apshelbourne

Probably, Kim. It's not a big village, and the chippy is the only one.

Sorry about that, Kim. I think it opens on Sundays in high season. I'm sure I've lunched there in August. The fish & chip shop is pretty good. And there's an off-licence (liquor store) opposite that does some good local ciders (the hard stuff, that is) and beers.

Probably the nicest Sunday lunch venue in Beer is Steamers. Fresh, local produce; plenty of seafood. The three pubs are OK, but nothing special. Me, I usually take my fish and chips and a bottle of cider down to the beach. By the way, we call them chinos, too.

Personally, i don't buy sausages unless the pork is organic or, at the least, outdoor bred. 70% of British pork, and nearly 100% of imported, is from pigs reared indoors in intensive conditions, comparable to battery chicken farming. I just don't want anything to do with that system.

Plymouth's a bit of a a desert. Tanners has an £18 3-course set lunch, which can't be bad. Haven't been for a few years, but it still gets good reviews. Personally, I usually end up at Positano, an old-fashioned, totally unreconstructed, family-run Italian restaurant. Not really up to eGullet's high-falutin' standards, but I always have fun and eat too much. Or go down the Barbican and sit outside eating one of Cap'n Jasper's half-yard hotdogs.

For Sunday lunch with a difference, you could try Riverford Field Kitchen (about half an hour away, need to book). Most reviewers have raved about it, Mr Coren gave it 9/10 ("the lunch of a lifetime"), and numerous friends insist we go whenever they visit us here in Somerset.

@prawncrackers If you're thinking of a rendang, do try Dos Hermanos' recipe. It's the biz.

Heck, Howard, why not push the boat out? Don't you know it's Christmas?

The only lamb sausage I'd consider would be the merguez. Lamb & mint and lamb & redcurrant are pretty boring IMHO. But a nice juicy merguez to throw in your tagine, or serve with couscous... I've used: 1kg lamb (about 25% fat) 8 cloves garlic 1 heaped tsp each of cayenne, paprika, cinnamon, fennel, cumin, ginger and black pepper 3 tsp harissa 2tsp salt Make into chipolata thickness links, but twice as long. But I suppose I've now taken this thread away from UK cooking!

Tesco ditto.

Most of the dishes quoted so far are 60s or 70s fodder, surely. My most treasured (?) memories of the 80s are of nouvelle cuisine. To perfectly recreate that 80s ambience: 1. Get an industrial chemist to redecorate your restaurant. Don't forget the chrome chairs, black tablecloths and a floor covering that looks like graph paper. 2. Put two small slices of rare roast beef on an unfeasibly large plate. Add three barrel-cut new potatoes and a maximum of four green beans. Dribble with jus. Cover with a very big silver cloche. 3. Place covered plate in front of diner and, at a cue from the head waiter, lift the cloche. 4. Luxuriate in the admiring gasps and mutterings of "Is that it? For a tenner?".

I notice that the Blessed Giles has delivered what I think is the most unfavourable review I've read so far.

The FEB (and its regional variants) is a marketing concept with no more genuine tradition than the Ploughman's Lunch. I never heard the term used until the 1970's. It was referred to in my youth simply as a fry-up or fried breakfast. The English, until recently, have never taken to breaking their fast at a cafe or restaurant, so most people's breakfasts have reflected individual tastes, available time and money. My old Dad, rest his soul, ate two rashers of back bacon, a fried egg and a slice of bread and butter every morning. Mam, who had to cook it, breakfasted on industrial strength tea and Players Navy Cut. The inestimable Jeeves had a penchant for lightly grilled trout, I recall. Posh folks of the time would not turn up their noses at kippers, devilled kidneys, mutton chops and kedgeree (on the same plate?). But now every hotel, B&B, cafe and supermarket would think it impossible not to offer their own version of this ancient British eating experience. Bundling up a bunch of easily cooked ingredients into the FEB marketing package is just a neat way of selling stuff to people. The only constants seem to be egg, bacon and sausage. Common additions include mushrooms, tomato (tinned or fresh), baked beans, hash browns, black pudding, fried slice (bread), sauteed potatoes and white (or hogs) pudding. But I've often seen "Vegetarian FEB" advertised, so the Lord knows what the essential ingredients really are. End of ramble.

£11 for pollock & chips? Ee, by 'eck, you Londoners must have loadsamoney.

Tim - just to say that your comment on the fried gnocchi, Ms Thurman and the chocolate has given me more chuckles than anything else in the last week. Thanks for that.

OK, so you don't always need a chrome dish piled high with microwaved veg with every meal, but am I the only one who feels utterly stiffed when a restaurant charges separately for every side dish? I mean, you fork out £20ish for a main course, all you get is a piece of artfully presented meat with fancy garnish/foam/jus/whatever and then they expect you to pay another £3 or £4 for some mash. It seems reasonable that the main course of a traditional 3 or 4-course meal should be adequately filling. - Tony - (P**sed off by Bibendum a few years back)

It's not just that you have to make sure you keep Flash up to date, and that you really need a broadband connection. Accessibility is the key issue here. The RNIB estimate that about 2 million people in the UK have serious sight problems, ranging from acute myopia to blindness. Some use screen readers to read websites; many more use built-in browser features, such as changing the default text size. You can mimic these features in Flash, but it's hard work and it costs. So, if you want your website to be an integral and important part of your marketing and communications, it's best not to make it unavailable to a significant proportion of your potential customers. - Tony -

Food Timeline thinks it was an American invention of the 1960s, but I've seen references to Veal CB being of Swiss or Italian origin. Some recipes indicate veal or chicken covered with a slice each of ham and emmenthal, then grilled. Later recipes either stuff the meat or sandwich the filling between two slices before breadcrumbing and frying. I can vouchsafe that chicken CB is ubiquitous in the touristy parts of Croatia. Quite appalling to a gastronomic purist, but very large, greasy & satisfying.

Just to close this debate (perhaps): I have had my faith restored - in cassoulet, that is, not in Tesco. I was in Wells, Somerset on Saturday, and went to the market stall run by a very nice French person. Among other things, I bought a tin of Cassoulet au Confit de Canard, made by Bastide de Narcillac in Castelnaudary. £3.50 for 840g. It was bloody lovely.

And the first person to mention deep-fried Mars Bars gets banned from this forum. Oops.

TaurOoze - any flavour risotto you like, as long as it's got beef in it.

Capri Quorn - Italian Vegetarian

Verre Gault - watering hole for Millau reviewers

Just to clarify: the cassoulet in question was a chilled product, not a tin. It cost £3-odd and was labelled as being a meal for one. I have never seen it before in Tesco, and I never wish to see it again. I have frequently eaten perfectly acceptable (to me, at least) tinned cassoulets, sourced - as we *all* say on this forum - from France. OK, not as good as what you can do at home, but a very useful standby. The point I was trying to make, obviously inadequately, was *not* that this cassoulet wasn't very nice, or that the pork in it had been reared in some Dutch gulag. The gist was that it was quite the worst thing I've ever come across that purported to be a foodstuff, and that I felt surprised that even the corporate technowazzocks at Tesco could think it was acceptable.

Lol, Jon. I don't think they're the sort of sect that hordes munitions and plans to blow up government buildings. OK, they believe we're living in The End Times and that they'll be saved by The Rapture from rule by the Antichrist, but it doesn't seem to interfere with their ability to make the best blueberry muffins in the South West. But I am doomed, I fear. I am marked with the Number of the Beast. It's on my Tesco loyalty card.