olicollett
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Posts posted by olicollett
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Everyone - Isherwood and the chefs - has dropped a bollock here.
The only issue is whether or not the meal in question was a freebie. If it wasn't, Isherwood's dropped bollock was a simple case of naivete. If it was, I really hope this incident goes a long way towards bring to an end the practice of blogger freebies. Food blogging seems to me to be a worthwhile and entertaining pastime, but only if the bloggers are getting the very same experience as every other punter. If they're not, it becomes pointless and vain.
By & large agree.
Problem is bloggers are often attracted by the promise of freebies & superior access.
What has gotten lost is that its only the quality of the commentary that matters, not just that you made the effort.
I am not defending Isherwood but why would he risk his credibility lying about paying for the meal. Here is his quote
"He mentioned I was given freebies, but I'm wise enough to know these were amuse bouches - they even appeared on the pre-printed menu they gave to me at the end of the meal "
This never ending accusation that bloggers get free meal after free meal is pure fiction especially from my point of view. In all of my years of dining I have only ever received five in decades, and we eat out an awful lot.
I for one would be very interested if people would name and shame those bloggers who receive these financial incentives. It would help clear up these never ending accusations.
After much annoying innuendo The Critical Couple now put a disclaimer on their site.
Hang on David - I'm not saying all do but someone did bring up the point of the Cube on twitter - hardly anyone paid for that!
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Yeah it has become quiet of late, and yes David's lack of posting probably hasn't helped!
I don't post enough - quite honestly I've been far too busy the last 5-6 months and seem to have a backlog of stuff from the beginning of the year to write about, but never get around to it
The rest of the forum seems similar in a way too. I think in some ways it doesn't help that the forum is so granular. When you look at some of the topics from some restaurants that would require their own thread every year, you might now not find a single post from the last 6-12months. Is it a reflection of a shift in focus that Jon talks about? Probably.
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To provide a further piece of context, the word c$%t is frequently bandied around in the catering industry - high-end professional kitchens in particular - and doesn't hold the same level of taboo and insult as it does in the wider world.
Indeed - I worked in the building industry for many years and you get numb to the "C" word after a week as it is part of every sentence
What is it about supposedly-mature men that the worst thing they can think of to call one another is something relating to female genitalia?
Just like infantile adolescent boys in a schoolyard calling one another pussy.
They seriously should be embarrassed if that's the best (worst) they can do.
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Sorry to divert the thread briefly but please note that using the "C" word in parts of the UK is not the same as using it in the US.
Anyway, both parties could have come out of this a lot better by not engaging in the whole thing. All rather silly.
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Excellent choice of venue and day, Martin
By coincidence I was there on Saturday as well - first visit, v impressed. I can't believe I've not been before given it's pretty local to me.
Slip sole is a must, fantastic. Really enjoyed the apple meille feuille as well.
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Looks like the delightful Grace Dent is not too impressed with not being able to get into Bubbledogs.
See last but one paragraph of her article
Odd. Doesn't tally with my experience of the service there for sure!
The queues have been absolutley bonkers. Last night we had a booking at the kitchen table and it was rather wet, but the queue was still massive at about 7.45!
Kitchen table was ace, I will add further words/pics this weekend..
Kitchen table sounds like it will be a laugh, but one thing that bothers me. If covers are so small and booking so impossible that you can't really get a table, should we really consider KT to be a restaurant or just a rather snazzy supper club?
I guess the same logic would apply to Fat Duck, French L, El Bulli RIP too. Maybe Momofuku Ko is a better analogy. But in my brain I don't even think of BD KT as restaurant at all because I immediately write it off as so hard to get in I shouldn't bother.
Hmmm...
J
There's 19 spots so it's not THAT small, but given the price vs. some of the other high end places in London I expect it will soon become v difficult. I think they said it was getting busy for the weekends now but weeknights should be OK.
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Looks like the delightful Grace Dent is not too impressed with not being able to get into Bubbledogs.
See last but one paragraph of her article
Odd. Doesn't tally with my experience of the service there for sure!
The queues have been absolutley bonkers. Last night we had a booking at the kitchen table and it was rather wet, but the queue was still massive at about 7.45!
Kitchen table was ace, I will add further words/pics this weekend..
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No - apparently it's a larger grain than table salt and smaller than sea salt. And doesnt have iodine in it - which, Google tells me, is present in some American table salts. I have no idea whether Irish (or UK) table salt contains iodine, or whether it matters.
Fair enough, not sure what difference iodine would make either, other than helping prevent idoine-131 absorption after exposure to a nuclear meltdown?
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Err, isn't it just table salt?
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Well I went this evening and had a great time. It might be worth remembering that it tends to be quieter in that part of town at weekends, tonight there wasn't much of a queue even at 8pm.
Looking forward to returning for the &
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It's bonkers but I'm looking forward to trying it out!!!
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RDB, is that a spoof?
You would think so
However, as Harters says alas not. Maybe this restaurant believes that the opinions of an over zealous primrary school teacher will be a valuable source of business generation or a provide some expert culinary knowledge , however such sychophancy may actually have the paradoxical effect of dissuading anyone from wanting to go near the place.
Thank you 'over zealous' is a very polite way of describing me! ;-)I have been back to SoLita on three occasions (as a full paying customer, no less) since this series of freebies and I stand by my initial comments. On the second occasion admittedly, there were some first week teething problems but by my third meal these seemed to have been resolved.
Unless I'm missing something, you don't appear to have a clear disclaimer anywhere in that "review" that mentions that it was free?
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As far as I know this is the first customer review, and it aint a very good one
Blimey, so it's 7 courses including amuse? Ouch.
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Odd, I just got back from here, meant to post in this thread before I went.
I actually did a day trip to Wolfsburg to visit Aqua - it's not exactly in the "reasonably priced" bracket but wow is it worth it (hopefully do my writeup this weekend)
TI did go to a couple of places in Berlin:
Monsieur Vuong - good, reasonably priced, great spring rolls. Not afraid of spice which is good for a german restaurant!
The Bird - V disappointing burger. Insufficient bun meant that it ended up everywhere before it got to my mouth, and the fries were a real let down
Oh and I did go to curry 36 - If you insist on eating currywurst you could do worse than go here, and it's certainly not going to break the bank!
Did you come across any other places serving quick, casual food (apart from [curry]wurst; I can easily get that downtown where I am, if I wanted to), or good, reliable bakeries?
I'm afraid not - I was only there for a weekend and it wasn't that food orientated so didn't spend too much time looking into it! Monsieur Vong is certainly on the casual side though and pretty quick service
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If you're privileged to get a reservation, 'Dinner' by Heston Blumenthal, it's the 9th best restaurant in the world, and the best in the UK!
Good luck finding anyone who agrees with either of those statements!
Well, I could make a start with the jury of the World's 50 Best!
Maybe I should have added a caveat:
"who has eaten at more than 2-3 restaurants in the UK over the last 18 months"
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If you're privileged to get a reservation, 'Dinner' by Heston Blumenthal, it's the 9th best restaurant in the world, and the best in the UK!
Good luck finding anyone who agrees with either of those statements!
Anyway, another vote for the Ledbury here!
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I guess it had started to get busy at that point (left around 7ish I think? Was quite err, tipsy after daytime drinking..), but it didn't seem full, even though they seemed to be doing some kind of function in half of the bar. I just thought given it's booked up for the next 10 months at weekend dinners some more people would be trying the food in the bar!
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Ended up in here on Saturday evening after the Dave Chang lunch and a cocktail class at 69 colebrooke row!
Was only in the bar but the food lived up to the hype, will try and add some pictures. Also interesting to note the bar was quite quiet on a saturday night!
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I can't believe I only just discovered this.
Shame there's a couple of my favourite books (David Everitt-Matthias' Essence/Desserts) are not available but there's a great selection out there
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Interesting - no one mentioned the burger at the Admiral Codrington:
http://www.theadmiralcodrington.co.uk/
My mate went on Saturday and reckons it's the best, and he knows his burgers.
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I was in Zetter sunday night - ended up hammered with an enormous bill after doing Roast Sunday around the corner !
Sounds promising anyway
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Thats why inspectors detach emotion from inspecting and return again to control for these confounding variables.
Oh come off it. Detach emotion? From a meal? You're having a laugh.
Sorry I meant to say they do not let a waitresses facial reactions decide on whether the restaurant gets a star or not. Well at least I hope they don't?
I did not state detach emotion from a meal, I stated detach emotion from inspecting. As emotions can often be a major contributor in decision making, sometimes resulting in overidealisation or being overcritical, therefore this is a factor (of which I am sure there are many).
However to stay back on track it appears in this case emotion and biased cognitive distortions were a major contributing factor behind LCS not being deemed to have two stars , rather than the claim being arrived at via Michelins criteria.
I'm sorry, but the idea that anyone reviewing a meal is at all is detached from emotion, immune to cognitive distortions and whatnot is just ridiculous. Any reviewer who thinks themselves capable of such a thing is completely deluded.
A reviewer might not think it goes into the asessment, but unless michelin inspectors are robots, every single factor will invariably go towards the end decision, whether they like it or not.
Now reviewing is different from inspecting.
I am saying that of course emotion maybe a factor even for michelin inspectors but to ensure that such extraneous variables are not overly impacting judegement which it can do, is why a criteria is followed (the food being the factors), repeat vists are made and other inpsectors may need to judge the same place.
Yes, but it doesn't matter what you do, how many repeat visits you have, however you define what you are doing - you can't eliminate cognitive bias when visiting a restaurant.
Of course, michelin, with multiple visits and so on should be more accurate, but is it really that difficult to believe that David's experience might have been lower than that which you might expect at a 2* restaurant? I don't think he worded it too well, but I think this has got rather silly.
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Thats why inspectors detach emotion from inspecting and return again to control for these confounding variables.
Oh come off it. Detach emotion? From a meal? You're having a laugh.
Sorry I meant to say they do not let a waitresses facial reactions decide on whether the restaurant gets a star or not. Well at least I hope they don't?
I did not state detach emotion from a meal, I stated detach emotion from inspecting. As emotions can often be a major contributor in decision making, sometimes resulting in overidealisation or being overcritical, therefore this is a factor (of which I am sure there are many).
However to stay back on track it appears in this case emotion and biased cognitive distortions were a major contributing factor behind LCS not being deemed to have two stars , rather than the claim being arrived at via Michelins criteria.
I'm sorry, but the idea that anyone reviewing a meal is at all is detached from emotion, immune to cognitive distortions and whatnot is just ridiculous. Any reviewer who thinks themselves capable of such a thing is completely deluded.
A reviewer might not think it goes into the asessment, but unless michelin inspectors are robots, every single factor will invariably go towards the end decision, whether they like it or not.
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Thats why inspectors detach emotion from inspecting and return again to control for these confounding variables.
Oh come off it. Detach emotion? From a meal? You're having a laugh.
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So, RDB - If you had a terrible experience at a 3* restaurant which was more the kind of experience you might expect at Nandos, you wouldn't be tempted to question whether it was worthy of 3 stars?
Yes, Michelin are the only ones who really know the criteria, but if you're comparing it to other restaurants in that category and it failed to meet the expectations in food and service (which are surely the primary judging criteria for any restaurant) then is it really that bad to question the rating? Have you never questioned a restaurants credentials for x number of rosettes, or a particular GFG rating?
Anyway, back on topic, I still want to go here, shame I've never found an excuse to get to that part of the country
Debenhams bans "confusing" coffee titles
in United Kingdom & Ireland: Dining
Posted
In my experience most decent coffee places in London are staffed by Aussies