spatchcock

I've been seconded to Hammersmith (work-wise) for the foreseeable future, and was initially dismayed by the set of choices ranging from the food court at Hammersmith Tube to the (lack of) variety among sandwich shops up Hammersmith Road. Since summer has broken, I've been quite pleased to discover a number of good pubs, including three gastros. Havelock, as has been mentioned, serves good beer. Unfortunately, they don't take plastic so eating was not an option that night. The Queen's Head on Brook Green Road has a very interesting menu, but it's more of a winter place - very dark, low ceilings, ... My current favourite is the Cumberland Arms on North End Road. Good food, good beer (Deuchars IPA, plus others), and backgammon. The just got wireless, too. Picnic tables for al fresco dining. Menu varied enough both on a given night and over the week to always have something interesting and appealing. Simple food, done to high spec and with quality ingredients. They even do good soup. Our team has designated it as our Away-From-The-Client meeting place. Now if Drapers Arms (near home) and Cumberland could engineer a rip in the time-space continuum, I'd never leave.

There's a new place called OttoLenghi that looks promising. They are an off shoot of a Notting Hill Lebanese place. Set up is a lot like Carluccio's - food shop in front, restaurant on back. They have just opened there doors, and are only open for breakfast and lunch. Supper service to start next week. Food and Menu in the window looked like very tasty. They are on upper Upper Street - not too far past Almeida.

So how does this compare to the story of Sambo's Restaurants? Details can be found here: Sambo's Revival (story is outdated - 1998 - item about how they want to revive the chain) In short, 2 guys named Sam and Bo decide to open a restaurant,a nd name it after themselves, hooking up with a kids story called "Little Black Sambo" about an Asian Indian boy who like pancakes, their specialty. They didn't take into account the American connotations around "Sambo" btw, the publishers have changed the name of the book, but descendants of the founders aren't changing the name.

Non-binding codes and standards are just that, non-binding. Without a level playing field, the signatures have little meaning. This, too, is an area where there is something in place, but largely toothless or full of loopholes. Reconstituted fruit juice has little regulatory need to distinguish itself from a packaging point of view from pure fruit juice - pressed from ripe fruit, no additives. Look at the Tropicana shelf to see how closely you have to look to separate the wheat from chaff, so to speak. In Europe, the European Commission caved to intense industry pressure to allow them to use significantly more milk and vegetable oils rather than pure cocoa butter to make your chocolate and still call it chocolate, despite the fact that this fundamentally changes the nutritional content and taste. And it has greater impact than bad diets and obesity. By changing the definition of the product, they don't have to rely on the original source materials that combined to define the product. Imagine being able to market chicken livers as foie gras, and you get the idea. At least we live in GM-phobic Europe. In the States, it took a lawsuit by Ben & Jerry's to allow labelling your milk (and other dairy products) as BGH-free. Such products containing BGH still aren't required to identify their products as having it. (That no one self-identifies is telling in itself.) Now, if these are the shortcuts and end-arounds that branded suppliers are pulling, what can we expect from the murky world of anonymous suppliers beholden to own-branding supermarkets?

Healthy competition suggests alternatives that allow people to make informed decision across a range of choices. The difficulty that many on this thread have expressed regarding finding an alternative to supermarkets just points out how one-sided the relationships between supermarkets and consumers is. The book goes into a great deal about how the relationship between suppliers and supermarkets even more so. Covent Garden is a bit of a weird example - they are a (somewhat) well known brand in their own right rather than an anonymous or new supplier. Their "thing" is fresh soups, sauces and juices - not pastuerised, no chemicals. (Americans can make a similar comparison using Odwalla). Go into Satansburies and see their own label soups in packaging that evokes home-made, all-natural (natural colours, artistic imagery). Labelling laws, or the lack of them, allow them to use phrases that suggest they are as good for you as Covent Garden. So the consumer sees what appears to be two very similar products for very different prices. Decision becomes easy doesn't it? At least it does until you look at the ingredients list.

I'm an American living in London. It's pretty easy to find a range of bourbons if you take the time to scout a bit. Many bars that offer a range of good scotch also offer at least some choice of bourbons. Note that pubs are generally poor places to dring anything except beer, whatever your preferred poison. Barring that, most have a bottle of Maker's Mark on the shelf. Canadian whiskey is for some reason hard to find. But that may be because I'm not really looking. I've found that my occassional forays onto the continent, it's hard to find liquors in general, at least beyond the bog standard (Jack Daniels is far too easy to find). I tend to drink the local concoction, unless I'm in Turkey (raki is evil!).

Fans of the Duke of Cambridge should know about The Alma, near Highbury and Islington. It's run by a few of the staff from the Duke. Haven't seen a published review, but it was the local of a good friend (he just moved to India). He rates it very highly. It's where I want to go next when it's my turn to choose, and speed and convenience aren't the overriding factors.

Damn. beat me to it. I lived on those during high school. Occassionally trading the worcestershire for A-1 sauce, but always missed the tang of the original. Growing up, I had no idea what a tamarind was. I thought it was something spicy, and attributed all the zing in worcestershire to that. I think early exposure to worcestshire has led me down the path of Tabasco, wasabi and all the rest. I think of worcestershire sauce the same way some think of Tabasco -- foo + worcestshire is greater than foo. (Although chipotle Tabasco is making a strong case for the throne).

You are not referring to Rodizio Rico? A churrascaria style place ? Many Brazilian BBQs tend to be tad more salt that folks in Europe can handle - But then we also tend to wash it down with beer. Rico is OK, nothing too great. I wonder if this was used as an ethnic put-down and se***l objectification of my folks --- I'll let Andy P be the judge being an english girl, with pasty white skin and a pear shaped figure, i must admit to a tendency to eulogise about tanned fit bodies. but i must apologise if you took this personally. (edit as i am actually tarka using jack's laptop as mine is broken)