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Guy Savoy is quite buzzy and has good food and very friendly service. Doesn't have that final notch of perfection in the cooking but v good, and they have some fun long tasting menus too.

But what if you don't want adventure? What if you just want good food?

To be contrarian: the problem with London is that there are too few boring places to eat: simple places serving well cooked ordinary food, with no innovation. Everyone wants to be an artist.

As a long term corn flake eater I can assure you there is! Give me a blind tasting and I will get it right 100% I bet. Years of studentdom soon teach you the quality difference between own brand goods and the 'real thing' Many own brand products are actually the same product as the branded products; made in the same factory by the same company to the same specification. Only the packaging is different.

My thoughts exactly.

This is a joke, right? Not a joke see the link: Real Salt But this is rock salt not sea salt. All rock salt was originally sea salt. (IANAGeologist). Aren't they just "lying" when they call it sea salt? (edited to add two uselessl links salt info and salt institute)

This is a joke, right?

This sounds like it fits the description. Have you eaten them? Just pick them up with your hands, open with a fingernail and use hands? seafood fork? to put them to your mouth?? If someone could find a picture of a big bowl of these... The correct plural is "telline" (Italian) which may be why web search didn't work so well. Yes, I have eaten them quite often. They are very good, but fiddly. I eat them like clams -- pick some out with a fork when they easy, and just pick up the shell and slurp them out for the others. After a while you get good at it... Generally they are cooked -- like clams. Though for some reason you have them more with linguine whereas clams must be with spaghetti. (edited because I put three 'l's in the middle)

The inside bit of telline is about the size of a kernel of corn, the shell is normally about 1 - 1.5 cm long. You can also eat them raw -- you can open them with your fingernail.

I went there in August last year and

I might do the Alain Chapel book of which i have a copy -- it would be slightly dodgy from a copyright point of view though -- too much to be fair use.

Great blog, Boris. Just catching up because I just got back from Switzerland -- Martigny in fact just on the other side of the rosti boundary. A lot of excitement the other night after the Swiss goal.

Thanks, guys. So I have them in a tupperware container now in the fridge, and I guess they will give off a lot of liquid. The step that I was missing was taking them out and putting them in fresh salt. How long should I wait before this? A week or are there signs I should look out for that indicate that they are done? How sterile is sterile? I figure if they are sitting in a load of salt anything will do, but I might use a glass jar with a clip down lid, and boil it first in good jam making style.

I bought a bunch of very fresh anchovies, some of which I want to salt. I assume I just fillet them and layer the fillets with lots of salt. But what else do I need to do ? do I drain off liquid? do I add bay leaves? Thanks for any tips.

First rule: honesty is important in a relationship Second rule: so is lying

I am familiar with the supplier relationship. It is worth pointing out that not all are equal -- Sainsbury's recognised the problem and introduced their own code of conduct a few years before everybody else signed up to the joint code. Others are notoriously ruthless still. Soups: I have in the past bought both the CG soup and the JS own brnd. The CG is clearly significantly better -- and a little more expensive. So I buy the CG brand. It is quite a clear choice. Other people may make a different choice. Again this seems both normal business practice -- you compete against someone by positioning your product slightly up-market or down-market -- and good for the consumer -- because we want a range of products at different price/quality points. I don't understand your point about labelling laws -- we have them already don't we?

Sometimes when people say green tomatoes they mean tomatillos (tomate verde), which are not actually tomatoes.

But isn't this just healthy competition? Someone comes up with a good idea (a four wheeled vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine) and everyone else copies it, and competes like mad, and we end up sitting in traffic jams all day ..ok, bad example. But think of Covent Garden soup company -- they can't just sit around saying we have IP that prevents anyone else sell ing fresh soup in a Tetrapak carton, and if they do they have to pays us 50p a packet, they actually have to make good soup. This is a *good* thing, for me as a consumer. It's obviously bad for some producers, but I think the balance in this case between consumer interests and producer interests is about right. I don't think it has anything to do with supermarkets, it's just to do with free markets, in general . I don't shop in supermarkets, but that's because I have enough free time and money to spend a lot of time getting high quality food from small shops, and I live in London. A lot of other people don't feel that way, and that is why they choose not to go to the local shops but to a big supermarket which is superior in many ways -- convenience, choice, parking etc..

I think it is one of the few qualifications left that still means anything. Many MWs work on their own -- it is sufficient qualification for you to start a business on your own and be taken seriously. The few I have met have been very passionate about wine -- Clive Coates and Jasper Morris in London.

I'm reading too. I like the look of your bread too. I live in London and my regular loaf is a pugliese from the Exeter Street Bakery that is damn fine, and looks quite close to yours.

There is a famous spoof essay by Charles Lamb which is available to read here: A Dissertation upon Roast Pig which discusses the accidental discovery of roast pork.

The beans were very good still. And the fries were good. I hope that my bad meal was just a one off, because I am very fond of the place.

Sort of: not Sam and Sam Clark but another chap who's apparently their partner plus someone else who helped establishing Moro. The chef is also ex-Moro. Mark Sainsbury, I think.

People buy organic stuff for lots of different reasons: avoiding residues of pesticides and fungicides are only one of them. Flavour, more nutritive value, supporting a diverse ecosystem, supporting the rural economy, are a few of the others.

This is absolutely false as a general rule. I will provide three illustrative counter-examples: 1) Processing milk to make yoghurt since many people are lactose intolerant 2) Processing manioc root (which is poisonous raw) to make tapioca 3) Cooking bones for stock. In all three cases the processed form is clearly much better for you than the "natural" form.