Gavin Jones

Buckfast tonic wine is still (I think) manufactured by the monks of buckfast abbey in Devon (UK). It is marketed by a separate company. It is a very popular drink in Scotland - and has been accused of contributing to high levels of alcoholism.

But I would bet on Peter Ackroyd in a sit-down fight with Steve P.

But everyday? There's only so much pork I can take. (even in pie format)

Try the Broons.

+ I've always thought someone who offers Pig's Trooter selon l'humeur du chef is offering a worldview.

I'm not really the person to pursue as never been a) a philosopher b) did not cook meal. But in one of Ludwig's lighter moments (i.e. not tractatus) he illustrates a problem (presumably in cognition) by a well known picture. It is the out line of either: the head of a duck with a prominent bill or: rotated, the head of a rabbit with prominent ears - you're getting the picture. Do you see a duck, or a rabbit, or.... a 'duck-rabbit'. I know, it's a bloody picture, and I too never found a sympathetic philosopher after Hume. Still you can see there's something there, and as my social circle then included various philosophers a friend gastronomically incarnated it on a plate. Duck, rabbit or duck rabbit. I will seek further details from the cook, Markman.

I think Flaneur is French for maker of flans - essentially it is a gallic pieman. But fancier. This is because France had Baudelaire and the attention of Walter Benjamin while England had Mayhew & Engels. I went in the shop (Flaneur) 15 minutes before their advertised end of serving time on a cold Sunday with 3 other people and was told that there over-priced products were no longer available. I will not be stepping back there quickly.

There are good vegetarian Indian places more towards Willesden/Kilburn - Gita's (?) & others. As this is North London my geography goes a bit funny. I do agree about the Salusbury, and I like the Vale too - though not eaten there for 1 year +. Have you tried the Colombian place just off Kilburn, Dona Olga?

A friend of mine cooked a meal which centred around 'duck-rabbit', in sympathy with a flatmate's wittgenstinian problems.

Klaus, not the doll presumably

Eating & Time - Martin Heidegger, a notoriously slow eater. I believe Simon can convey his whole philosophy in pork products (though not exclusively black pudding). For me, tripe.

I too am a campari lover. Alway pleased by the thought of the thousands of cochineal beetles which have died for my pleasure - so inappropriate for vegetarians. And also giving its name to a film role for Noel Coward. It is however one of those drinks that is best not drunk (quantity wise) by the bottle in my experience. The 'bitters' element nicely mirroring the taste of bile the next day.

Reminding me of a less than pleasurable non-culinary experience. Bad Chamber music - if you will.

The cheese trolley was extremely good. Everything else I had (on a fixed menu) was as the French say, 'correct'.

Bordeaux, Burgundy - where are you growing your British grapes? Beer is what you want, mate. Olive oil is just the indigineous fat - so that equates to lard. Foie gras is just animal fat - so lard again. Cassoulet - sophisticated? Beans - cooked in animal fat (lard). Or if gratinated it becomes pie. The seafood is there - but so much better in fishfinger format. Deep fried in Lard.

I think the logic was that you were really unlikely to die directly at that (uk gov't) level from drink. You could always die indirectly - from the shame of being caught with a bottle of St. Veran rather than Montrachet, say - or run over as you stagger home from the pub. I think around 60-65 units pw you may have chances of noticing attritional effects of drinking in competition with other ways in which your body decays. But it is still only 1 bottle of 13% wine a day. I'd think there are still quite a lot of us hanging on in at the 1 bottle of wine a day point on the risk/return graph.

The Uk government had suggested limits of 21 units per week (=21 small glasses of wine) for men and 14 for women. They replaced these with 28 units for men 21 for women. To predictable outcry. As I understand it there are crudely two main themes with alcohol. 1) Cardio-vascular: basically the more you drink the better it is for you. 2) Liver, oesophagus, brain: The more you drink the worse it is for you. The other stuff is fairly minor. So you optimise your preferred exposure to risk from these types of damage. i.e. you can die in your mid-50's from your cardiac event, as boring as hell through never having had a drink or you can die in your mid-50's from your cirrhosis, as boring as hell through having drunk too much. My own view on drinking is encapsulated in the rule that n people drink n+1 bottles of wine.

Wasn't all this explored in the film 'Pie' - how pie is transcendental etc I think by definition if a food place offers pie it is a pie-shop (or pie-man or pie-monger). A restaurant (n, fr) can therefore not offer a pie, but something else - possibly with those diamond shaped crottes that you referred to earlier. Thus the confusing domestic/public divide, which takes a different form in northern europe to southern europe. i.e .Catholicism - public hell Protestantism - private hell. + what role did the cooking in 'gentlemen's' clubs play in providing a 'British restaurant culture' during the 19th C? And to what extent does this still exist - not just in St. James' but in NY say?

I offer the following just to imagine the disgust of our more distinguished american contributors. I dined this evening on an old Northamptonshire specialty: Hock'n'dough pie. A very short pastry lined casserole filled with prok, potatoes, onion and water. slow cooked. slow cooked, slightly stodgy. But learned of a fantastic English dish (I believe the information from someone called Ivan Day). Thatched pie. It dates from the 17/18th C & shows just how to deal with those pesky Italians. It is a pie, as follows. Layer the bottom of your pot with vermicelli, add the contents of the pie (steak, kidney, anything to make Plotnicki gag), cover with pastry. When cooked, invert. The vermicelli now on top bears a striking resemblance to a thatched house. Perhaps not that tasty - but clearly post-modernism invented by mid-18th C. Britain - so bad at food - so good at late capitalism. I also rec'd further evidence that UK eating habits are driven by variety rather than quality - hence the pressure to produce ever new kinds of pasta - e.g. chiken tikka tortellini you can make up your own culinary carcrashes. Still Los Angeles is the only place I have seen signs for the kosher burrito followed 2 blocks later by a sign for 'the original kosher burrito'

More that of butler. I always think of Losey's "The Servant" where Wendy Craig shows what happens when a lady comes between a gentleman and his gentleman's gentleman - as played by Dirk Bogarde. Though you may feel this does not really clarify matters. In there Bogarde certainly cooks "British" food - my memory fails me as to whether Wendy Craig does French.

I too think that the historical difference between "ladies" cooking and gentlemen's gentlemen would be worth pursuing. My earlier point, to rephrase, would be whether we preferred a scatological or an eschatological account.

I thought the cliche was that an Andouillette was really only good if it had a faint faecal odour - truly a gout du terroir. Only that may have been from Simenon, a Belgian, and I can't tell whether that is acceptable opinion. i.e. is it southern catholic wine drinking and ok or protestant, beer drinking, northern and not ok.

Is S. Plotnicki a relation of Fabian Plotnick a 'fictional' restaurant reviewer invented by Woody Allen? Truth will out

You all have the cart before th horse. Clearly the last 300 years of history have been driven by gastronomy with industrialization/war etc the consequence. 1. Industrialization of UK clearly attempt by evil capital owners to make them eat marmite. 2. Napoleon: attempt to force everyone across Europe to eat baguette and camembert (& drink corsican wine). 3. 20th C Demonic central european plan to force all europeans into wienerchnitzeled serfdom. 4. Repelled by american spam invasion. 5. But at the last moment gastronomic freedom fighters set up a maquis of underground Bresse Chicken eating, Montrachet drinking cells who now threaten to take over the world for pleasure.

Is there not standard explanation of all this. Possibly involving clearance of agricultural land in uk for higher yield on capital sheep/extended farming rather than low yield peasants. But leading to industrial revolution. How long was rationing in uk- 13 years (?) which should screw up most localised delivery systems. How long was France's rural economy semi-feudal? What are French equivalent of UK corn laws, Irish Potato famine?