us. Sure, they will have bad days – fiorentina pizza with a hard egg yolk, a Zinger Supercharger Tower meal with missing hash brown, or dry, overcooked peri peri chicken, as well as missing loo paper and forgotten desserts – but your favourite chain never truly burns its bridges …

… to ensure I get to eat something hot in a motorway service station, is often my single moment of self-care in an otherwise thankless day. I’m not at Noma now, and needs must, so I’ll take joy however it’s packaged.

Chain eateries: the bad

Two weeks later on September 11, The Telegraph‘s Ed Cumming wrote about the up and coming British bakery chain, Gail’s, where a loaf of bread costs £5.

Cumming wrote about his disillusionment in ‘How Gail’s has gone from bourgeois cafe to irritatingly robotic chain’:

… the other day … I read that Gail’s, the bakery chain, had estimated that there was scope in the UK for ‘300-500’ stores. Speaking at something called the ‘Lunch!’ event, managing director Marta Pogroszewska said there was ‘high demand’ for what Gail’s does, adding that the ‘bakery space is very interesting right now’. It plans to open 31 new stores this financial year, adding to the 121 it already has.

She’s right, the bakery space is interesting right now. Gail’s is a particular example. Like bankruptcy, or falling in love, Gail’s is something that happened slowly and then all at once. The first shop opened nearly 20 years ago, in Hampstead in 2005. As it inched its way through the capital’s more bourgeois enclaves – Notting Hill, Soho, Bloomsbury, Kentish Town – Gail’s became a byword for sophistication. Its distinctive red and white branding was a proof that you could relax, you were not far from a superior pastry and a babycinno for your toddler. If you were a Gail’s person you were better than other café goers.

Gail’s has a good pedigree, in that it started with Luke Johnson, the man behind the success of Pizza Express. Then, two years ago, private equity arrived:

Evidently the formula, devised by former Pizza Express maestro Luke Johnson, worked. In September 2021, as the rest of the hospitality industry was licking its wounds from the pandemic, Gail’s – which then had around 70 outlets – announced it was to be bought by Bain, the private equity firm, in a deal worth a reported £200 million. Flush with American cash, since then it has been opening new branches faster than you can say ‘San Francisco Sourdough’.

Gail’s secret is to appeal to people who like exclusivity:

… the Gail’s Superiority Feeling depends on the sense you are getting an elevated experience, not available to everyone. These loaves cost a fiver, which is a good feeling to those who can afford it; but apart from the cost, part of the joy is knowing that you can’t get them everywhere. ‘People might not buy a new Mercedes, but most people still treat themselves to sourdough bread,’ said the chief executive, Tom Molnar, earlier this year, showing a curious understanding of the word ‘most’.

I treat myself to sourdough bread nearly weekly. I have my own culture, make the dough and bake the bread myself. It costs a fraction of what Gail’s loaves cost — and, on the basis that I make it, it’s pretty darned exclusive. But I digress.

Cumming has become a bit disillusioned with a chain he once enjoyed:

… as it expands, Gail’s is already starting to betray the irritating robotic tendencies of a large chain. It has an app that takes about 45 minutes to load, so is useless at the till …

There is gold in bakeries, for those who can get it right. Just look at Greggs. But the road to profit is paved with quotidian pains. After all, if I want to overpay for a disappointing baguette served by brusque staff on every street in the country, I can go to Pret.

Pret’s a darned sight cheaper, that’s for sure.

Fortnum and Mason eye US market

Granted, this item is not restaurant-oriented, even though Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly has a restaurant that attracts both Britons and tourists.

The department store has discovered that visiting Americans would like to buy their merchandise back home in the US.

On October 31, The Telegraph reported, ‘Fortnum & Mason plots major US expansion as demand for British tea and jam grows’:

Tom Athron, chief executive at Fortnum & Mason, said the upmarket grocer would open a warehouse in the US so it could begin selling its products directly to Americans.

Mr Athron told The Telegraph: “About a third of the overseas customers into Piccadilly are from the US. What we want to do in much the same way as we’ve done in the EU is put some of our own stock on the ground.”

The upmarket kitchenware chain Williams Sonoma is ready to help:

Californian retailer Williams Sonoma, which owns chains including West Elm and Pottery Barn, currently imports some Fortnum & Mason products to sell in its shops but plans to open a warehouse would allow the British retailer to sell products directly to Americans for the first time.

Demand is strongest in California and New York “and then some of the major cities – Houston in Texas is big, Chicago is big and Miami,” Mr Athron said.

American shoppers are particularly fond of British staples such as tea and jams, Mr Athron said. Fortnum & Mason holds a royal warrant to supply the King with tea as well as groceries.

Mr Athron said: “We want to make sure that they have access to products at home but send them signposts so when they come to the UK, they think: ‘Oh, I must go and get the full Fortnum’s Piccadilly experience’.”

He suggested Fortnum & Mason could even open shops in the US in the future, saying: “I always remain open to it.”

European business is expanding …

It comes as the King’s grocer this week restarted deliveries to the EU for the first time since they were curtailed by post-Brexit red tape. Fortnum & Mason has opened a new warehouse in Belgium and launched a dedicated EU website.

… as is trade at two major international airports:

As well as restarting deliveries in the EU and expanding into the US, the retailer earlier this year opened a new shop in Hong Kong International Airport and plans to open another branch in Dubai International Airport over the coming months.

Tom Athron is making Fortnum’s even more appealing to foodies in Piccadilly:

Mr Athron, a former chief financial officer of Waitrose, took on the role of chief executive in 2020 during the throes of the pandemic and kicked off a five-year plan designed to make the business more appealing to a broader range of shoppers.

This included a major revamp of the third floor of its Piccadilly shop, turning it into a “creative hub” for food and drink with an in-house kitchen, gin distillery and new kitchenware shop.

Excellent news!

2014, 2023: French legislation on restaurant fare made on the premises

Over the past 15 years, controversy has loomed over the extent to which quality restaurant food is made on the premises.

In 2009, news emerged that some of Gordon Ramsay’s expensive fare was actually sent in from industrial kitchens in west London. Wikipedia tells — or reminds — us:

On 17 April 2009, it was revealed that one of Ramsay’s restaurants, Foxtrot Oscar in London’s Chelsea area, used pre-prepared food that was heated up and sold with mark-ups of up to 586%. It was also revealed that three of his gastropubs in London did the same thing. A spokeswoman for Ramsay said, “Gordon Ramsay chefs prepare components of dishes devised and produced to the highest Gordon Ramsay standards. These are supplied to those kitchens with limited cooking space such as Foxtrot Oscar and Gordon Ramsay’s highly acclaimed pubs, including the Narrow. These are sealed and transported daily in refrigerated vans and all menu dishes are then cooked in the individual kitchens. This is only for the supply of Foxtrot Oscar and the three pubs and allows each establishment to control the consistency and the quality of the food served.”^[159][160] Reflecting on the controversy in 2010, Ramsay was unapologetic: “When I was working at the Gavroche all those years ago, the duck terrine wasn’t made there. It was made outside, then brought to the restaurant wrapped in plastic. This is standard practice. What on earth was the fuss about?”^[161]

Well, I missed what he said about Le Gavroche, which is closing at the end of the year to allow Michel Roux Jr to focus on other projects. I ate there once. It was an outstanding lunch. I’m glad I didn’t have the duck terrine.

Around the time that the Ramsay controversy came to light, the French current affairs magazine Marianne had an extensive report on the amount of restaurant food that is actually boil-in-the-bag. French restaurateurs said that it helped them keep overheads down. Furthermore, they were able to hire less expensive migrant staff who just wanted a job and really weren’t interested in cooking. Oh, dear.

In 2014, however, a new law appeared in France designed to regulate — and reduce — the amount of pre-prepared restaurant food. This was during François Hollande’s presidency.

On July 15 that year, The Guardian reported:

From 15 July, every restaurant in France will have to make clear whether it cooks its food from scratch, rather than serving food prepared industrially off-site. After all, who wants to sit on a bistro terrace, charging bistro prices, to be served onion soup out of a packet? But according to chefs, the “fait maison” (homemade) law falls far short of its goals.

… midrange restaurants in particular have faced criticism for using factory-made shortcuts in the kitchen. A survey carried out by French catering union Synhorcat suggested 31% of restaurants (not including cafeterias, bars and fast food outlets) used industrially prepared foods.

Others claim the proportion is much higher – Xavier Denamur, restaurateur and fresh-food campaigner and filmmaker, carried out his own personal survey, which took him to dozens of restaurants throughout France. He believes closer to three quarters of restaurants relied on industrially produced food.

Last month, UK-based French chef Michel Roux (senior [co-founder of Le Gavroche with his brother Albert]) blamed this decline on France’s 35-hour working week and the high employment costs. “France is in danger of losing its proud food culture and traditions, not to mention its gastronomic supremacy,” he said. “In contrast, the food in Britain has improved so much and the standard is largely excellent. It is the reverse of what has occurred in France.” Nicholas Farrell also blamed the working time rules when he recently called French food a “national disgrace”.

Many in the industry say the 35-hour week has had an impact on the quality of the restaurant experience. (Ever felt rushed out at the end of a late evening meal?) But it’s not quite as simple as being restricted to a seven-hour day; the hospitality industry has allowances for longer days, within certain rules, and plenty of chefs put the time in. Gregory Marchand of Frenchies in Paris says: “You get career chefs who work long hours and want to learn, and people who are just doing this as a job.” Australian chef Shaun Kelly, speaking during a break in his 15-hour day at Paris restaurant Yard, says: “I have yet to meet a chef working seven-hour days.”

But many agree with Roux that high employment costs are crushing. Michelin-starred chef Alain Dutournier says things are going well at the high end of the market, but not for mid-range restaurants: “The deterioration began in the 1990s with the rise of national insurance costs and the cost of employment,” he says.

Cheap bought-in goods cut preparation time and the need for costly kitchen staff and it’s easy to find places adopting this model, according to British chef Michael Greenwold, of Roseval and the Sunken Chip in Paris. He looked at around 25 spaces when choosing premises for his restaurant. “Everywhere you went you could see that they were buying in ready-made stock, sauces and so on.”

And Dutournier tells of a recent trip to the coast, near Marseille: “We found it very hard to find a restaurant that would serve us fresh fish. It is terrible.” Kelly says he was surprised by the reality of French food. “I don’t want to use the word disappointed,” he says. “But as a chef, you hear about France all your life. And it wasn’t quite what I expected.”

The new law is meant to tackle this by promoting establishments that do cook from scratch. Carole Delga, secretary of state, said the fait maison logo would “allow all, at a glance, to distinguish food that has been assembled from industrially prepared elements from cuisine created from raw produce”.

All restaurants must now put the following key phrase on their menus: “Les plats ‘fait maison’ sont élaborés sur place à partir de produits bruts,” (“‘Homemade dishes’ are made on site from raw produce.”) Restaurants that make everything from scratch must then display the words fait maison or the logo somewhere visible, and those that have a mix must put it next to each cooked-from-scratch dish. Those that buy everything in, and so have no fait maison dishes, still have to put the key phrase on menus to “remind their customers of the rule”.

This is where the 2014 law was predicted to fail:

… there has been debate over what constitutes brut or raw produce. Under the law, to qualify as fait maison, ingredients must not have undergone significant “modification” – so no heating or marinating. But, for example, they can be frozen, industrially peeled (except for potatoes – fast food places shouldn’t be calling frozen chips homemade), chopped, sliced, or shaped, and industrially made sauce bases are fine too – as long as it’s noted on the menu.

Denamur has made a number of documentaries on the state of French food and arguably kickstarted the fait maison idea, but he is bitterly disappointed and is calling on chefs to ignore the law. “I chop all my steak tartare to order, but someone who buys it in, vacuum packed in a controlled atmosphere, where it might have come from 10 different cows, can call theirs fait maison too. It’s ridiculous.

“We could have set an example for Europe, but instead we have this catch-all where the government is trying to go some way to please the consumer, some way to please the restaurant industry and some way to appease the industrials,” Denamur says. “If you can’t make the base for a sauce, don’t make one. Don’t use an industrial one – that’s not real cooking, it’s not fait maison.”

Three top chefs decided to go further than the law. Dutournier, along with:

Alain Ducasse and Joel Robuchon have set up a quality mark scheme where restaurants meeting certain criteria, including cooking from scratch, can display the Restaurant de Qualité sign. Around 800 restaurants have signed up. And union Synhorcat is calling for a legally protected “appellation” under which only establishments cooking from scratch on site could call themselves restaurants. A similar law, in place since 1998, means the title boulangerie (bakery) is reserved for places that bake bread on site; other bread outlets must use the term depot de pain.

The article concludes:

… the fait maison law is unlikely to help much.

And, unfortunately, it did not help.

Nine years later, Emmanuel Macron’s administration is attempting to rectify his predecessor’s — Hollande’s — shortcomings in the ‘fait maison‘ law.

On October 23, 2023, The Connexion reported on the new legislation and explained why the 2014 law did not work:

Restaurants will have to display a new logo to indicate which dishes were not entirely prepared by the chef under new plans announced by the minister of commerce.

Dishes that are entirely prepared by a restaurant can already be highlighted on the menu with the existing fait maison, or homemade symbol, which is a pan with a roof over it. However due to the stringent criteria this requires, it is not very widely used.

Out of France’s 175,000 restaurants, only 7,000 use the fait maison symbol, according to Alain Fontaine, president of the l’association française des maîtres restaurateurs.

In large part this is due to the extra work that the logo requires: restaurants must be able to provide documentation about the cooking process at every stage, without which they could be penalised for false advertising.

Frozen ingredients are allowed, but not chips: a single frozen chip disqualifies a dish from being fait maison.

Under the new plans announced on October 22, the opposite approach will be tested by 2025: a logo for non-homemade dishes.

“We have been working on this for several months,” Minister of Commerce, Olivia Grégoire, told La Tribune.

“We have to do something, because the optional fait maison logo that was created in 2014 is difficult to implement and not widely used.”

“There needs to be more transparency, both for customers and tourists,” she said.

“It is also good for the morale of restaurateurs who take the pain to prepare homemade dishes for their customers.”

However, Alain Fontaine doubted whether the new law would help:

… he is not certain that the new logo will lead to more homemade dishes.

“To make homemade food, even if it is cheaper in terms of ingredients, you need professionals in the kitchen, not just ‘bag cutters.’

“There is a problem of recruitment that affects the whole sector.”

Several months ago, I listened to a number of discussions about the restaurant sector on France’s talk radio station RMC. A number of independent restaurateurs complained that furlough during the coronavirus pandemic put paid to retaining cooks as well as front of house staff. More than one said that his employees left to work for DIY chain stores where the hours were a reliable 9-to-6 and only involved ‘standing around not doing anything’. Anyone who frequents DIY chains know that s/he has to know what to look for because the staff are in no position to help.

EuroNews also had an article on the new 2023 legislation:

If you travel to France and sit down in a nice bistro in Paris to enjoy the delights of French cuisine, what you may find is… industrial food.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s tasteless and tough to eat but for many places it’s simply cheaper and more practical to buy mass produced and frozen meals.

It might be surprising in a country whose gastronomy has World Heritage status but restaurants have been facing criticism for using ready made dishes, bought from wholesalers.

According to the 2 Michelin stars chef Thierry Marx, only half out of 175,000 restaurants in France are serving homemade food. “Many of them suffer because they are compared in terms of price to others who use ready to eat meals, or even ultra-processed food without telling their customers,” he explains.

The article included a tweet from the Minister of Commerce, Olivia Gregoire, who says that customers deserve to know more about what is on their plate, where it comes from and how it is prepared:

Fait maison ou produits industriels, je n’ai pas de jugement de valeur à porter sur ce que cuisinent nos restaurateurs.

Ce dont je suis sûre, c’est que les consommateurs doivent davantage savoir ce qu’ils ont dans leur assiette, d’où ça vient et comment cela est préparé. https://t.co/HNT4Vq1yNH

— Olivia Gregoire (@oliviagregoire) October 24, 2023

The article says that how restaurants will comply is currently under discussion:

French Trade Minister Olivia Grégoire wants this new rule to become compulsory by 2025. Several weeks of discussions with industrials and restaurants owners, however, are now due to begin to define precisely how it will be displayed.

“It could for example be an asterisk which refers to the dish at the bottom of the menu. It’s less punishing and easier for restaurant owners to implement,” suggested Alain Fontaine.

The French government is also planning to require that France’s consumer and fraud protection agency increase checks on misleading use of the label or non-compliance.

How to know if your restaurant meal is pre-prepared

The EuroNews article gives tips on discerning if a restaurant meal has pre-prepared elements:

If you travel to France and sit down in a nice bistro, here are few tips from a French foodie to avoid readymade favourites like boeuf bourguignon and veal blanquette.

– If there are too many choices on the menu (more than 15 main dishes let’s say) be wary.

– Check if the dishes are not “too basic” like duck confit, gratin dauphinois, Shepherd’s pie or even chocolate mousse. Those meals are likely to be prepared by industrial suppliers. (That’s why many restaurants specify already on their menu “homemade” next to those dishes when they are.)

– If the menu does not take into account the change in seasons, then be extra careful – as frozen products are more likely to be used.

– A complete menu at too low a price is also worthy of suspicion.

– If you have any doubts, do not hesitate to ask.

They are plenty of restaurants across France serving delicious freshly cooked food. It would be a shame to not taste the (real) delights of French cuisine. Bon appétit!

The Telegraph‘s Ed Cumming wrote about the new law on October 28 and also looked at British fare in ‘How to tell if a restaurant is serving you a pre-made meal’:

According to the Association of Master Restaurateurs, just 4 per cent of the 175,000 restaurants in France serve meals cooked entirely from raw materials, a staggeringly low figure. Most buy from specialist supermarkets. Braises are a particular target. While French food looks sophisticated to outsiders, just like a gastropub, many menus are built around the same dozen or so items. These can be standardised and sold in bulk, which makes it easier – and cheaper, crucial in a cost of living crisis – for new operators to open. 

Even expensive restaurants use ready-made elements:

“The large majority of restaurants seem content to serve you the industrial version without telling you,” says Edward Chisholm, the author of A Waiter in Paris, a memoir of his time working in the city’s restaurants. “If you took the time to riffle through the bins of most Parisian restaurants you’d probably be shocked at how much ready-made packaging was in there. And this isn’t just the tourists traps in the centre. It can also be places masquerading as high end, such as places I worked. Often you’re so taken in by the decoration that it seems implausible that there isn’t a kitchen of the same calibre.”

Cumming then turns to UK restaurants:

Pre-prepared food is a feature of restaurants in the UK, too, at every level … That sweet gastropub with a surprisingly broad menu? It might well be buying from a central kitchen. Anywhere non-Thai with a Thai curry? Whether the curry is red or green, it could be a red flag, especially if it is alongside a range of other cuisines. 

As in France, braised dishes are a giveaway. In the UK, pies are another item to watch for:

“You can often spot it because it’ll be places that rely on slow-cooked things,” says Jackson Boxer, the chef and restaurateur behind Brunswick House, Orasay and the Corner, a new restaurant in London landmark Selfridges. “Or pies where the contents of the pies will be made in huge bulk, bagged and shipped out to be refilled in containers.”

Also judge by the look:

You can sometimes tell whether it is likely to have been bought in by how much it resembles something you could buy in a shop yourself.

“If you walk into an upscale supermarket like M&S and Waitrose and see those long lines of ready meals where there used to be fresh vegetables, they’re marketing themselves as Indian or Chinese or gastropub takeaway,” Boxer says. “Restaurants are essentially buying the same stuff. It’s bangers and mash where the onion gravy and mash are made in bulk, and the sausages come from the butcher.”

It’s not necessarily a bad thing, he adds. Not everywhere can aspire to make all its dishes from scratch. “It’s a sensible approach to running a business whose intention is to feed people,” he says. “Out of necessity, lots of places serving food are relying on low-skilled labour. But does it make for an interesting, rewarding, soul-stirring dining experience? I would argue that in most cases, not.”

Jackson Boxer discussed Gordon Ramsay’s boil-in-a-bag controversy from 2009:

“I think if you were a very successful restaurant with a few places and realised you could support them by preparing things in a cheap kitchen somewhere, with logistical advantages, but you were still using the same suppliers and quality of produce, there’s zero difference with a normal practice,” says Boxer. “You’re essentially dividing your prep kitchen from your service kitchen by a greater geographical distance.

“I think where it changes is where you outsource that preparatory work to large-scale catering suppliers, or by scaling up you use that sense of accountability with where your stuff is coming from. There’s no point slaving over your cooking if you’re going to work with something of poor quality.”

The article acknowledges that some things are better coming from industrial sources. However, these are items such as mayonnaise, fish paste or chili sauce.

Sometimes, even an experienced diner can be confused:

Another food writer recounts going for brunch and ordering a poached egg, only to be told they “couldn’t do it yet”, which was surprising given that there were eggs on the counter. Eventually the waiter cracked and confessed they didn’t actually poach the eggs themselves – they bought them semi-poached and heated them on-site. Omelettes, steaks in the bag for different levels of cooking: it seems there is no limit to the corners restaurants can cut.

It might be time for a French-style law in the UK, now that our food is on a par with France’s:

All this fudging means many British chefs would welcome a similar labelling system here.

Ultimately, good food prepared on the premises costs more:

“If you’re talking about making food as transparent as possible, labelling makes total sense,” says Oli Brown, of Updown Farmhouse in Kent. “A normal customer wouldn’t have a clue how food is produced. In a world where everyone is broke and a country that still doesn’t fully understand how restaurants work and what it costs to run one, having a label that would let you say, ‘we’re the guys who peel the potatoes and cut them and blanche them and fry them and fry them again and that’s why it costs £6 rather than £2.50’ would be very useful.” 

I agree.

On the other hand, how many restaurants are charging £6 for a plate for what started out as industrially frozen chips?

I cook dinner or bake bread nearly every day. The only item of kitchen equipment I don’t have is a deep fryer: too wasteful and logistically difficult with disposal of the oil. As such, when we do dine out, I normally have something fried, e.g. squid, soft-shell crab, matchstick fries.

Otherwise, I am continually learning how to expand my repertoire at home. It’s a lot cheaper — and I know what every single ingredient is and where it came from.

The Wolesley has excellent food but that’s about it

Ever since The Wolesley opened in November 2003, I had wanted to eat there.

The restaurant changed owners in March 2022. On April 2 that year, Ed Cumming of The Telegraph reported (emphases mine):

On Friday morning, The Wolseley looked and sounded just like it always has. Stepping over the threshold out of the spring sunshine on Piccadilly, through the big doors and the dark curtain, you entered a thrilling and glamorous world, just as you have since it opened in 2003. In this art deco playground, all monochrome and gilt details, the cutlery still tinkled on china.

The espresso machine still hissed in the background. It was a full house, as usual, and the hubbub of the kitchen still mingled with the happy murmur of the guests’ conversation. The acoustics have always been strange here, simultaneously deafening and private. Some tables looked like business breakfasts, others like visitors fortifying themselves with bacon for Francis Bacon across the road at the Royal Academy. One or two customers sat alone, setting kedgeree against their hangovers. Nobody looked sad to be there.

If you had heard the news, however, something didn’t feel right. And Jeremy King – sitting at his usual table, in the far corner of the bar on the right as you go in, a plate of salmon in front of him, untouched – looked like he had seen a ghost.

Overnight, it had been announced that he and Chris Corbin had lost control of their restaurant company, Corbin & King, to their Thai-based shareholders, the Minor Group, after an auction that finished in the early hours of the morning and concluded with Minor paying more than £60m for the rest of the business. The company Corbin and King had founded, and steered through two decades of turmoil and glory, was no longer theirs, and neither were its restaurants, including The Wolseley, Brasserie Zedel, Colbert, Soutine, Fischers and Bellanger, which lie dotted across the capital, lighthouses of civilisation.

“I owe you an explanation,” King wrote in a newsletter, sent at 3.15 in the morning. “We took part in the auction to try and buy the business and assets of Corbin & King that we didn’t already own, including of course all the restaurants. Regrettably, that attempt failed and Minor Hotel Group was the successful bidder, buying the entire business.

“As a result, I no longer have any equity interest in the business, although for the time being, I remain an employee. I assume Minor will take immediate control of the restaurants.”

The article, complete with photos of The Wolesley, goes on to describe Corbin and King’s ethos for their now-former restaurants:

Corbin and King have always prided themselves on being democratic. Leave others to the £200 tasting menus and wine flights. Their restaurants drew on the European cafe and brasserie tradition, places for everyone to eat and drink and be ogled and conduct their affairs, of the heart and the briefcase. Food was important, but the atmosphere was the main thing …

The Wolseley was the critic AA Gill’s favourite restaurant: he wrote a book, Breakfast at the Wolseley, about a room he described as a “thing of grand beauty.” When Bacon’s old rival Lucian Freud died, they lit a candle at his usual table. Once, at breakfast I found myself with Katie Price at a table to my left and Lord Browne, the former chairman of BP, on my right. Celebrities love these restaurants, not because they are given special treatment, but because everyone is …

Eating smoked salmon and scrambled eggs – the latter, it must be said, not quite as good as I remembered them …

At last, King emerged from the bar and started making his usual tour of the dining room. He joked and laughed and shook hands. Some looked like old friends, others he was meeting for the first time on what might be his last day. You might not have known anything was amiss, but not everyone was fooled.

“Is Jeremy all right?” the woman at the next table asked me, evidently noticing something in King’s demeanour. “He looks sad.” I explained the situation. She looked worried. “I used to come here with my father,” she said. It was one of Lucian Freud’s daughters. I asked which had been Lucian’s spot. She tapped the table in front of her. “I still try to come most Fridays,” she said. “Partly it’s in his memory, but also they treat you like a queen. The last time I was here, Stephen Fry, Nigel Slater, Ross Kemp and Frank Auerbach were all here, too. Where else is like that? …”

According to their website, the ownership of the various restaurants is under The Wolseley Hospitality Group Limited.

When my far better half suggested going to The Wolesley a few weeks ago, as we had a commitment nearby, I sat back and thought, ‘Finally’.

What follows are our impressions of our early dinner there on a weekday afternoon.

The doorman

The day had been rainy, although when we arrived, the precipitation had paused.

The Wolesley is conveniently located in Piccadilly, just across from the Ritz, separated by Arlington Street.

A doorman wearing a black wool overcoat and a bowler hat opened the door for us. He looked at us but said nothing. It was only when I said, ‘Good afternoon’ that he greeted us. Surely it is his job to greet every guest? The doormen at the Ritz do so without fail — and with a smile.

The entrance

As it was chilly, we were wearing our raincoats. I had expected a cloak room for us to check our things, but no.

The bar, pictured in The Telegraph‘s article, was off to the right from the main desk. We did not see it.

The man behind the main desk was European and polite. He said that our table was ready.

The noise

The noise level was deafening and somewhat disconcerting for people who are accustomed to quiet establishments.

Both of us were taken aback by the acoustics, and it did rather put us in a bad mood.

However, some people love a buzz, so this is a place for them.

The table

A young woman showed us to our table, which was inside the large horseshoe area in the front of the restaurant. One of us sat in the curved banquette and the other in the chair opposite. The woman with the menus swung the table around, put the menus on the table, swung it back around and left us to take off our coats, half sitting down, which is not the most comfortable posture for coat removal.

The banquette in this section is continuous, but the upholstery is interrupted in places by lacquered wood. While it looks quite elegant and Japanese, it does not make for comfortable seating as it is difficult to avoid sitting on the end of an upholstered section. We put our coats there, but it was clear that my better half spent the first 15 or 20 minutes making adjustments to find a better sitting posture. As such, we had to leave the table at an angle.

From my vantage point, I could see there were two coat stands in the back, one on either side of the door leading to the downstairs loos. However, only two customers used them. It seemed a better idea to have our coats with us, although, if it had been raining, we would have used the stands.

The drinks

A link to a notional October 2023 menu can be found here. It includes all the offerings for food and drink at any time of day. Unfortunately, not all of the prices have been brought up to date.

I was happy to see that Lillet was on the Aperitif page (page 12). I hadn’t had a glass in 37 years. The price is £12 instead of £11.75, by the way. It was delightful.

My better half ordered a Dubonnet, which had also gone up in price from the stated £11.

It’s not a huge issue, but someone only needs to update the PDF from the actual menu.

We barely had time to finish our drinks, as the main courses came quickly, perhaps too quickly.

As for wine, it is sold only by the glass. We each had a glass of Corbières 2019, Château la Bastide, Languedoc (£11.50 a glass, page 15).

The main courses

The food, by the way, is good to excellent (see page 7 of the menu).

Let’s start with the good. My better half chose a large Eggs Benedict at £19.95. The English muffins, while suitably thick were rather burnt in places on top. The gammon slices were acceptable, although nothing to write home about. The eggs were poached beautifully, running through a competent hollandaise when cut into.

Now for the excellent. I chose the Omelette Arnold Bennett (£19.50) which is offered in very few restaurants. It is just as well, because it is an art form and requires great cooking skill. I would not dare try this at home until I improve my omelette expertise, which, right now, is not very high on the scale. I have chosen The Guardian‘s link to the recipe as the photo shows exactly what it should look like. As for the name, the paper’s Felicity Cloake tells us:

A brunch classic that deserves to be better known, much like the early 20th-century novelist it’s named after. Though Bennett himself seems to have enjoyed the dish as a post-theatre supper, this silky, smoky tangle of eggs, cheese and haddock is so ridiculously, deliciously rich that it’s best consumed well before bedtime … though I won’t judge you if you want to go back to bed afterwards.

It was delightful and stayed hot from start to finish. I highly recommend it.

The only drawback was the lack of a bread roll and butter, which also would have gone down a treat.

The service

While the servers were polite, some even congenial — you get more than one during the meal — overall, the quality of service waxed and waned.

They did not quite guide us from one stage of the meal to the next. This process should be seamless. In other words, timing is everything, even in a busy environment. Furthermore, it is unlikely that The Wolesley hires inexperienced wait staff. Therefore, the customer should not be sitting there twiddling his thumbs whilst viewing his server from a distance. It was difficult getting their attention.

Our first server did not have English as a first language, which in a quieter atmosphere would have been fine. He obviously did not understand what we were saying when we asked to have a drink from the bar before ordering. He just walked away. He came back ten minutes later to take our drinks and main course orders. It took ages for the aperitifs to arrive, then the main courses arrived five minutes later. Hmm. Our waiter tried to whisk away my Lillet, which I had barely started on. Dear, oh dear.

There was a very long lull between the end of the main course and the taking of the dessert order. At this point, we had another server, a young, congenial British woman who explained what a London Rarebit is. She highly recommended it.

The next course came quickly, then there was an interminable wait for the check. Why does this happen so frequently? Answers on a postcard, please.

The dessert and savoury

There are very few places in Britain now that feature savouries on the menu. These are in place of dessert.

Not being the biggest dessert fan, as they’re usually disappointing in some respect, I prefer savouries.

I had a small London Rarebit (£9.75, page 8), which was a slice of toast with melted grated cheese on the bottom supporting three generous slices of good quality streaky bacon and a beautifully poached egg in the middle. I was in culinary heaven. I will definitely try making that at home.

My better half had the Black Forest Gâteau (£9.50), which was acceptable but not a must at that price.

The check

The check for two came to £140.70.

That was for two aperitifs, two glasses of wine, two mains and two second courses.

It was a bit dear, but then, we were in Mayfair. Add in rent and rates, utilities and salaries and it’s probably fairly priced. Still, the noise was a big drawback.

We will not be returning.

The teas

The parties on either side of us ordered a Wolesley tea (page 10).

The two women to my left ordered the Classic Afternoon Tea (£44.50), comprised of finger sandwiches, scones and cakes, all presented on a traditional tea stand. One of them could not finish her portion, so they packed it up for her in a small branded paper shopping bag.

The two people — a man and a woman — to my right ordered The Wolesley Champagne Tea (£56), comprised of the above offerings but with a glass of Pommery Brut Royal NV. When they say ‘a glass’ they mean one glass. Fortunately, the man said he didn’t drink, so the lady received the Champagne.

We got a better look at their tea offering as it arrived while we were eating and were unimpressed. The tea sandwiches were in longish rectangles made with thickly sliced bread (some white and some artisan whole wheat) with a thin sliver of different fillings. There were eight of them. They were far from delicate.

The assorted cakes did not come in twos, but rather one of each, which prohibited sharing: a Battenberg slice, a chocolate torte, a macaron and two or three other creations.

The clientele

It was interesting to see the varied clientele.

The twenty-something woman sharing the Champagne tea with her male friend looked straight out of the pages of Tatler and was known to at least one staff member who asked her if she was living in Mayfair now. The young woman said that she was still living in her village but was meeting up with a friend. The server said that it was good to see her again.

The two women on my other side looked as if they were work colleagues. After they left, an older couple — man and wife — took their table. They were from northern Europe, but the noise prohibited me from distinguishing whether they were speaking Danish or German. I imagine they found The Wolesley in a tourist guide. I hope they liked it. One of them ordered the Chicken Schnitzel sandwich (£21.95, page 7). I didn’t see what the other had.

There are two upstairs sections behind the horseshoe area. There were couples, families with young children and a group of men who looked as if they’d just walked off a construction site. Democracy continues to reign, even though ownership has changed.

The history

The Wolesley was a British car manufactured between 1901 and 1975.

In the early 1920s, the Wolesley Motor Group made a full range of cars, including large luxury models. The company had a showroom built where the current restaurant is. The showroom opened in 1921 and the architecture is worth noting. The architect, William Curtis Green, built a stately, imposing structure in Portland stone with an interior influenced by Venetian and Florentine design. Unfortunately, the company fell into receivership in 1926.

Barclays Bank took over the building in 1927. The bank asked William Curtis Green to create the bank branch, to which he added a number of Japanese lacquered elements: furniture and doors. The doors still exist today and the restaurant furniture continues in the Japanese lacquered tradition.

Barclays sold the building in 1999, and a Chinese restaurant took over the premises. In 2003, restaurateurs Chris Corbin and Jeremy King took over the premises and were careful to preserve its original features. The Wolesley opened in November that year.

The Wolesley earned many awards in its first decade. Judging from the non-stop stream of customers, it continues to do very well, indeed.

It is located at 160 Piccadilly W1J 9EB and reservations can be made online.

The Wolesley City will be opening soon.

Noodle & Snack: London’s most authentic Chinese restaurant

This week brought a special treat for my far better half and me.

We went to London for an event and had an early dinner beforehand at a place that The Times‘s Giles Coren reviewed in November 2022: Noodle & Snack, 145 Cleveland St, London W1T 6QH, in Fitzrovia, a minute’s walk from Great Portland Street Tube station. It’s open from noon to 9 p.m.

Coren wrote:

It’s an awakening of the soul. I’m obsessed

While I wouldn’t go that far, Noodle & Snack is probably the most authentic Chinese restaurant in London, if not in the UK. I’ve never had such good Chinese food since Lee Ho Fook in London’s Chinatown. It used to be my go-to and had lots of Chinese customers, but it closed years ago.

Some things have changed since Coren reviewed the restaurant.

First, they are no longer licensed, so it’s soft drinks or jasmine tea only. That was okay, because we had wine at the event we went to later. However, it could be a show-stopper for those who want to unwind at lunch or dinner.

Secondly, they took Coren’s comments on board and have translated what was in Mandarin only to English and Mandarin. Thank goodness. The menu on the wall has more offerings than the menu on the table, so check out both of them.

Thirdly, she has a print of Coren’s column about the restaurant on the wall next to the cash register.

A lovely lady named Sally waited on Coren, and I think she waited on us, too. Coren had asked her for recommendations, so we did, too.

She said something that was music to our ears:

I don’t want to give you too much to eat.

She suggested the sweet and sour pork, a helping of vegetables and an order of boiled dumplings.

She suggested the same to Coren:

“Have the sweet and sour pork,” she advised me. “Proper. For Chinese people. Speciality from my home city of Shenyang.”

… it was wide, tenderised fillets of pork, floured and deep-fried twice for crispness, in a sweet and sour sauce made from two kinds of vinegar, brown not orange, with big slices of sweet onion and soft, roasty-tasting garlic, and truly life-changing.

It stayed crispy until the end, too. When I lived in the US, I used to order crispy beef done the same way in a spicy orange and Szechuan pepper sauce — one of my abiding food memories, even though I had it several times. I had only found it at that one restaurant though, and thought of it like a lost friend I’d never encounter again. Fortunately, I have been reunited. Beef, pork — it doesn’t matter. It’s the flour dredging and frying that counts.

Then there were the dumplings. Coren described them:

Now, the dumplings were not your silken steamed dim sum, but heftier, thicker and very much boiled. Ten of them in a portion, a daunting prospect, but then… so soft, so warming, and the pork filling mild and quite sweet but made tangy with aromatic vinegar. Unbelievably delicious.

I agree with everything but the dipping sauce. Ours was pretty much straight soy, no aromatic vinegar. That didn’t matter either, because the sweet and sour pork came with plenty of sauce.

The biang biang (bang bang) noodles are a must. These are not the normal noodles from the Orient that one expects, but thick pappardelle on steroids. As Coren put it:

… the biang biang noodles … were wide and chewy and fresh and stuck together in places, just like your mum would have made if your mum was from northern China and really good at cooking.

They came with a sprinkling of mild chili flakes and spring onions. Sally mixed the noodles together for us and we helped ourselves. We put the sweet and sour pork on top and had dumplings on the side.

We asked for knives and forks, because unless one is adept with chopsticks, the food is too unwieldy, especially the noodles. Sally happily obliged.

My only criticism is that the plates are really small. They could do with normal sized plates, because the food is so ample and you want to enjoy it while it’s still hot.

The bill for two came to £39.60, including a 10% service charge. While they take MasterCard, Sally says they prefer cash, so, for that amount, I paid in folding and told her to keep the change.

Coren really liked Noodle & Snack:

And that weekend I dreamt of Noodle & Snack, night and day. Esther kept asking, “What is it?” and I’d go, “Oh nothing, nothing…”

And at noon on Monday I was back, fifth time in eight days, this time with my office mate Charlie, who knows China better than me and wanted to see it. Sally brought us a cold chicken “snack” on the house that was clean and cool and fiery with Sichuan pepper. And I got the sweet and sour pork again for Charlie, who laughed because it was so good. And also aubergines that were floured and fried twice and so squishy banana-like inside I wanted to cry, but don’t have a name for as it wasn’t written or spoken in English at any point. And the best mapo tofu of all time.

I noticed that, on the table menu, they have duck spring rolls and a squid dish for those with more adventurous tastes. On the wall menu, two different tripe preparations are available along with more pork and vegetarian dishes. This menu is indicative only.

As Coren raved about them, we’ll try the floured and fried aubergines next time.

It should be noted that getting downstairs to the loo was somewhat unsettling, and I’m used to London’s downstairs conveniences. There is a banister on only the left-hand side of the stairs. I’m not as agile as I used to be in dress shoes. That said, the loo was immaculate, and my mother always said that was the deciding factor in a restaurant. If they care about the loo, they’ll care about your food, too.

If you’re in the neighbourhood, Noodle & Snack is a fine place to eat. Giles Coren’s review has much more about the restaurant’s decor, complete with photos. You can see more photos along with a few customer reviews here.

Talk about value for money. You won’t leave hungry.

Langan’s Brasserie: a true London classic

This week, a friend of mine and I shared a real treat, eating at Langan’s Brasserie, just across from Green Park station, on the Stratton Street side.

Langan’s, founded in 1976, closed during the pandemic, although it was not a victim of it. It had been taken into administration, as it had been failing since 2019. New owners quickly bought it and undertook an extensive refit.

Even if the 1970s celebrities of stage and screen might no longer visit because of death or old age, the brasserie continues with its classics and traditions.

Dinner

Having finished a late afternoon wine tasting early, we arrived at the restaurant a good 45 minutes early, well before dinner service would normally start in many places.

However, that was no problem for the accommodating staff. The gentleman at the reception desk warmly welcomed us and took my coat.

Two groups were still finishing their late lunches, and he showed us to our table, also helpfully indicating the loo for the disabled just off to one side. My friend greatly appreciated the gesture.

Menus quickly followed. Our ageing waiter was either Spanish or Italian and of the old school: friendly, yet professional.

The atmosphere on the ground floor dining room is pleasant in its green and white decor. Particularly striking are the three large, green glass chandeliers adorning the ceiling. Dark green curtains separate the dining area from the rooms for private parties.

Each table has napery, complete with linen napkins. There is no stainless steel cutlery here, only silver. Even the sauce pots that accompany some of the dishes are silver.

The all-day menu has a special section to indicate Langan’s Classics: Bangers & Mash (£26), the Spinach Soufflé (£15) and the Fish Pie (£33).

The wide-ranging Raw Bar section has dishes that serve as starters or main courses. The main course in this category is the Plateau de Fruits de Mer for two (£87). Langan’s are big on Obsiblue prawns, which, although farmed in New Caledonia, are still considered a luxury treat. The prawns are blue in their natural state but, when cooked, are pink, just as every other prawn.

Most of the main courses come with potato and/or other garnish which means that there is no need to order a side of vegetables: money saved.

The grill section largely focuses on beef but also has a fish of the day on offer. Those dishes would require a side of potato or vegetables.

For starters, my friend ordered the Shellfish Cocktail (£19.50), which comes with Obsiblue prawns and a lobster claw. Not knowing how filling it would be, I opted for the aforementioned Spinach Soufflé, which takes 20 minutes to prepare.

The 20 minutes passed by quickly. The French sommelier took our order for Rully Blanc – Les Villeranges – Domaine Faiveley (2020, £76). He came back with the wine (complete list here), poured it and chatted with us for several minutes about French and Italian wines. My friend is very knowledgeable, and the two compared notes on their respective favourites.

After the sommelier left, we only had time to sip a bit of the Rully and sample some homemade sourdough before our starters appeared.

My friend’s classic Shellfish Cocktail did not disappoint. It was done in the classic British 1970s way with the slightly sweet Marie Rose sauce and shredded lettuce. He finished it with a spoon.

The Spinach Soufflé exceeded my already high expectations. It came with a small silver pot of hollandaise sauce with a touch of anchovy blended in for a smooth, almost herby flavour. The soufflé was perfect in its construction: a beautiful, flat rise and piping hot. I have never tasted anything like it: rich, unctuous and comforting. Despite its price, it is ample enough to serve as a main course, which I will remember for a return visit.

Our waiter came by to ask how everything was, which is not something normally done in British restaurants. We sent our compliments and finished eating.

We did not have long to wait for our main courses, either. Granted, it was only around 6:30 or so, but everything went like clockwork.

My friend had the Chicken Kyiv (£29), which came with a silky potato puree, Savoy cabbage relish, pancetta and peas. He said it tasted just the way the classic Kiev did back in the ’70s. The sauce was expertly encased in the middle and did not leak or get absorbed into the meat. His only wish was for more garlic in the butter sauce, but he is rather big on garlic.

I had the Golden Beer-Battered Fish & Chips which was a bargain at £24, accompanied by homemade tartare sauce and mushy peas, both in small silver pots. The waiter asked if I needed any additional sauce. Knowing my love of tartare sauce, I asked for extra. He duly returned with a small silver bowl of it. I’m not sure what they put into it. It was very light on cornichons and had no capers, but it did have horseradish and a strong vinegar, along with some dill and possibly tarragon. It was fabulous. My friend enjoyed dipping his bread into it.

The unidentified fish — probably hake — was perfectly fried, wonderfully moist on the inside and crispy on the outside until the very last bite. The portion of piping hot chips was massive, much more than I could eat: the soufflé effect.

Our sommelier was judicious in refilling our wine glasses throughout. We were still left with a glass apiece after we finished our main courses.

Then came time for dessert. Classics are there — Rum Baba (£12), Baked Vanilla Cheesecake (£12), Langan’s Mess (£12), Crème Brûlée (£11.50) and a British and French Cheese Platter (£16.50) — along with a more recent offering, Four Chocolates Fondant (£12.50). Homemade ice creams are also available — Bourbon Vanilla, Bolivian Dark Chocolate, Vietnamese Coffee, Strawberries & Cream — at £3.80 a scoop, accompanied with a choice of Greek yoghurt, tropical tutti frutti, Coconut Malibu or raspberry and yuzu sauce. Liquid Puddings — cocktails — are also available.

Wine suggestions come with each of the desserts. Feeling rather replete, I opted for a glass of Sauternes Cuvée Céline – Clos Le Comte 2015, 75ml ( £9), which was the perfect end to an outstanding meal.

My friend chose the Rum Baba, which was made the authentic way: a yeast cake, with plenty of holes to absorb the generous sousing of Plantation Stiggins’ 1824 Pineapple Rum. It came with a thin layer of pineapple compote on the bottom, which he said was surplus to requirements. I had a bite of the baba, and the rum sang through it. Definitely one to consider for a future visit.

The bill came to £236.

By the time we left, more people were coming in, among them a large private party which went through the green curtain. The noise level grew louder, therefore, book at a quieter time for more conversation.

On our way out, one of the waitresses was with a lady at reception. They suggested more dishes to try when we return: the aforementioned Langan’s Fish Pie as well as the Roasted South Coast Cod (£36), which comes with Obsiblue prawns, bouillabaisse and red pepper rouille. They also suggested the Crème Brûlée.

Everyone and everything was top notch. We were treated as future friends rather than complete strangers.

We shall be back!

History

Tripadvisor has a brief history of Langan’s, named after the original co-owner Peter Langan, who has since gone to his eternal rest (emphases mine):

November 2021 saw the hotly anticipated reopening of Langan’s Brasserie. With acclaimed duo, Graziano Arricale and James Hitchen at the helm, their mission is to bring all of the elegance and eccentricity of the original Brasserie – opened in 1976 as a joint venture between actor Michael Caine and the legendary restaurateur Peter Langan – back to the forefront of London culture. Reimagined for a new generation by Peter Mikic (Vogue once called the London-based interior designer a “master of metamorphosis”) each of the three floors will have its own distinct visual identity. Upon entering, guests are instantly be immersed in a sense of occasion …

You can see more photos on the restaurant’s Facebook page.

Although Langan’s interior might not look exactly the same, The Telegraph‘s restaurant critic, the incomparable William Sitwell, reminded us of its great past just before it reopened late in October 2021. His article comes complete with vintage photographs:

It was London’s most famous restaurant. Indeed, in the late 1970s, many regarded it as the capital’s only restaurant. At least, the only one worth going to, worth eating in and, above all, worth being seen in. For two decades from 1976, Langan’s Brasserie on Mayfair’s Stratton Street bestrode London’s social scene.

It was a haven for film stars, rock stars, aristocrats and the beautiful people of the day; and those who dined there were more than happy for everyone to know about it.

Now, 45 years after it was founded, and on the eve of its reopening with new owners, the man who obliged the stars’ desire to have their presence well and truly documented in newspaper gossip pages is reflecting on those heady days and – more specifically – nights.

In the kitchen of his London home in North Kensington, society photographer Richard Young – regarded as the original paparazzo – is almost melancholy at the memory. ‘Those days are truly gone,’ he tells me. Yet adorning the walls of his kitchen, hallway, staircase and on almost every space of wall, in fact, are many of those memories in stark black and white.

Framed photographs attest to Young’s role in the story of one of Britain’s great celebrity hotspots; shots of everyone from Elizabeth Taylor to Sean Connery, many of which were captured on the pavement outside Langan’s, and also, in delightfully unguarded moments, indoors.

‘Langan’s became the main port of call for any major star who was visiting the capital,’ says Young, now aged 74 and still plying his trade as a photographer of the famous. ‘In those days there were only two restaurants worth going to – Langan’s and San Lorenzo. But San Lorenzo wasn’t as profitable for me [because fewer stars dined there] – and the food wasn’t as good.’

The restaurant was the brainchild of actor Michael Caine and Irishman Peter Langan, a former chef. Caine had dined at Odin’s in Marylebone, where Langan was cooking, loved his seafood salads and crème brûlée, had become friendly with him and suggested they open a place together. Langan had bonhomie in spades; Caine could supply the guests.

I went to Odin’s in the 1990s with my better half. The food was excellent there, too.

Sitwell continues:

Caine’s idea had been to create an iconic restaurant, like his beloved La Coupole brasserie in Paris. ‘It was a shame there was nowhere in London like that,’ he said. Having dined often with Langan, he decided, in 1975, that they should just fill the vacuum themselves. ‘Peter, let’s create the most fabulous restaurant in London,’ he said one night. 

Langan found the location, where a restaurant had previously stood:

He focused on design and décor while Caine financed the project. The room had the comfort and sophistication of the smart drawing room of a grand London house, the walls adorned with artworks by the likes of David Hockney, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon. The great and the good felt at home.

Soon after, they would hire the chef Richard Shepherd, a man with impeccable credentials and latterly of the city’s renowned Capital Hotel – together the three of them created a restaurant that had the magic touch; a combination of food, atmosphere and guests that other restaurateurs could only dream of.

Now, Richard Young has brought together a collection of all the photographs he took at the restaurant over the best part of two decades.

His book encapsulates an era of glamour that existed long before social media; a time when celebrities didn’t have to worry about fellow diners taking covert pictures of them with a smartphone (and so were able to really let their hair down) and when gossip lovers pored over the pages of Nigel Dempster’s Daily Mail column or William Hickey in The Express.

Young provided a steady daily supply of pictures of celebrities for the latter, having stalked Langan’s the night before.

‘Every morning I would bring in three or four rolls of film that I had taken on my Leica M4,’ he says. ‘They couldn’t believe how I’d got pictures of everyone from Francis Bacon to John Travolta. They loved it and I never told them quite how I did it.’

In fact, Young was on the inside, literally, of Langan’s. At the time a fledgling photographer, he was hired by David Bailey and Patrick Lichfield, founders of celebrity magazine Ritz, to cover the capital’s social scene, and he would join meetings held on an almost daily basis at Langan’s …

‘I went to Langan’s nearly every night. I’d sit at the bar and watch who was coming in. It was triple-A-list celebs and it was fantastic. I could take pictures of them at the front as they left and even sometimes at the tables, usually with their permission. Sometimes without…’

Caine recalls the sight of Young arriving on his precious motorbike. ‘He would turn up on his Harley-Davidson and hang outside, capturing all the big names,’ he writes in Young’s book. ‘Eventually, he became a part of the Langan’s family.

He would hang by the bar and then run outside to capture the likes of Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro or Mick Jagger as they were leaving, and then come back in and finish his orange juice.’

Langan’s became Young’s second home:

‘From Princess Grace of Monaco to Frank Sinatra to Catherine Deneuve to Roger Moore, they all went there and it proved a very lucrative time for me,’ Young recalls. ‘To be honest, at the time I didn’t see the inside of my own home very much.’

The food was an essential part of the Langan’s experience:

With Shepherd in the kitchen, Langan’s wasn’t just a place to be seen – the food itself was a major draw. His dishes were mainly old-school French brasserie in style and, as a glance at an old menu reveals, there were a hell of a lot of them.

His handwritten bill of fare, featuring a drawing by David Hockney of the three proprietors – with Caine in the middle, besuited and holding a cigar – featured some 30 hors d’oeuvres, 20 plats du jour, six specialities du jour, 14 legumes and salades, 25 desserts, seven fromages and a concise list of wines and champagnes, all written in French on a single page.

There were snails, avocado with vinaigrette, Dover sole, roast duck, profiteroles and créme brûlée. It was a menu to appease the well-heeled and well-travelled and excite the palates of fashionable Londoners.

However, it became apparent that Langan had a personal problem:

From Caine’s perspective, Shepherd was there not only to run the kitchen efficiently but also, in Caine’s frequent absences, to keep a close eye on Langan. ‘The pressure was enormous,’ recalls Shepherd now, ‘juggling the kitchen, the staff, running the business – and Peter himself.’

For Langan needed to be kept under close observation; indeed, he frequently required a supporting arm as well, to stop him from toppling over. Peter Langan was in his mid-30s when Caine met him. From a rural background in County Clare, he had come to London in the 1960s and quickly established himself as both an effective restaurateur and bon viveur.

He became known as the life and soul of the party. Guests wanted to drink with him and, as his reputation as a hellraiser grew, they expected to see him worse for wear. As Young explains, in the early years he didn’t wish to disappoint.

‘But a lot of it was showbiz,’ he says. ‘He wasn’t drunk nearly as often as people thought. But they expected to see him on all fours, under the tables and biting ladies’ ankles – so that’s what he did.’

Eventually:

Often, Langan wouldn’t make it home at all and would be found asleep on the floor or just slumped in a chair at the back of the restaurant by the cleaning ladies in the morning. Fed up with his antics one night, Shepherd told the staff to put Langan’s chair and table outside on the pavement, to keep him out of trouble.

‘Sadly, Peter unravelled over the years,’ said Caine. In 1988, at the age of 47, he set fire to his house and a few days later died of his injuries. ‘He was a very sensitive soul,’ his widow Susan said, ‘and somewhat misunderstood.’

Back to the celebrities. Mick Jagger once celebrated his birthday at Langan’s:

Young famously captured Mick Jagger blowing the candles out at a table upstairs while celebrating his birthday in 1982.

‘I could hear people singing Happy Birthday in the Venetian Room upstairs one night,’ recalls Young. ‘A barman told me it was Jagger’s birthday. I’ve never run up a set of stairs faster. But I got the picture, bang, bang, bang and the photograph went everywhere. And I was surprised Mick didn’t tell me off.’

Prince Andrew showed up, too. At that time, he was a youthful veteran of the Falklands War.

Young continued photographing:

Night after night. He shot Dudley Moore taking over the piano; he flirted with Elton John, who obliged by flicking a V-sign at him; he saw Marie Helvin running down the street barefoot, clasping her high heels; he recorded Prince Andrew’s frequent dates in the restaurant; and he photographed quieter times as Caine, Shepherd and Langan sat upstairs, talking business.

By the 1990s, the London restaurant scene was changing:

… with a fleet of new British culinary stars emerging in the capital, such as Marco Pierre White, and other dining rooms attracting attention, like Sir Terence Conran’s Bibendum in South Kensington and Rowley Leigh’s Kensington Place in Notting Hill, Langan’s star was waning. Celebrities found new places to be seen at.

Young moved with the times:

Richard Young’s Harley-Davidson was more likely to be spotted a few hundred yards away, behind the Ritz, outside Le Caprice.

Sitwell says:

On my last visit to Langan’s for lunch, some five years ago, the food was still good, but the place was much quieter – with not a fashionista in sight.

Langan’s closed in 2019, a year before the pandemic. However, it was resurrected during lockdown with the refit by new owners Graziano Arricale and James Hitchen:

still as a French brasserie, but with swanky additions, such as a raw seafood bar and beef tartare prepared at the table.

It will be reimagined with a rather grander aesthetic, too, yet the new owners will be hoping to rekindle that original heady mix of A-list guests.

As Arricale, a former operations director for high-end hospitality boss Richard Caring, puts it, ‘We look forward to creating a real hub for the locals of Mayfair, along with those from the worlds of fashion, art, film and music, to help us bring Langan’s back to its rightful place at the centre of Mayfair.’

An Evening Standard article from October 2021, complete with photos, told us more about the new owners and reminisced about the old Langan’s:

Now it is to be reanimated by school friends and business partners, Graziano Arricale — formerly of Birley Clubs, who count celeb haunts Annabel’s and Harry’s Bar among their roster — and James Hitchen, who made his name as the CEO of one of Manchester’s most popular restaurant groups, East Coast Concepts.

This most storied of London restaurants, then, is in experienced hands. The pair have kept the bones of the old Langan’s — the grand brasserie-style food and showpiece dining room — but given it a facelift, expanding the offering. There will be a basement private dining room, a raw seafood bar, and an invitation-only upstairs bar, all of which has been overseen by interior designer Peter Mikic, with a profusion of Italian marble.

The question for the pair, though, is can they distil that same magic which saw Langan’s, which was co-founded by Michael Caine, become the restaurant of the Seventies and Eighties? The names were endless: Mick Jagger, Marlon Brando, Muhammad Ali. Joan Collins said it was “like a private club, where one could see many of one’s friends. I loved the food and the atmosphere, even if you did have to fight through the paparazzi on the front pavement”.

Peter Langan got on the wrong side of Princess Margaret, by then divorced:

He once invited himself to Princess Margaret’s table while she was dining with her young lover Roddy Llewellyn, flinging his jacket onto the back of her chair and then scrambling onto the table while mumbling incoherently. She never returned.

He also barred certain A-listers of the time:

He once barred Rudolf Nureyev “for being himself”. He failed to recognise Brando, saying: “The only thing I knew about him was that he was even fatter than me.” And with Orson Welles, he kept things even simpler: “I think you’re a stupid fat f***.”

One famous couple from the past who did appear at Langan’s reopening on October 28, 2021, were Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster. The Mail‘s Richard Eden reported:

Rod Stewart along with his rock ’n’ roll friends were regulars at Langan’s Brasserie in Mayfair back in the day — so you can imagine how delighted I was to see the 76-year-old star sailing into an emotional reunion with a long-lost pal at the reopening on Thursday night.

He and his glamorous wife Penny Lancaster, 50, ran into their old friend Jo Wood — ex-wife of Rolling Stones’ Ronnie, Sir Rod’s bandmate in the 1970s rock group Faces.

I wish the new owners well.

Initially, critics panned the new Langan’s for overpriced food and snooty staff, but Arricale and Hitchen took the criticism on board and changed things.

On November 18, 2021, The Times‘s Marina O’Loughlin, an eminent food critic, slammed both the food and the staff — as well as the new dress code, a first for the establishment, requesting that men wear jackets. Her article has a great photo of half of the main floor dining room.

Three weeks later, the aforementioned William Sitwell poled up, writing an equally sharp critique for The Telegraph. His complaints mirrored O’Loughlin’s.

Fortunately, the owners held onto the new dress code and properly addressed the food, the prices and the snootiness. A number of the dishes mentioned in those reviews have been dropped, with prices for many others dramatically reduced.

Sitwell, incensed that he had been asked about his reservation by the doorman, wrote:

… if you now arrive at this expensively refurbished gaff, as it works feverishly to reclaim past glories, and are greeted with a ‘Good evening’ from the chap at the door, you know who to thank.

Thank you, Mr Sitwell.

The doorman was courteous and helpful to another couple who wondered if they could get a table without a reservation. They duly did.

On that basis, Langan’s and its owners deserve to succeed. They’ve listened, and they’ve made necessary changes.

My friend and I had a memorable dinner, one that will go down in our personal annals of great food memories. You won’t be disappointed, either.

Marco Pierre White’s sautéed liver — a must-see video

In 1980s Britain, Marco Pierre White (MPW) was the original enfant terrible of young chefs.

He went on to win not only Michelin stars but also start the careers of the youngsters working in his kitchen at Harveys in Wandsworth Common, London.

Gordon Ramsay, Stephen Terry and Phil Howard all worked for MPW at the same time, more about which below.

However, more important is the bad rap that liver gets.

This is because most liver is cut into thin, shoe sole slices and is overcooked.

Whenever someone says to me, ‘Liver? Yuck!’, I tell them they’d love it if they ate it my way: thick with a somewhat crusty exterior and rare on the inside. A butcher will gladly cut liver to order.

A masterclass in cooking liver

Fortunately, Marco Pierre White likes it the same way and demonstrates how to cook liver properly in this video, which is around seven and a half minutes long. The liver recipe at the beginning only takes a couple of minutes to watch:

An Italian responding to the video says that this is (emphases mine below):

Fegato alla veneziana = Venetian liver. The mother of Marco grew up in Venice.

As is true of the most authentic Italian cuisine, this dish has three ingredients. Marco prepares sautéed liver, onions and adds a small amount of vinegar for the sauce.

The video begins with the sautéed onions on a plate with the vinegar added, making a sauce of sorts.

Now on to the liver:

1/ Marco salts the liver by hand from a great height, then grinds pepper on it the same way. This is because seasonings disperse better on food when applied from shoulder height.

2/ Marco dusts the thick slice of liver with flour, then shakes off the excess. He doesn’t say so, but you should season the flour with salt before dredging anything in it, even if you’ve already seasoned the main ingredient. Otherwise, what ever you cook in it will taste of just flour: terrible.

3/ He puts the liver in a preheated pan that has sizzling oil in it, just covering the bottom.

4/ When the liver has ‘caramelised nicely’ on the bottom, flip it over and cook until it is ‘nicely golden brown’. So, one side should be caramelised and the other golden brown.

5/ The finished product should be pink inside. Marco explains that this has to do with the temperature of the pan. If the pan is too hot, the flour on the outside of the liver will be scorched. If the pan is too cool, the liver goes soggy. Once you think it is cooked enough, lightly touch the top of the liver. If it springs back, it’s rare. The more the surface of the liver solidifies, the more well done it is, which is not what one wants.

If you don’t want to touch the liver, Marco says to watch for the blood to come to the top, at which point it is done.

6/ Remove the liver from the pan, let any excess fat drip off of it and put on top of the plated onions and vinegar sauce.

Because the video is old, the cut liver doesn’t look that pink. However, when Marco feeds one of his sous chefs a little bit from the top of a long knife, the sous chef says it’s great:

It’s the business.

Liver is an important protein:

Liver is actually one of the most nutrient dense foods you can eat and therefore one of the healthiest food choices you can make. If you get and buy local or fresh sources you can it eat it raw and it’s even better for you that way. We humans would eat the liver raw right after a kill while hunting. I prefer to process it and bring it home.

Done properly, liver should be pink in the middle:

… yes, the liver should be still pink when plated otherwise the texture will be too tough!

A viewer made Marco’s Venetian liver and enjoyed it:

I have just prepared and eaten MPW’s onion liver. Yummy.

These days, Marco is the face of Knorr’s seasoning cubes:

Check out his section on the Knorr website. Excellent cooking ideas for the home cook to try out. He even managed to improve on my own Spaghetti bolognaise recipe, and I didn’t think that was possible!

The video comes from a late 1980s show on Channel 4, which had just started broadcasting. Channel 4 has always been known for its innovation in programming.

YouTube has more episodes, but there aren’t many, because MPW stopped filming halfway through the series. Another commenter says:

They only managed to film 3 episodes before Marco told them to get the f…k out of his kitchen, apparently it was supposed to be a 6 episode deal with the newly launched Channel 4. Sorry about that.

The video is so nostalgic. There’s smoking indoors! We even see the little square in the upper right hand corner of the screen, signalling that a commercial break was coming up:

Ahhhh the box with the diagonal lines in the right hand corner of the screen that told you the adverts were coming up took me back.

After Marco gives the sous chef a taste of the liver, they discuss their mentor, Albert Roux:

Albert Roux mentored Marco plus many of his crew at La Gavroche in the 80’s.

Apparently Marco worked at a butchers shop and a couple other little enterprises Albert ran as well.

This was the dialogue:

Chef: Albert Roux is my mentor.

Marco: OUR MENTOR.

In the 1980s, Marco Pierre White was known for his pre-Raphaelite looks, especially his hair. He looked like an angel but ran his kitchen like a demon:

Marco is a frightening man in the kitchen. Honestly doesn’t even compare to how Gordon treats his staff, this guy was just plain scary.

Gordon Ramsay wrote about his time with Marco:

Oh, believe me, Marco yelled at everyone in that kitchen from the chefs to the waiters, read one of Gordon’s books and he’ll tell you no one was safe.

Today, somewhat grizzled, MPW owns several branded restaurant enterprises that are franchise operations.

Harveys

Harveys opened in 1987. It was a small restaurant in South London. MPW co-owned it with another restaurateur, Nigel Platts-Martin.

It attracted celebrities and, despite its size, was a bit of a status symbol. No doubt the French maître d’ and French waiters helped.

MPW hired young male sous chefs and commis who, somehow, managed to dance around each other in a demanding kitchen environment:

I can’t believe there are not more fights … Look how they are all crammed in there running around so close and for 12 hours a day.

In the video, he tells the interviewer what he wants from his staff:

Interviewer: “What it is it you want out of them?”

Marco: “I want loyalty, I want finesse out of the them.”

There was only ever one woman in MPW’s brigade, and she did not appear until the late 1980s or early 1990s:

Chef Gigi Mon Ami worked with Gordon Ramsay when he was Sous Chef at Marco Pierre White’s Michelin rated “Harvey’s” restaurant in Wandsworth Common, U.K. Gigi wrote about it in Moon On A Platter, but she also taught Culinary Fine Dining @ JobCorps- and said Gordon actually was very nice to her; kind of looked after her in Marco’s kitchen cuz he had hired her as a joke; she was the only girl in the kitchen, late 80’s. Ever since then, kind of a soft spot for Ramsay – that’s the way European kitchens were in the 80’s and into the 90’s before everything was PC.

Chef Gigi Mon Ami from San Francisco even wrote a book about it, Moon On A Platter. She travelled the world and was often the only woman in the kitchens in which she cooked.

The restaurant closed in 1993 with two Michelin stars awarded to MPW, who said that he wanted a third star and that, in order to win it, he would have to work in larger premises.

The young men, Marco included, did not cover their longish hair. All of them look like budding pop stars, including Gordon Ramsay:

Ramsay has looked exactly the same since 1987…except he doesn’t still have that Flock of Seagulls haircut.

One commenter on the video above wondered how Marco could have earned his Michelin stars with all those uncovered heads:

I mean the amount of hair the customers must have found in the food …

Marco had a penchant for giving his staff and customers a taste of his food. AA Gill, referred to below, was one of our great — and young — food critics at the time:

I love it when he feeds his cook the liver [and] onions with the knife… apparently this was something he loved to do. I remember reading AA Gill; he wrote that Marco hand fed something to the girl who was his guest at the time. Kinda cute, considering how much of a culinary behemoth he is. For me it says that he really, really does care about food and feeding people and creating gastronomic happiness at the highest level. Awesome.

Gordon Ramsay

Many of the comments on the video concern Gordon Ramsay who graces our television screens around the world, moreso than his mentor Marco.

Marco Pierre White is the only chef who ever made Gordon Ramsay cry. Unfortunately, this is not on video, but, allegedly, a spokesperson for Ramsay says that it’s true.

Commenters argued over who is the better chef.

Some say that Gordon merely copied Marco:

Ramsay copied so much from him, from his plates, recipes (scallops with curry powder, tagliatelles, etc) and embellishes so much. Marco is so much more authentic.

Several people pointed out that Gordon also copied Marco’s gestures but that Marco’s delivery of criticism was more constructive:

Notice, Marco says “come here” with a gesture only and then teaches the person something when they get there, whereas Gordon screams “come here” to the person, then insults them when they get there. Marco attacks the mistake, Gordon attacks the person. I know who’s the scarier of the two. And the better chef.

Someone else agreed:

At around 7:20 you can see Gordon blink his eyes like he is crying, there was another video at the end of which Marco says to Gordon, “You know, you cry every night”. In a Boiling Point episode, Gordon tells a young cook that he is nothing but a big baby cause Gordon caught him crying. Hell, when Gordon was his age he was crying his eyes out every night.

Another says that Marco is better:

Marco is the only chef in history to get 3 stars AND 5 spoons and forks in the Michelin Guide for his restaurant The Oak Room. That is total excellence. The great thing about it, is that he was doing a lot of the cooking when he achieved that honor. Gordon has 12 stars, most of which are not because of his cooking, but the cooking of others. Those stars belong to those chefs that work under his brand, not to him.

Anyone expecting the young Ramsay to speak will be disappointed:

Thumbs up if that’s the quietest you’ve ever seen Ramsay in the kitchen, haha.

And is it true that when he left he stole the Harveys reservations book?

Ramsey recently confesses he was so jealous of Marco that he went in Harvey’s and stole the booking book.

Stephen Terry

I didn’t even recognise Stephen Terry in the video. He returned to Wales to open his own restaurant:

Wow, look how young Stephen Terry is…….. He has the Hardwick Restaurant in Raglan near me 🙂

On a break, the interviewer asks him how he feels when Marco bawls him out. Terry shrugs and says:

It’s for a reason. It’s never not for a reason, the reason being that you’ve done something wrong or you’ve done something you shouldn’t have done … You’re learning all the time.

Back in the kitchen, Marco criticises Terry for the presentation of one the plates:

“You wanna do things like that, go to a florist!”

The love for a professional kitchen

Although a professional kitchen looks like a living hell, young men in particular still aspire to becoming professional chefs:

Yo, for real, passion is the only thing that drives you working in a kitchen, you face long hours, so much stress, burns, cuts and running, it’s physically and mentally draining for any person, but I love it. The people you work with, it’s like a family and it’s full of weird people hahaha but we’re always for each other and we always do our best. Sometimes Chefs can be tough, but even the tougher [ones] reward the staff and congratulate them for everything. It’s actually a beautiful job, but it’s tough, really tough.

Another commenter agreed on passion being an essential ingredient to a successful cooking career:

I love food. I love to eat it, i love to touch it, I love to change it, the way it sounds in the pan, the happiness it gives when it’s served, to improve my techniques and to magnify the ingredients. It’s all about passion really. And it should be, otherwise no one could do it.

Anthony Bourdain put it best when he wrote about the importance of cameraderie in the professional kitchen, a dangerous place:

The ability to ‘work well with others’ is a must. If you’re a sauté man, your grill man is your dance partner, and chances are, you’re spending the majority of your time working in a hot, uncomfortably confined, submarine-like space with him. You’re both working around open flame, boiling liquids with plenty of blunt objects at close hand-and you both carry knives, lots of knives. So you had better get along. It will not do to have two heavily armed cooks duking it out behind the line over some perceived insult when there are vats of boiling grease and razor-sharp cutlery all around.

I will post at least one more Marco Pierre White video.

For now, though, I hope that you try his Venetian liver recipe. It’s a keeper.

UK news in brief: coronavirus, the Queen and by-election disaster for Conservatives

It’s been a week full of news, which is unusual right before Christmas. Yet, here we are.

Omicron death

The person who died with Omicron was an unvaccinated man in his 70s:

"Early 70s"? What is this obsession with vagueness?
Age, comorbidity, ethnicity, weight. Also symptoms might be useful.

— Adrian Swallows (@adrianswallows) December 16, 2021

I, too, would like those questions answered.

The man’s stepson called into Nick Ferrari’s LBC show to say that he was a germophobe. He had everything delivered to his door and never left the house unless he had to post a letter:

Guido Fawkes has more (emphasis in the original):

Speaking to Nick Ferrari, the stepson of the man who died earlier this week claimed that he had been taken in by “conspiracy theories”, and refused to take the vaccine despite being in his early 70s:

He thought it was a conspiracy. He was an intelligent man but it’s all these different things you are getting from online and different media things… He wasn’t vaccinated at all.

According to the latest figures, there are currently 15 people in hospital with Omicron, an increase of 5 since Tuesday…

Chris Whitty’s Omicron projections

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson held a press conference with Chief Medical Officer Prof Chris Whitty and Chief Scientific Officer Prof Patrick Vallance.

Whitty predicted Armageddon with a chart showing unbelievably high projections of Omicron cases.

A good friend of mine said he hoped that chart would come back to bite Whitty in the proverbial. I couldn’t agree more.

However, when Whitty appeared before the Health and Social Care Select Committee on Thursday, December 16, he changed his tune when giving evidence to MPs.

The Telegraph reported (emphases mine):

Britain may be “better off” with omicron than it was with the delta variant, thanks to the booster programme, Prof Chris Whitty has suggested.

Giving evidence at the Health and Social Care Select Committee, the Chief Medical Officer for England said that vaccines appeared to be holding up well against omicron and said boosters may even be preventing transmissibility and infection …

“It is possible that with a boost, we’re better off with omicron than we are with two vaccines with delta for severe disease,” he told MPs.

Prof Whitty said he was expecting omicron to cause an “impressive” rise in cases, which could lead to daily peaks in admission bigger than seen in the January wave, when hospitalisations hit nearly 40,000 a day.

However, he said that cases may begin to fall quickly and that a milder illness may mean people would stay in hospital for a short period, reducing the overall burden on the health service. Fewer people may also need intensive care, he added …

“I think most people think on the positive side, that there will be some preserved immunity, particularly on the non-antibody side, such as T-cells. Therefore it is likely someone who has one or two vaccines already will have some protection and with a booster considerably more protection against hospitalisation and death.

“It does look as if boosters restore some of the ability to actually reduce infection and transmission, at least for a period of time.”

Then he told MPs that he was reluctant to give the public projection numbers, yet he did just that at this week’s press conference:

“I have resisted putting forward projection numbers into the public domain because I don’t think they are reliable and you can’t put enough caveats on them.”

We don’t think they are reliable either, Prof Whitty.

Health and Security Agency’s Omicron projections for England withdrawn

The UK Health and Security Agency also backtracked on their projections because of a change in public behaviour. I wonder:

We know what it was designed to create and it worked so now it’s no longer relevant to them. Some however hear the headline that went with it and still believe it. Whole way things have been done just stinks

— Rhino (@f1ryan) December 16, 2021

If only they would lift Plan B …

… because it is really hurting the hospitality sector.

Michel Roux Jr has tweeted about his daughter Emily’s London restaurant Caractère, which is suffering from a rash of sudden cancellations:

https://twitter.com/NBHNPP_Head/status/1471165962971975693

Her restaurant is not the only one. Omicron has everyone running scared.

But, what if it ‘cases’ did double every two days and what if we all caught Omicron? Would it confer herd immunity? We’ll know if the following extrapolation is true by Twelfth Night:

Thankfully it only doubles every 2 days

16 DEC 88000
18 DEC 176000
20 DEC 352000
22 DEC 704000
24 DEC 1.4 MILLION
26 DEC 2.8 MILLION
28 DEC 5.6 MILLION
30 DEC 11.2 MILLION
2 JAN 22.4 MILLION
4 JAN 44.8 MILLION
5 JAN ALL OF UK GOT COVID – NATURAL IMMUNITY- IDEAL

— Cornwall Brexiteer (@BCFCadvocate) December 16, 2021

The Queen cancels Windsor Castle pre-Christmas lunch

Because of the Omicron scare, our sovereign has cancelled her traditional pre-Christmas family lunch at Windsor Castle. ITV’s Chris Ship reports:

The Queen is said to regret the decision to cancel the traditional pre-Christmas lunch with her family. But it was decided it was the right thing to do.
No updates yet on the Queen’s plans to spend Christmas Day at Sandringham as she normally does from Dec-Feb in non-Covid times. pic.twitter.com/Nn1RbAfgGZ

— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) December 16, 2021

South Africa, however, remains relatively relaxed about Omicron, as the Daily Mail‘s Dan Hodges points out. Note the reply, which shows Chris Whitty contradicting himself yet again. Either boosters help immunity or they don’t. Which is it, Chris?

https://twitter.com/SilusPA/status/1471423948126670848

The elusive NHS GP can be seen — privately

Our NHS GPs have been elusive since last year. If you’re lucky, you can get a telephone or an online appointment. Very few patients are able to see them in person.

However, if one goes private, one can see one’s GP:

There you have it….the misguided perceptions of a an over exhausted NHS.

— Stephen Watkins #COYI #WHUFC #WestHamAreMassive (@SeahagW999) December 15, 2021

It looks as if the Mail on Sunday is investigating this situation. Good!

Niece was told no appointment available with her GP for a week. He was available however to do a private medical a couple of days later and she was told to “bring cash” to pay for it. I kid you not. Greedy Physicians not general practitioners.

— ezza (@ezzalodge) December 15, 2021

Of course

— ezza (@ezzalodge) December 16, 2021

Killing off ivermectin as coronavirus prophylaxis

In more medical news, we discover how ivermectin was effectively killed off as a prophylaxis for coronavirus in the UK and the US.

Thanks to my reader dearieme for the Vox Day link, which leads to a World Tribune article summarising the incident from Robert Kennedy Jr’s New York Times Bestseller, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the global war on Democracy and Public Health.

Excerpts follow:

Andrew Hill, PhD, is a senior visiting Research Fellow in Pharmacology at Liverpool University. He is also an advisor for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation. As a researcher for the WHO evaluating ivermectin, Hill wielded enormous influence over international guidance for the drug’s use.

Hill had previously authored an analysis of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 that found the drug overwhelmingly effective.

On Jan. 6 of 2021, Hill testified enthusiastically before the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidlelines Panel in support of ivermectin’s use. Within a month, however, Hill found himself in what he describes as a “tricky situation.” Under pressure from his funding sponsors, Hill then published an unfavorable study. Ironically, he used the same sources as in the original study. Only the conclusions had changed.

Shortly before he published, Dr. Tess Lawrie, Director of the Evidence-based Medicine Consultancy in Bath, England, and one of the world’s leading medical research analysts, contacted Hill via Zoom and recorded the call (transcript below). Lawrie had learned of his new position and reached out to try to rectify the situation.

In a remarkable exchange, a transcript of which appears on pages 137 – 143 in Kennedy’s book, Hill admitted his manipulated study would likely delay the uptake of ivermectin in the UK and United States, but said he hoped his doing so would only set the lifesaving drug’s acceptance back by about “six weeks,” after which he was willing to give his support for its use …

The two scientists discussed ivermectin’s positive results in combating coronavirus:

… the number of preventable deaths incurred by such a delay would be staggering — as many as 504,000.

Hill declined being listed as Lawrie’s head author on the paper with the positive results. Instead, he published the negative findings.

This is why he did so:

Four days before publication, Hill’s sponsor Unitaid gave the University of Liverpool, Hill’s employer $40 million. Unitaid, it turns out, was also an author of the conclusions of Hill’s study …

… when pressed he admitted his sponsor, Unitaid, was an unacknowledged author of conclusions.

“Unitaid has a say in the conclusions of the paper. Yeah,” he told Lawrie …

Dr. Pierre Kory, of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, commented, “Andrew is apparently making a living now accusing the doctors and scientists who support ivermectin of medical fraud.”

Regulatory acceptance of ivermectin did not delay only six weeks. Instead, almost a year later, it has still not been approved by health agencies in the United Kingdom or in United States. Instead The WHO, CDC, NIH, and FDA have suppressed the drug’s use.

Instead, we are taking notional vaccines. Who knows what they are doing to our bodies?

Boris’s daughter’s name

Boris and Carrie Johnson have named their infant daughter Romy Iris Charlotte. She is shown with her brother Wilfred:

"Romy after my aunt, Rosemary
Iris from the Greek, meaning rainbow 🌈
Charlotte after Boris’ late mum whom we miss so much."

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) December 16, 2021

Romy is a ‘rainbow baby’ because she followed a miscarriage.

Best wishes to the Johnsons.

Conservatives lose safe seat for first time ever

In less cheery news for Boris, the Conservatives lost Owen Paterson‘s former North Shropshire constituency for the first time ever — nearly 200 years:

Tories LOSE North Shropshire with 34% Swing https://t.co/zNkbbf47yV pic.twitter.com/cMxfEzRW2c

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) December 17, 2021

Paterson resigned a few weeks ago over sleaze allegations. He had a 23,000+ majority in the 2019 general election.

Failed candidate Neil Shastri-Hunt, who had been parachuted in from outside the constituency, said he planned to get some sleep and:

go and give my 8-week old a bit of a cuddle.

My commiserations to anyone who took this misguided betting advice:

Latest odds North Shropshire. Money makes Tories favourites… pic.twitter.com/Yb0j7AXFEV

— PoliticsMarkets (@politicsmarkets) December 16, 2021

The by-election took place on Thursday, December 16. The Liberal Democrats won by a landslide, as I thought they might:

North Shropshire result in full https://t.co/TUlow6XfIP pic.twitter.com/rwhDi2fXhN

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) December 17, 2021

Also note how low the vote for Labour was, despite party leader Sir Keir Starmer refusing to admit he is a socialist:

What does that mean?

Of course he does. He is trying to win the next general election.

— Phillip Collings (@phil_collings) December 16, 2021

Conservative Party chairman Oliver Dowden MP admitted his party ‘got a kicking’ but added that such by-election results are not unusual when a Prime Minister is halfway through his or her term in office:

Therefore, this protest vote might be a one-off. Let us hope so.

However, in order for that to happen, Boris must be more of a Conservative and less of a Green Blairite.

Courier’s employees throw parcels against wall

And last, but hardly least, we have distressing news about some Christmas home deliveries.

Hermes is the UK’s worst courier company, but we have to put up with their delayed, sometimes damaged, deliveries.

A reporter from The Times did a brief stint with Hermes and found a group of disgruntled employees, some of whom threw parcels against a warehouse wall. The reporter is shown with his car boot open:

This month an undercover reporter worked for Hermes, which delivers online orders for retailers including John Lewis, Marks & Spencer and Next, amid a surge in complaints about packages being late, damaged or losthttps://t.co/0odrfBKeso pic.twitter.com/CyMUJ1gagw

— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) December 16, 2021

Couriers were encouraged to mislead customers and “act stupid” if faced with complaints

Another worker suggested that the reporter should “tell them you started today” pic.twitter.com/EDfJmmzMbG

— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) December 16, 2021

Hermes will investigate but says this is not typical behaviour of its employees. The company is at the bottom of the national delivery league table:

The disclosures come at a time of growing concern about consumers being failed by delivery services

Last month Citizens Advice ranked Hermes bottom of its delivery league table

In recent days Ofcom also rated Hermes lowest out of delivery companies for customer satisfaction pic.twitter.com/ezkUjdzcfw

— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) December 16, 2021

Hermes said it had launched a full urgent investigation into the findings but that it was confident the “vast majority” of allegations were “unfounded and do not reflect our business" 👇 pic.twitter.com/XzDEM23tc9

— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) December 16, 2021

Meanwhile, I have been noting the rather downbeat Christmas notes we have received with our cards this year.

I hope that 2022 brings us far better tidings.

Coronavirus revives the long lunch: ‘Christmas every day’, says restaurateur

Anyone, especially men, who worked in London in the 1980s will tell you how wonderful business lunches were in that era.

They were long and languorous, fuelled with alcohol.

The 1990s put paid to all that, and lunch al desko with fizzy pop or coffee became the norm, which, sadly, still exists today.

Therefore, it is good to read that long 1980s style lunches are back, in England, at least.

That’s the only good thing that can be said about coronavirus.

According to food critic Kate Spicer, writing for The Sunday Times, the trend started during curfew mandates in Ibiza in 2020 (emphases mine):

Daylight decadence is back. As someone recently said to me: “It’s literally carpe diem.” It arguably all started in Ibiza. With clubs closed, hedonism was a sit-down affair, and lunch became the island’s big ticket.

When holidaying Britons returned from the Spanish resort and our restaurants reopened, lunch followed.

Restaurateurs in London are loving it:

Dan Keeling can tell you what a good lunch sounds like. The co-owner of the highly praised Noble Rot restaurants in London has his office above the dining room at the Lamb’s Conduit Street site. “There’s no maybe about it — people are relishing lunch,” he says. “I know when we’re having a good service because the rumble of laughter, the roar of conversation, the actual vibrations of convivial good living rise up through the floorboards. A service like that can go off on a Tuesday. I love it. I feel like a kid up there, listening to my parents having a party.”

“We’ve been scooping grown men giggling into taxis at 6pm all summer,’’ says Fitzdares’s CEO, William Woodhams. ‘‘What I see is people planning lunches weeks in advance — off the cuff is over, it’s all about a lunch as a main event. Reservations start with a table for two and snowball. With everyone half in the office, half WFH, people are not in London all the time. They’ll come in, plan a morning of, say, three meetings where they might have originally done eight in a day, and then devote the afternoon to lunch.”

This phenomenon is an urban one:

Keeling thinks the urban exodus during the pandemic has reminded people exactly why we love our big British cities: “It’s impossible to recreate that urban glamour and energy in the shires.”

How true!

Other big cities are benefiting, such as Manchester:

At Manchester’s Hawksmoor, the high-end steak and seafood restaurant, lunches are as busy as they have ever been since opening in 2015. Co-founder Will Beckett puts it down to people wanting “face time not FaceTime. It’s not about what’s new and centred round the ‘chef’s vision’. They want a restaurant that nails the food and atmosphere but puts customers at the centre of the meal, somewhere they’ll feel comfortable and loved.”

Not everything is rosy, however. Brexit and coronavirus resulted in Europeans moving back to the Continent. That said, we have six million who successfully applied to remain in the UK, so we should be able to get European hospitality workers, surely.

Still, for those restaurants that can open for lunch, the world is their oyster. One London restaurant co-owner described it as ‘Christmas every day’:

At Luca, the unimpeachable Italian in Farringdon, the co-owner Johnny Smith says they could book lunch sittings several times over. He describes the energy then as celebratory. “It feels like Christmas every day. And when people come they have it all — the prelunch drink at the bar, all the courses.”

Good!

Here’s a glimpse of the 1980s lunch, as served at Langan’s, which is reopening on October 30:

At its epicentre was Langan’s Brasserie in Mayfair, then owned by Peter Langan and the actor Michael Caine. It was the destination for “languid, long, late and liquid business lunches”, as Richard Young, the photographer who documented its glory days, remembers. When the stars came out, he would often spot the same people sitting there at 8pm, rolling lunch over to dinner. One of the restaurant’s new owners, Graziano Arricale, says it won’t be having any express-menu business either when it reopens in October after recent refurbishment. “People see Langan’s as an escape from work,” he says. “I don’t think the two-bottle business lunch will come back, but going out for friends is different. Our lunch crowd will be in for a long, celebratory two or three hours.”

Excellent!

Another fan of the 1980s lunch was the late Keith Waterhouse, who even wrote a book about it:

The writer and satirist Keith Waterhouse rose at dawn, worked until lunch and then spent the rest of the day over a meal he eulogised in The Theory and Practice of Lunch. The book, published in 1986, is worth digging out to remind our fretful, workaholic Pret generations what it’s like to breathe into the afternoon and take time over eating during the daylight hours. “Lunch at its lunchiest,” he wrote, “is the nearest it is possible to get to sheer bliss while remaining vertical.”

I could not agree more.

However, alcohol is not necessary for a good lunch:

… it doesn’t have to be drunken. Good company is its own high, says the model, make-up artist and sidesaddle stuntwoman Lady Martha Sitwell, who has mastered the sober long lunch. “If it’s a good crowd I’ll slam a few sugary drinks and a good atmosphere will pull you into the afternoon. It doesn’t have to be messy.” Not that she’s anti that. “It’s just pointless pretending you can work,” she says. “It’s straight to the sofa to rehydrate and brainless Friends reruns.”

Yes, it is one’s lunchmates who make the afternoon a memorable one.

That’s why my far better half and I are looking forward to another long, languid London lunch with friends next week. I can hardly wait.

News from England: the cost of coronavirus restrictions

The cost of coronavirus in England has been immense.

There is no end in sight for some restrictions and, as I wrote earlier in the week, there will be no Freedom Day on July 19, except for theatres and nightclubs.

London

On July 15, The Telegraph‘s Tanya Gold wrote about London’s ongoing ghost town appearance (emphases mine):

It is too early to say that London is dying, but something is wrong with the city and Covid has accelerated it. Certainly, there is a sense that things are slipping out of control …

I was in central London last week, and it felt ever more ominous. Perhaps it was the weather – again, the rain was monstrous. Or perhaps it was the silence: the department stores in Oxford Street were glassy and empty …

What will happen if offices shutter forever, and most people work from home? This will work for the affluent with spare rooms for offices, and gardens; or they might just leave for Amersham and its Britain in Bloom awards stacked on posts. For those renting in inner cities, it won’t; employers will pass a business expense onto an employee, one whose home is already small.

Will central London’s beautiful buildings become flats? John Lewis [a nationwide department store chain] is moving into housing. Will anyone want to live in them if the city declines?

Restaurants 

On the topic of London, Mark Hix, one of Britain’s best chefs, has had to close his two restaurants in the capital.

He has moved back to Dorset and opened a restaurant there.

Hix Soho in Brewer Street is now a taqueria and Tramshed, his old 150-cover restaurant in Shoreditch (East London), will become a furniture showroom.

He wrote about the two establishments for The Telegraph.

The owners of the El Pastor taqueria invited him to visit, which he did:

My strongest feeling was not one of regret, or even missing the time when this place was my flagship, but rather of pleasure at seeing it busy and buzzy again. It has a new lease of life. And therefore I wished them well, especially with the landlord, the same greedy one who had doubled the rent when I was the tenant and began the collapse of my London chain of restaurants because we just couldn’t make any money at the rate he was charging.

We have all learnt some important life lessons these past 16 months of Covid. Perhaps the landlord has too in the new business climate it has produced. Most of all, though, what that walk down memory lane did was give me courage.

As for the Tramshed:

I’ve got a date in my diary to go back to the kitchen at the Tramshed, my old 150-cover restaurant in Shoreditch. It is going to be less return in triumph and more fond farewell, for my presence there is, as the theatre posters put it, ‘for one night only’. The guys who have been running it since my business went into administration are moving out and are staging one last hurrah with my help.

Lockdown has killed the place off and it is going to be converted into a furniture showroom of some description. When I took it on in 2012, this handsome building had been used for chemical storage, so I suppose it is a case of back to the future. Which rather neatly sums up my life story since I handed back the keys in March of last year after breaking the news to the staff there that they had lost their jobs.

He foresees a difficult return for hospitality:

I’ve come back to Dorset, where it all started, and am now building a new future. All being well, on Monday we will be taking one more step towards that with the lifting of all Government restrictions on how we trade, but the hard work of repairing the damage done by Covid has only just begun. The road back to prosperity for the whole hospitality industry remains a long one.

As I write, Hix is taking a brief fishing break in Iceland, a country on the Green list.

However, a question remains over whether he and other restaurant owners will be able to trade freely on Monday with the lifting of restrictions. 

Hospitality chiefs are still trying to interpret what Boris Johnson said on Monday, which sounded to me like a U-turn on what he said on July 5. The Times says that masks and outdoor service are still recommended, as is checking customers in with contact details. That is what is in place today.

Furthermore, coronavirus passports, which the Government had previously denied would be recommended, are, in fact, on the table.

On Wednesday, July 14, The Telegraph reported:

Ministers on Wednesday published delayed sectoral advice for businesses on how to operate when the country moves to step four of the Prime Minister’s roadmap out of lockdown next Monday …

The Government was accused of widening the net of companies encouraged to use domestic coronavirus passports, after Boris Johnson initially signalled on Monday that they would be recommended for nightclubs and venues with “large crowds”.

The Prime Minister said relevant firms should show “social responsibility” and “make use” of the NHS Covid pass app, which shows proof of double vaccination, a recent negative test or natural immunity, as “a means of entry”.

The updated guidance sparked a backlash among Conservative MP and hospitality chiefs, after advice specifically for restaurants, pubs, bars, nightclubs and takeaway services encouraged the use of Covid passports.

It stated: “Consider the use of the NHS Covid pass to reduce the risk of transmission at your venue or event.”

So far, only Steve Baker MP (Con) has spoken out against this recommendation:

I am simply astonished that after everything the Prime Minister and Michael Gove said in the past about ID cards that they are advancing this fast down this really quite appalling path.

Kate Nicholls, the head of the industry body UK Hospitality, expressed her disappointment and said:

the guidance for pubs and restaurants was “disappointing” in the wake of a select committee of MPs and a Cabinet Office consultation “acknowledging that this was a very difficult thing to implement in a domestic hospitality setting”.

She said ministers needed to provide a “whole suite of guidance” to explain how Covid passports should work in the sector “for us to decide whether we are willing to adopt this on a voluntary basis”.

Predicting few businesses would adopt the measure by Monday, from which date the guidance is meant to apply, she said: “I don’t think anybody would be able to introduce this on a voluntary basis from Monday until we have clarification.”

Ms Nicholls added that “more work is needed by the Government” and warned that there were “real concerns” around equalities legislation, and “practical issues” around the type of testing that qualifies and how businesses should handle customers’ personal health data.

This is an unfortunate development.

Transport

Still on the subject of London, the capital’s mayor, Sadiq Khan (Lab), a strong opponent of his predecessor Boris Johnson, intends to continue with mask mandates on Transport for London (TfL) vehicles and the Tube as a condition of carriage.

Douglas Murray wrote an editorial for The Telegraph in which he says:

Sadiq Khan, for instance, has tried to look super responsible by insisting that even after the rules for mask-wearing are relaxed masks will be compulsory on public transport in London. Obviously, throughout the pandemic, there have been the rules and there has been what people do. I have seen plenty of people get on the bus with their mask on and then pull it under their chin as soon as they are in their seat. We have become used to the theatre of masks.

But the Mayor of London has ordered Transport for London to enforce mask wearing after July 19, making the prospect of a journey on the London Underground even more enjoyable. Citizens of the capital not only have to pay the highest fares of any commuters in the world for one of the world’s worst services, but must now mask up under threat of the London Transport Police if they do not. What a wonderful way to get the capital moving again.

Agreed. It makes no sense, and Khan has complained for months that TfL’s finances have been dire since lockdown started last year. It’s pure political theatre just to oppose Boris Johnson’s government.

Office work

On July 5, the Government encouraged office workers to go back to their workplaces.

This Monday, they backtracked because they got complaints in the media.

The Times has an article about the travel company Tui, which has told its employees they only need to come into the office one day a month, regardless of what happens on July 19.

Other companies have followed suit. However, in the United States, fully-vaccinated employees are expected to be back at their desks by September:

Other businesses adjusting their working practices include KPMG, the accountancy firm, which has told its 16,000 UK staff they should work in the office for up to four days a fortnight. In the US, by way of contrast, Bank of America yesterday followed Goldman Sachs in telling all fully-vaccinated staff to be back at their desks by September.

The policy director of the Institute of Directors says that the Government’s advice this month has been confusing:

Roger Barker, policy director at the Institute of Directors, said: “Like everybody else, businesses across the country having been awaiting ‘freedom day’ with bated breath — but we have had a series of mixed messages and patchwork requirements from government that have dampened enthusiasm.

“Return to work or continue to stay at home. Throw away your masks or continue to wear them. The guidance has done little to dispel that confusion.

“Business leaders are understandably confused as to the legal status that this guidance has and are concerned about vulnerability under health and safety legislation, as well as the validity of their insurance.

“Government needs to inspire confidence in businesses and the workforce that we can all return to work safely.”

School

We have little idea of exactly how much school-age children have been suffering over the past year.

One mother and her ex-husband saw how their daughter’s scholastic performance had been declining and put her in an independent school, with financial help from both sets of grandparents.

The mother, Mel Sims, told The Telegraph her story, beginning in the Spring of 2020:

My daughter was in Year 5 when the first lockdown brought her education to an abrupt halt. A bright only child, mature for her age because she spends so much time with adults, she’d been doing very well in the classroom. But then the state primary she attends in our village in Essex closed its doors to all but key worker children. I’m a 49-year-old single mother. My daughter’s father lives in Durham. I had no choice but to become her full-time teacher.

While some of her friends in private or religious schools were receiving a whole day of live Zoom teaching, my daughter’s school was very disappointing. What they did provide was an email every Monday morning, packed with multiple different lessons for parents to print off, somehow quickly get their heads around, then teach to our children as best we could.

My business – a children’s play centre – shut down along with the schools, so I was at home. I found myself teaching my daughter from 9.30am until 4.30pm every day. Other than the weekly email, we received no contact from the school, which, like many, lacks funding and has class sizes of 30-plus. My daughter’s after-school club, where she mixed with older children, was closed. Extracurricular dance classes went on hold and the swimming pool was shut.

Since Covid, my daughter has received very little or no homework as the teachers seem to feel the children already have enough on their plates. I don’t know what happened to her foreign language lessons. My previously high-achieving daughter was starting to fall behind the level she had been at before – not just a little, but dramatically. By the end of each week of lockdown, her maths and English were worse. She’d lost interest in doing better; any desire to excel. It was heartbreaking to see her sliding backwards.

This caused tension between the mother and the school:

Friction began to develop between us and the school, as they resented me trying to push her beyond the slow pace at which her class was moving. Many of the families in our village didn’t even have enough computers for their multiple children. My daughter’s academic success was riding on all the other local parents’ capabilities, and that felt deeply unfair on her.

Schools reopened last autumn then shut down at the end of January 4, 2021 for several weeks. By then, the cumulative negative effect had kicked in:

When the second lockdown arrived, my daughter was in Year 6 [the year before secondary school]. This time, there was at least a school registration every day, which took place over Zoom. But my daughter gained little from it, as everyone on the call was at such different levels both academically and behaviourally. There wasn’t the opportunity for much academic input from the teacher and my daughter quickly grew bored.

Fortunately, the girl had passed her 11-plus exams, which opened up more education opportunities. Her parents decided that she would have to go to an independent day school, but, even pooling their savings together, they could not afford school fees of £5,500 per term. With the help of the girl’s grandparents, they are able to meet the cost of the new school.

Mel Sims concludes:

We’ll all be making big changes. But we’ll do so in order that, if schools do close again, our daughter’s education will not grind to a halt. The new school staff have already assured me that if we go back into lockdown, exactly the same learning will continue over Zoom, full-time and unaided by parents.

I never thought it would come to this. Pre-pandemic, I’d always believed we didn’t need private school; that whatever happened at state school, we could get our daughter through.

School closures have changed all that. Yes, we’re paying a price. But I feel we’ve had to invest in a lockdown-proof education. With so many children off school again even now, as their “bubbles” have burst, it seems we have made the right decision.

Care homes

Recently, Sunrise Senior Living and Gracewell Healthcare, a group which runs 45 private care homes in England and one in Wales, wrote to Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for the Department for Health and Social Care to ask that mask mandates be relaxed.

On Thursday, July 15, The Telegraph reported that:

some of these measures are now damaging the well-being of care home residents.

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) is expected to issue updated guidance on care homes, and whether or not masks will be mandatory in them, later this week …

“For many residents, a visit from their family member has provided invaluable improvements to their well-being, but the requirement for these visitors to wear a face mask degrades the level of connection and therefore devalues the positive impacts their visits can have.

“This restrictive policy, along with various others from both the DHSC and PHE [Public Health England], should be reconsidered as we approach this next step in England’s roadmap out of lockdown.”

The letter said the success of the vaccination programme among care home staff and residents meant the majority of homes “are now set to confidently return back to an enhanced degree of normality”.

All 46 Sunrise and Gracewell homes have at least 90 per cent of residents vaccinated and all but one have more than 80 per cent of staff jabbed. This is the threshold that the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says needs to be met in each setting to provide a minimum level of protection against Covid outbreaks.

Helen Whately MP (Con) oversees social care provision. It is unclear as yet whether she will change any requirements for July 19. The Telegraph quoted her as saying:

I’m also really aware that there will be circumstances I’m expecting to continue in health and social care, clearly, where people will need to continue to wear PPE [personal protective equipment], which includes masks.

Conclusion

I find it concerning that the Left, whether in Parliament, SAGE and elsewhere have caused the Government to backtrack on Freedom Day.

As Douglas Murray says in his aforementioned article:

It is inevitable, perhaps, that politicians like Khan want to score some political points. But again what is so strange is that all the points are scored from that side. Putting aside a few MPs on the Tory benches there is no political pressure on us to go the other way. To do so – to advocate the path of greater risk and greater freedom – is still presented as though it is somehow irresponsible or otherwise risky.

But society is risky. Life is risky. The biggest leap towards normal life has already been taken. It is the success of the mass vaccination programme which this country has rolled out so well. But after that we do not need politicians and private companies policing us ever more. We need to take a different leap. Not into greater safety, but into greater freedom. Our allies and competitors are up for that. The question now is whether Britain is. An awful lot rides on the answer.

I couldn’t agree more.