naebody

Amazon has it. The USP was indeed starters and puddings -- "no intercourse" went the catchphrase. I suspect this was intended to get around the English mockery of nouvelle quisine and its empty plates (a linguistic excuse not a hundred miles from the current insistence by Maze etc. that they are serving modern tapas). There were some suggestions at the time that it was too girly. Had a quick search on newspaper archive which stretches back to 1985, and there are very few references -- most critics were already calling it an "early Eighties" kind of place. The first reference is inside an article about how restaurants should become less masculine and start accepting credit cards (yes, honestly): I think Don and Annie Foster Firth co-owned MAT before going on to set up Industry, a consultancy. The wine list (put together by Eddie Khoo?) was famed and exhaustive: the legend went that French wine growers would travel to MAT just to drink their own vintages after their cellars had run dry. The whole starters/puddings thing was abandoned in the late Eighties, once its star had faded and AWT turned his attention to empire building with One Ninety Queensgate. The Times' "Eating Out" Directory of March 10, 1990, says: I'll private message you a few old reviews in full -- not of MAT, sadly, as the newspaper archive I searched does not go far enough, but of the places that followed. Choice quotes include: I cannot locate any mention whatsoever in the press on when it disappeared. I would, however place the time of expiry at 1999. Hope this helps.

Indeed. The lighting has suddenly been cranked up to the levels of a Hong Kong beach cafe. I guess it'd be too much of a fire risk to put candles on those wobbly wee monopod tables. Still, a bag of tea-tree lights and some blue tack would do wonders for the atmosphere. Was there on Friday night, peak hours, when less than half the covers were full. Asked the front-of-house if it was the norm; he tapped his nose and said "wait a week". Was a bit surprised by this, in that it has already had good reviews in papers, including the all-powerful Evening Standard. Having said that, it's probably the kind of place that requires not only good reviews, but guidebook recommendations and word of mouth too. It won't get much passing trade in that corner of Soho, and it's just that margin too formal to scare off the casual diner bound for Wagamama. Alternatively, perhaps it's because all EGulletines went during the opening period, thereby expending in a four-day rabbit-pie-fuelled orgy the core audience for any new restaurant opening (ie. us).

... umm .... Bloomsbury perhaps? As ever with London, the best plan when starting anywhere is to walk for 10 minutes and get to somewhere else. Nevertheless, in your immediate vicinity may (or may not) be Fino and Salt Yard, both excellent and well worth booking. For fewer bucks and considerably less bang, you could try the cafe at the Royal Institute of British Architects (Med-ish), Ikkyu on Tottenham Court Road (Japanese), the Perseverance on Lamb's Conduit Street (British) and Busaba Eathai on Store Street (Thai). And if you are really freaking out at our currency's strength against your own, The Fryer's Delight on Theobalds Road is your best local chip shop. That's Bloomburg covered pretty comprehensively, I feel.

You're right. All you soft-spoken Americans should speak up for yourselves more. Something of a Catch 22, that. A lukewarm review of G@W by the Harden brothers in City AM, a London business free-sheet, which I will summarise in the style of their eponymous guide: "Extraordinary" view in a "tastefully, if neutrally, revamped" room. "Some very good," if "not especially ambitious" dishes. Service was "generally solicitous" but "it would have been polite" for the waiter "to mention that an unspecified glass of Bollinger was vintage and was going to cost £28.50". In summary, not enough attention to detail when the bill "could so easily reach a tonne a head". Three stars out of five.

In the unlikely event that your article is not predicated by the Chelsea Flower Show, you may want to drop in on Peter Jones for their themed "blooming marvellous menu". (Don't expect it to satisfy your need for weird though. Judging by the PR blurb, it seems more like unambitious Med-ish chow with a bit of pot pourri thrown on top.)

Yes, indeed, that's all true. Was just sounding off after contemplating why I, like many posters on here, prefer Arbies to Putney Bridge, despite the latter being identifiably of Michelin class while the former is not. I eventually reached the conclusion that Michelin cares overly for things I couldn't give a stuff about. This would be okay if, as you suggest, the recommendations were only important to the people who actually read the guides -- young chefs, gastrodome tourists and gravytrainspotters. But a Michelin star has somehow been accepted in popular culture as the arbiter of cooking ability -- observe how often chefs' star quotent comes up on BBC2's ludicrous Pimp My Queen's Lunch programme. Michelin's prejudices, and the UK public's credence of them, act to reinforce a perception that the best food must be constructed by artisans, served by penguins and eaten by people with more money than sense. It can't be top class unless it costs a bomb, comes with foam and leaves you hungry. This divisive perception does nobody any favours.

She reviewed it after a visit during the half-price, warm-up period? That hardly seems cricket. It barely seems rounders. It's a point often expressed, but one that can't be expressed often enough: a good restaurant is universally agreed to be one that delivers good food in a pleasant atmosphere at a fair price. Yet we've all come to accept that such qualities are neither sufficient nor essential to win the favour of Michelin, which somehow remains the industry's own benchmark. Absurd.

So, he wants small and intimate in St James's, values friendly service, and has a trad French leaning (as evidenced by using Michelin as his guide)? Meanwhile, you want proficient food that comes at a price that won't create communal alarm? May I suggest playing safe with Boudin Blanc? Edit: ah - didn't see your last message that they're over from France. That means scrubbing the Boudin recommendation: while it's fine by London standards, they'll be appalled. As for simple Italian food without the addition of arsey service, there's nothing much wrong with the unpromisingly named Franko's. For somewhere uniquely London, Inn The Park is okay (although like all Oliver Peyton-owned restaurants the level of service can be dreadful, for explicable reasons.) Caprice is still a bugger to book, but once you're through the door the front-of-house remains as egalitarian as ever. You get the same treatment whether you come down the road from the Ritz or down the stairs from the brothel that shares its building. I've never been knocked out by the food though, which seems to hedge towards the kind of blandness favoured by business lunchers and slebs.

Had the cassoulet at Ma Quisine in Kew the other day, at the recommendation of the waiter. It was a comforting lump of stodge that neither disgraced nor bettered the standard available in every French market town. It's not worth crossing town for. But it's definitely worth stopping by post the physical/emotional strain of Kew Gardens/The National Archives (delete as applicable). As for retail, try Moen & Sons in SW3 for the real stuff. It's closer than Paris, and the staff are marginally more approachable.

I would've mentioned it. But, while chefs get plaudits for good food, the customers will usually give themselves sole credit for choosing good wine. For the record, my own wisdom and refinement was demonstrated by ordering both the Shadowfax pinot noir and the Symington douro.

If there's any substance behind Michelin's recent bluster that it's not hung up on petit fours and penguin waiters, then I'd imagine Arbutus has a decent chance at collecting a tyre gong. It remains to be seen whether quality (and prices) will be maintained once the last critic leaves the building. But my initial impression is of a kitchen running a notch or two above places like 1 Lombard Street, L'Escargot and Rhodes Twenty Four, all of which are starred. Thanks. Prats & Symington Douro is not an easy concept to express via charades. But I think I got the "Prat" bit over quite successfully.

Not true. I brought along The World's Most Fussy Vegetarian last night (see posts passim), who was completely placated by the halloumi pithiver. Putney Bridge offered no such salves to the carnophobe, so this is definitely progress. A few observations: the wine caraffe thing is genius, allowing you to take risks and order much further up the list than would be financially sensible by the bottle. Couldn't understand why all the other tables were still going for bottles. Any opening wrinkles with service and timing appeared to have been ironed out. The front-of-house dealt admirably with all the odd requests we threw at them (including bringing one solitary lump of cheese, and correctly identifying a wine I ordered solely by saying "Portugal" and waving my hands around). Calmness was maintained even when La Maschler breezed in. They were also very tolerant with a pair of out-of-place lads who ordered single main courses, then walked out when told they would take up to 25 minutes to arrive. I can live without side plates. But I'm less impressed by the wobbly monopod tables. One wrong move would have landed my pistou soup onto my crotch, which would have been a disaster for any number of reasons. Also note they have places set up at the bar, in the style of Caprice. These should provide a haven for the solitary diner, in a part of town where eating alone is more commonly viewed as an invitation to be chatted up by some bloke called Brenda. Pretty much everyone, on sitting down and seeing the menu for the first time, said: "pig's head? Hur hur hur hur ...". Doubt they'll sell too many. The rabbit, meanwhile, was flying out of the kitchen, and deservedly so. It'd be a steal for the £14 list cost, making its current sub-£7 price tag almost offensive. I agree that a Michelin star would not look out of place, while a bib gourmand is all but guaranteed. Otherwise: the English asparagus starter was as good as you'd expect, although the accompanying egg stuff was a little too reminiscent of sandwich filling. Mighty soup. And the pithiver ... will never be ordered by anyone who's reading this. Still, its existence means we can all bring along veggies without guilt, and that fact alone should be celebrated.

Tonight, I shall be giving them the litmus test of bringing along an impossibly fussy vegetarian with a zero tolerance policy on pretty much everything. This is an unfair stunt to pull on only their second night, I accept. But if they set up in Meeja Land, they're going to have to play by Meeja Rules. My table shouldn't be hard to spot. It'll be the one featuring heated arguments about smoker proximity, menu scope, wine mark-up, chair positioning, picture selection, cutlery cleanliness, and my own pigheadedness for ordering the pig's head.

Just back from Campania, where the favoured appetiser among the locals was to dismember huge bowls of raw, just-picked, unseasoned fava the size of boomerangs. I suspect that anyone suggesting improvement via horseradish or smoked trout would have received a fava pod up the fundament.

I've never been to Roast. But my better half, whom I know personally, was there last week and was impressed enough to insist that we go back as soon as possible. My own impression -- formed by word of mouth not experience, -- is that it's a Conran-sized operation that's being run by a restaurateur who doesn't have a Conran-like number of kitchens in which to vet staff. That's what caused its shambolic opening. And even now, the standard on both sides of house every evening is defined by the number of resignations and no-shows each morning. As for punter reviews, the general public seem keen to complain about anywhere with a reputation or ambition, while giving an equal amount of praise to some real stinkers. From this I can only conclude that the public are weird.

Haven't been bowled over by anything on Kingsland Road lately, and I doubt the spartan atmosphere is stag conducive. Viet Hoa's original owners have opened Viet Garden in Islington, which may be a better bet.

Oh deary me. Apologies for keeping this off-topic argument running, but L'Alba D'Ora was my local, and I will not have their good name sullied. On my last visit, just over a year ago, not a single pie had passed into the deep frier. And, as the website menu highlights, they offer items rarely seen in the supposedly more diet-conscious south (haddock breaded with sage; prawns in ginger; squid; monkfish; stuffed Jalepenos). If I remember correctly, items such as chip butties etc. were included mostly for the benefit of the local schoolkids, who gathered at the door every lunchtime to fling wet chips at each other. As for deep frying pizzas: yes, it's an appaling idea. But I'd argue that the end product bears just as much of a resemblance to pizza fritta as your average Chicagotown deep pan does to a neopolitan. You can't blame our guests from Napoli (or, in the case of L'Alba, Cassino) for giving it a shot.

I'd suggest that Edinburgh's brief fad for deep frying everything was, in the main, publicity driven. Offering deep fried (insert random word here) was a very easy way to get a small business into the local paper. It's the same procedure used by all those Birmingham curry places offering the world's hottest vindaloo, or by London eateries that charge £85 for a sandwich. Incidentally, as a Edinburger now living in the smoke, I'd observe that the average Scottish chip shop is a completely different proposition to its London equivalent. While the Sweaties will be frying fresh haddock in light batter, the Cockneys seem to rely on moving pre-coated reconstituted fish logs direct from freezer to fryer. It's grossly unfair to take a few novelty items on the Jock menu as symptomatic of the nation -- just as it'd be unfair to say that all London's Turkish restaurants are shabby because the place round the corner does a donner-and-chip pizza.

Actually, I believe "supper" in this context refers only to the chips, not the batter. In my artery-hardening youth I have experienced the macaroni pie supper, the smoked sausage (ie. saveloy) supper and, at the Dishlandtown Chippy in Arbroath, the near-legendary chip supper (ie. chips with chips). All were mercifully unbattered. I suspect the Scottish use of "supper" was initially intended to suggest that you were buying a full meal rather than a snack (which would be "single", as in single fish, single sausage, single chips, etc).

That's not strictly true. It's just that the successes tend to be viewed as isolated cases whereas the failures are considered symptomatic of the wider universe. Needless to say, this is true well beyond the world of catering. As a general rule, journalists have to put some kind of "this is important because ..." spin on their articles. And what kind of spin can you put on a story about a closed business, other than seeing it as a portent of doom? Yet I'd argue that the specific successes are talked about much more, in the press and elsewhere, than the specific failures. How much have we heard about Leon, the world's most zeitgeisty sandwich shop? Maze and Yauatcha have generated more column inches than their evil alter-egos, Pengelly's and Anda. On the subject of startup businesses, I'd be wary of studying someone else's business plan. Many recent successes have tended to break rules rather than follow rote. One example would be Ping Pong, which has minimised labour costs and created a scalable business simply by preparing dim sum in a central warehouse then re-steaming it on premises. It takes a locktight business brain to consider such things, not a foodie sensibility. Three years tutelage at the elbow of Ferran Adria may well give people the latter, but it can never guarantee the former. Personally, I'd argue that the best training for any prospective restaurateur is to go work for McDonalds. Too many restaurants fail because their owners want to own a restaurant, when what they should be doing is running is a business.

Excellent. What a corrective, cathartic thread this is proving to be. Like everyone else in this odd little country, I'd heard the frozen pea theory so many times that I'd come to believe it. Risotto primavera was, I had assumed, intended to taste like a swimming pool. Where did this shared pea delusion start? Why, in a rare circumstance when the Brits had both the the land and the labour available to do something right, did we still manage to get is so completely wrong? Was there some kind of Birds Eye payola afoot among cookery writers? (Incidentally: those new Birds' Eye adverts, in which a Blumenthal/Whittingstall hybrid questions stooge shopkeepers about how Alphabyte Reconstituted Gunkballs are equivalent to a real potato because they've been given the same treatment as Walt Disney's head, is arguably the lowest point yet for human civilisation. But I digress ... ) A second vote for those 9p packets of noodles. The absolutely best ones are those with packaging entirely in Mandarin, meaning you're never completely sure if the Salt'N'Shake-style stock packet is chicken, beef or vegetable until it starts bubbling (and even then it's often a line call). It's like a savoury version of Revels.

Hm. Doesn't it go against the spirit of the question to include recipies any more complex than "place on/in/over something hot/warm/cold"? One key measure of a good cook is to how they can make great tastes out of unpromising ingredients. Remove Bill Grainger's book from your scrambled egg recipe and I'd be reasonably confident of ending up with glue. If you want a single taste that provides the biggest bang/buck ratio without the requirement of additional forraging, fluffing or stuffing, I nominate miso. Spread it on a halved raddish, if you insist on complicating matters. Finally, at risk of removing what little credibility I have as a foodie, I'd suggest that all those twice-baked spongey/melty chocolate affairs at £6+ a pop stack up quite poorly value-wise when measured against a haselnut Topic, which gives you change out of 50p.

Without coming over too League of Gentlemen, I'd note that The Metro is a local paper for local people. Its reviews have to serve an entirely different purpose to those in the nationals. How many readers of AA Gill or Mr Coren will actually have the opportunity, or inclination, to eat in the restaurants up for review? I'd imagine it'd be very few, proportionately speaking, given the difference between the catchment area of a newspaper and that of a restaurant. Therefore, the primary remit is to entertain a broad readership through any means necessary. Meanwhile, with a local paper, the primary goal is to inform rather than entertain. The first duty of Fay Maschler and Circplum, when they sit down to dinner, is to tell other potential customers whether a specific kitchen will provide beatitude or botulism. I'd view it as the difference between giving someone an opinion and telling them a joke. There's no reason why your opinion can't also be funny, or that your joke can't also be informative. It's just a question of adjusting the ratios to suit your audience. The local writers, if they get the ratios right, will inevitably have a bigger effect on bookings even though they boast smaller readerships and lower status. That's why, even after some fair write-ups in the nationals, I have avoided Taman Gang in Chelsea on the basis of a brilliantly damning Metro review. It's why La Maschler still wields the power to make or break a kitchen every Wednesday, despite the writing style of a sedated accountant. It's why Hugo Young, while sharing a readership with Maschler and carrying a sharper pen, still couldn't break wind in a Tex Mex. And it's why Michael Winner continues to have a weekly national column that is obstensibly about restaurants, but is really only about what a crashing waste of everyone's time it is to be Michael Winner. (Incidentally, I guess you could argue that the information-first remit means local reviewers, such as one on a New York paper, have a much stronger justification to go about their business incognito than some minor 'sleb on a British broadsheet. Which is, I think, where we came in ...)

There's a comprehensive recent thread on the joys of sweatyland here. To summarise, The Witchery, Number One and Martin Wisharts are all good Edinburgh choices. To that list I'd add Rhubarb in Prestonfield. For fish in Leith, Skippers is pleasingly no-nonsense. Most bars will provide a range of whisky suffucient to poleaxe all comers. If you're a completist, try the Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre on the Royal Mile. If you're an absurdist, the Canny Man's in Morningside is a must. While Glasgow provides fewer food options, it's a good place to eat modern Scottish. Along with The Buttery (still reliable), you could try The Ubiquitous Chip, Stravaigin and 16 Byres Road. Bar-wise, The Corinthian and Rogano are both civilised, reassuringly expensive grown-up options where you're guaranteed to avoid the Trainspotting treatment. Otherwise, just try your luck around Merchant City.

Bar was quite busy, but the cavernous restaurant was empty but for for a table of Japanese business tourists. The amuse bouche was the highlight: a shot glass of courgette soup accompanied by a few bites of scallop sashimi. The scallop was not a patch on the Fifteen version if ripped off. Still, the price was right. Starters were forgettable, in that I've forgotten what they were. But the main course will live long in the memory: nugget-sized lumps of John Dory, cremated, then served inside a damp parcel of cardboard-thick uncooked filo pastry, which was placed on a bed of gloopy squid-ink linguine. The Date's veggie option, which involved tofu in a similarly robust filo crate, requires no additional adjectives. On the positive side, the wine cellar is solid, and the dark-wooded conservatory dining room has a kind of mid-90s chic. (Drafty though. And god knows what temperature it'll reach when the sun starts shining. Perhaps it'll be hot enough to cook the filo.) However, if the kitchen can't cope with a grand total of six customers of an evening, it doesn't inspire confidence. In current form, I give the place two months.