Still Room Whispers

State Of The Blog

2012-01-06T10:05:00.000+00:00

This blog will no longer be updated as future posts will be uploaded to the Posh Nosh Morsels Blog, labelled "Still Room Whispers".

Binge-drinking and the myth of minimum pricing

2011-12-19T12:13:00.000+00:00

Eureka!
Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, has had the guts to stand up to the doctors pushing for price increases to combat alcohol abuse, saying their arguments are flawed.
Morning Advertiser, 19th December 2011

PubCo Shenanigans

2011-11-25T10:36:00.000+00:00

As one who was once promised the earth by Inntrepreneur Estates, and then hounded for future rent when I slung the keys back at them, I like to keep abreast of what the current crop of PubCos are up to. And now, to top it all, the government which pledged to purge quangos has caved in to pressure not to legislate against the likes of Enterprise by setting up a "Pub Independent Conciliation Advisory Service" (PICAS) and a "Pubs Advisory Service" (PAS). (Morning Advertiser, 23rd November 2011)

The mind boggles.

Another tale of Nanny & The Food Police

2011-11-15T11:18:00.000+00:00

Another example of Nanny Local Authorities meddling where there is no evidence of risk. A London burger chain has been bullied into ceasing to serve rare-cooked meat by a Council diktat.

Caterer, 14th November 2011

A Gluttony of Gastro-pubs

2011-10-24T12:42:00.000+01:00

Six weeks after I applauded the editor of the Good Food Guide for ditching the hackneyed term "gastro-pub", it seems that a Sunderland-based pubco - Tavistock Leisure - have different ideas. They are about to roll out both a gastro-pub franchise and an Italian concept - probably even less authentic than Jamie's, I suspect. (Morning Advertiser, 24th October 2011).

I like Sunderland - I spent a lot of time up there 20 years ago, running a couple of places in receivership, and I reckon they're a canny lot.........

Walking on egg-shells

2011-10-11T10:43:00.000+01:00

Global finances are (again) in turmoil; Greece's economy is in meltdown, with Italy and Spain not far behind - public sector workers, in particular, scared about losing their jobs ........ but the EU has the time and the money to ensure that the people of Europe pay more for their eggs (Caterer, 10th October 2011). Cracking!

Black Sheep is not a Peculier Golden Goose!

2011-10-06T18:11:00.000+01:00

In the news earlier this week, with the report that control of the independent Theakstons' brewery has now passed to the next generation (Morning Advertiser, 2nd October 2011), the family firm is making headlines again by drawing attention to the unfairness of our excise duty rates by revealing that in the last financial year they paid 41% of annual turnover to HMRC (Morning Advertiser, 5th October 2011).

Having discovered Theakston's Old Peculier back in the mid-seventies at the Anglesea Arms in South Ken, I had tremendous admiration for Paul when he disagreed with the rest of the family - hence "Black Sheep" - and went it alone.

One government after another goes for the perceived easy targets, but how long before the golden udders run dry?

Nanny's told to get stuffed!

2011-09-19T12:59:00.000+01:00

At long last a fairly major player in the hospitality industry has had the guts to call into question government interference - this time, the proposed calorie count on all menus - by pointing out that there is certainly no demand for this additional red-tape from customers. Full marks to Sarah Thomas of Orchid for her sensible comments (Morning Advertiser, 19th September 2011).

Let's hope it inspires others to put these half-baked plans under close scrutiny.

The Gastro-pub is dead - long live the pub

2011-09-06T12:49:00.000+01:00

Encouraging news from the editor of the Good Food Guide who is ditching the term "Gastro-pub" because it has become so hackneyed in recent years (Morning Advertiser, 6th September 2011). I agree that too many pubs think they are restaurants nowadays and I certainly would welcome a return to proper pub grub like Scotch eggs and home-made pork scratchings. And why is it that you never see a proper cheese board anywhere?

My home-made pork scratchings

Prohibition (2011-style)

2011-09-05T12:10:00.000+01:00

I have smoke coming out of my ears at the moment - I must have missed the original news that cigarette vending machines will become illegal in England from the 1st October 2011. Smokefreeaction.org.uk Report.

This sort of interference in our lives makes me mad enough (ie very angry) to take up cigarettes (if not arms) against the impossibly smug nannies who believe they know better than the rest of us what is good for us.

It was my choice to give up smoking - it should be your choice too!

The ubiquitous Aiden Byrne

2011-06-17T16:18:00.000+01:00

"So, Aiden (I have met him: the hand that is typing this has shaken his), just how many stoves can you cook at simultaneously?"

After opening - with a great fanfare - at The Hillbark Hotel in Frankby on the Wirral, this time last year (Caterer, 7th June 2010), Aiden Byrne had parted company with the owners - and most of his team, who elected to stay - by December of the same year. The former Black Horse Hotel - renamed The Collingwood by Ed Atkinson - opened with rather less fanfare; the new manager was "removed from his post" after a couple of weeks, at very short notice. I know this because I had an appointment to see him - made the previous day - but when I arrived, it was to be told he was no longer with the company. Assured, disingenuously, by the man himself that it would not be a wasted trip for me, I will be watching how he fares at Craxton Wood. (Caterer, 16th June 2011)

Don't get me started on who, in their right mind - even if their surname is Macdonald - calls a high-class hotel group after the world's most famous hamburger chain!

The Free Library Public House

2011-06-13T14:43:00.001+01:00

There used to a pub in Birkenhead called The Free Library - where it used to stand is now part of The Wirral Globe newspaper building. The vogue in the 1980s - particularly in Whitbread pubs - was to put up bookshelves and load them with fodder bought by the yard. Now, with funding cuts, it looks like more pubs really could become local libraries!
Morning Advertiser, 13th June 2011

"I'll have a Stephen Fry, a Kipling and a pint, please!"

Spontaneous Orgasms in the pub?

2011-05-09T14:28:00.000+01:00

In breaking news that Thorntons Chocolates are to take part in a joint venture producing a new chocolate liqueur, I can see lots of "When Harry Met Sally" moments in a local near you.
Morning Advertiser, 9th May 2011

I'll have to start thinking of a new cocktail to supercede my favourite Screaming Orgasm!

A force to be reckoned with?

2011-04-15T11:33:00.002+01:00

'Ello, 'Ello, 'Ello! Now then, now then, what's going on here then? Tom Robinson once declaimed that, "The British Police are the best in the world" in his song 'Sing if you're glad to be gay'. Well, it seems that Lincolnshire Constabulary are bigger nancys than Tom ever was. Apparently - at God-knows-what-cost to the ratepayers of that county - our fearless bobbies are being told how to pack their lunchboxes (No sniggering at the back!).
The Mirror, 15th April 2011. I despair

You are what you eat?

2011-03-14T11:27:00.000+00:00

I love food - it's a wonder that I can fit into trousers anywhere between a 32-inch waist and 38-inches (if one believes what it says on the labels). I love cooking and I love eating - in short, I love food for its own sake. What I cook and what I buy is not, for me, a lifestyle statement, a political badge, a gilded certificate of ethical beliefs - food is what sustains me and is undoubtedly my greatest pleasure (obsession, some may say) in life.

I'm unashamedly middle-class, although I think I would have made rather a good aristocrat - I eat lunch and dinner, not dinner and tea; I sit on a sofa (not a settee), in my living-room (not my lounge), and I go to the loo, not the toilet.

I discovered, back in the early-1980s, when I was training in cocktails, that I have a very good palate - I can imagine flavours and build up quite complex combinations in my head; I never thought to be exceptional and it is only with the passing of years and the transfer of that gift to cooking that I have accepted it is quite rare.

As I was not formally taught in catering - I studied Sociology - I do not find myself hidebound by tradition: a friend who is a very successful restaurateur, at the age of 16 or 17 told one of his catering lecturers that he (the teacher) didn't know what he was talking about and quit college. He's never looked back, and has been a tremendous inspiration to me over the last 25 years.

So, I've nailed my colours to the mast - now, to the excellent article on food and class in yesterday's Food Monthly, Observer, 13th March 2011. Louise Carpenter makes it very clear that this does not pretend to be an empirical study, it is little more than a series of vignettes, but no less illuminating for that. What I can't quite get my head round is this: the father of one of the families featured (2 adults and 2 kids, one of whom is vegetarian) is German (resident in the UK for 20 years), describes himself as "working-class", is said to be a "dinner lady" for a local nursery, and spends £178 on food in a week - £65 of that on meat for just 2 dishes: shin of beef on Saturday night and pork belly for Sunday lunch. Lovely ingredients, honest "peasant food" - the sort of thing that I buy regularly, but pay little more than £3 a pound for. I'm greedy and allow half-a-pound of meat or fish per person, so for six meals - remember that the pubescent daughter is vegetarian - my meat cost would be less than a tenner. Their meat cost, at that allowance, equates to £21.66 per pound. That's close on £50 a kilo! Just to pay their weekly food bills - nothing else - would entail a gross taxable income of more than £12,000. How, I want to know, do they afford it?

A Souper Cause!

2011-03-14T09:49:00.001+00:00

As a lover and passionate advocate of home-made soups any time, I think this is an excellent idea - instead of the poor supping at soup kitchens, the rest of us have one day of it, for charity.
Super Soup Lunch, Friday, the 25th March 2011

Love food, hate waste!

2011-03-13T17:46:00.000+00:00

Reading Jay Rayner in this month's Food Monthly, Observer, 13th March 2011, I find myself nodding and chuckling simultaneously. Is it the fabled Yiddish parsimony in our cultural DNA - I've just bagged and frozen a few spoonfuls of barbecued pork sauce because it may come in useful - which continues despite a love of shellfish, pork and the unkosher mixing of milk and meat, or is it just an Everyman's love of food? You tell me. Not just Shepherd's Pie, Scouse and Bubble & Squeak - so many dishes from around the world would not have seen the light of day if it weren't for leftovers and I, for one, abhor the Health & Hygiene regulations which saw an end to the constantly-bubbling stockpot in almost every catering kitchen. With no leftovers in my fridge at this precise moment, I think I'll have to go and create some.......

Blue-rinse Gourmets who outlive their doctors.....

2011-03-04T11:20:00.000+00:00

Interestingly, on the same day I wrote of my suspicions concerning the research into the amount of red meat it is now recommended adults limit themselves to, The New York Times published a heart-warming article on some maverick elderly gourmands who defy such nannying.

NY Times, 28th February 2011.

The writer of the piece, Henry Alford, does acknowldege: It’s the rare gourmand who, after 60 or so, doesn’t alter the way he or she eats, even in some tiny way. One praiseworthy exception, Larry Garfield, 95, of Key Biscayne, Fla., worked in the carpet industry until he was 83. Mr. Garfield, unchanged in his alimentary ways even though he’s had his gallbladder and prostate removed and had a quintuple bypass in 1992, said, not without satisfaction, “The main thing to understand about the people who have constantly warned me about what I eat is that I’m here and they’re not.”

That, for me, says it all.

Two slices of red meat a day can kill you!

2011-02-28T15:43:00.000+00:00

According to new "research" BBC, 25th February 2011, more than 500g of red or processed meat per week can give you bowel cancer. I abhor these scare-mongering stories that crop up from time to time. Once upon a time red wine was a definite no-no - until another bright spark (probably paid equally handsomely for a new research project) claimed the contrary: not only was red wine not bad for you, it was positively good in moderation. And there, surely, is the key. Too much of anything, with too little variety of diet, may be harmful; I personally would would want to see real empirical proof, obtained from a statistically-significant sample before according these latest findings much credence.

The Fox & Grapes, Wimbledon Common

2011-02-22T14:42:00.004+00:00

I've just come across this preview of a pub I used to work in about 30 years ago. The Handbook, 19th January 2011

It's definitely come up in the world since my day!

I'd dropped out of catering for a while to do a "proper job" but it was well and truly in my blood by then - and my usual saviour, The Dog & Fox was fully staffed. Thus, I ended up in Camp Road - I kid you not! Even in 1981 it was 30 years behind the time, run by Mr and Mrs Horder: I think his name was Peter but I can't remember hers - she was the epitome of Hyacinth Bucket and the staff were certainly not allowed to be familiar.
Ozzie Osbourne, who lived over the road then, was a regular - and boy did she fawn! The current poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, who was a couple of years younger than me, came in a few times while I was working - not so long ago I wrote a poem about her! But that's another story....

Mrs Bouquet (sorry, Horder) was inordinately proud of her "platters" - just like Hyacinth and her "candle-lit suppers" - which were just slightly-large plates of butties or Ploughman's with a bit of tortoise-chewed lettuce. Having said all of that, it was a pub with character and I certainly wish the new French team every success.

True to type?

2011-02-21T10:15:00.000+00:00

It doesn't take a lot to distract me from work - particularly on a miserable Monday morning - so I chuckled when I read the heading "SHATfesbury [my caps] to acquire £10.25m Enterprise package".
Morning Advertiser, 21st Feb 2011 Wonder how long it will be before their typographers get it right (or did they)?

Enterprise culture at Pubco giant?

2011-02-17T12:02:00.000+00:00

In a story which demonstrates the bizarre nature of current Pubco operations, an Enterprise lessee has bought, at auction, the freehold of the pub he rents - and now receives income on - from Enterprise.
Morning Advertiser, 17th February 2011.
Even factoring in the barrellage kick-back the Pubco receives, it must appear to any sane person that so-called "sale-and-leaseback" is another junk-bond debacle waiting to happen when the sub-tenant pays substantially less than he receives from his tenant.

Any excuse for a ceilidh....

2011-02-14T19:05:00.000+00:00

Planning early for St Paddy's day:
Morning Advertiser, 14th February 2011

The voice from Irish-America says: "They have tried to make it into a week here - just what we need, more drunks p****ng in the streets....."

A tax or attacks on boozing at home?

2011-02-10T12:21:00.000+00:00

Hands up if you think that piling more tax on off-licence booze is going to magically cure pre-loading and binge-drinking!

Morning Advertiser, 10th February 2011

I, personally, couldn't disagree more! The complex issues of pre-loading and binge-drinking are social ills that will not be affected by price at all - in fact, as disposable income is diverted from other purchases, we may see different social ills growing. There is no quick fix and I am getting more and more irate at reading, without transparent empirical evidence, the words of "experts" whose jobs and little empires depend on making this sort of glib proposal.

When is a carvery not a carvery?

2011-02-09T19:38:00.000+00:00

Hands up, anyone who has ever heard of a Curry Banquet Carvery?
Morning Advertiser, 9th February 2011

This is a masterclass in how to fill a Press Release with a load of waffle. "We're offering a carvery but we're not turning into carvery venues....and, actually, the equipment is just a mobile bain-marie that we'll use for other purposes when it suits us!"