Food and Drink

A two-part guide to the best summer pubs, free with the Guardian Saturday 13 June and the Observer Sunday 14 June

(GU: Original Article)

Covent Garden seems to put as little into its pre-operatic sandwiches as it has into the set of its new production

What £17 at the Royal Opera House gets you: nine mouthfuls of what was billed as an 'open sandwich' – in reality, postage-stamp-size lumps of stale, over-refrigerated bread with an excuse of a 'filling' on top of it, a dozen tiny olives, a slice of lemon (very important), and a beer. I'm glad that Covent Garden is heavily subsidised: what on earth would the prices at the bar be like without its annual Arts Council millions? You'd need a mortgage for a pre-operatic amuse bouche.

Cynically, I could say I spent more on my vague imitation of a sandwich than the ROH seems to have on the sets and costumes for Christof Loy's new production of Alban Berg's Lulu, with its aggressive, willfully contrary minimalism for one of opera's most sensual creations. Even if there were some outstanding vocal performances from Agneta Eichenholz, making her debut in the title role, and Michael Volle as Dr Schön.

Andrew Clements reviews the show in tomorrow's paper. This will be a controversial production: it moved even the normally restrained first-night crowd at Covent Garden to boos, and had the experienced Lulu-watchers in the row behind me apoplectic with indignation. See what you think, if you can get along before 20 June; it's a production that's worth hearing, for sure, whatever its visual asceticism.

(GU: Original Article)

Mat Follas won MasterChef earlier this year and is now taking the plunge and working towards the opening of his restaurant - and he wants your advice ...

When the people at Word of Mouth asked me if I wanted to blog the progress of my start up restaurant, The Wild Garlic– my first thought was: when? Since winning Masterchef, there's been no time to breathe and the amount of work to be done has just increased by about 70% (if I'd won The Apprentice it would be at least 110% ... am I the only one who hates those overstatements?).

It also struck me that in the midst of all of the panic and work involved in getting the restaurant under way, writing a few posts would force me to pause - give me a chance to step back, stop and calmly think about what we're doing. Most importantly, I'm hoping to get some good honest feedback from Word of Mouthers – you're known for being an opinionated lot when it comes to eating out, and I think this is a brilliant opportunity to get some real help with some of the decisions I need to take from people who know what they like – and don't like – about the places they eat out in.

So I'd like to say don't hold back, I'm keen to hear your thoughts. But in all honesty, there's just one bit of feedback I really don't need – yep, it's the worst time, economically speaking, in the last 20 years, that I could have picked to do this, and yes, I'm clearly mad to consider opening a restaurant in the current climate. But there's not much I can do about that now!

A few weeks ago, I finally resigned from a corporate IT job. After 11 years and one week (not sure how many hours but I was close to counting), I sat for half an hour wavering over pressing the 'send' button ... wondering how we were going to pay the bills ... all that job security gone ... that wage coming in automatically every month. The decision itself wasn't hard but actually doing it, pressing that button, was another thing entirely. But ... bye bye IBM.

I didn't look back for long – I'd already signed the lease on a great little place in my local town that I'd had my eye on for a few years. It had been a locals' pub in a town of three pubs and no restaurants, struggled to find its place for years then been transformed into a nice bistro run by a young couple who made a real success of it before selling it at the height of the property boom.

The buyer was a good cook, young and with a clear idea of what he wanted to serve, but unfortunately it wasn't what the locals wanted to eat. After realising too late that he had to change, the business ran out of funds about the same time as I was finishing MasterChef.

After extended negotiations and lots of looking at other sites we eventually took a lease on the building. It's taken three months to the day, from agreeing to purchase the lease, to actually signing it. It's incredible - the stress; the rows. People keep asking how it feels to be fulfilling my dream. Well, at the moment, it feels like I've got a big lump of cold sick stuck in my stomach.

But no matter, it's in my name now. I got up with great determination the day after signing, had breakfast and charged over to the restaurant. Finally I could walk through the door and take a sledgehammer to the oversized bar and start to make it look like the image in my head. At last I can begin getting ready to open. And this is where the first lot of decisions come in – the all important look of the place.

Currently it's all beech veneer tables, white fabric chairs and leather placemats, which are not my style at all. But is my own taste going to be right for the restaurant? I'm wondering if I should go country kitchen - all wood - or something a bit more modern, like the clean lines and stainless steel Kevin McCloud is so fond of.

For furniture, we've made contact with Marnie Moyle, an amazing outdoor table designer who I'm very excited about (and flattered that she likes what we're doing) … but her beautiful tables are designed for outdoors and I'm not sure the the chairs she has with them work inside.

Can I fit her furniture with something else, I'm thinking, or do her tables have to be properly matched with equally high end chairs? I personally think that £20 indoor chairs around those tables will work - it's eclectic and very much us, but I'm suspending judgement for a time, surfing the web, looking at country cottage styles until I see some Arne Jacobsen chairs (is that just my teenage memories of Christine Keeler getting the better of me?). If you've got any good links you reckon I should see (for the furniture that is, not Christine Keeler!), please share them below.

There's also the question of the huge bar in the restaurant that dominated the place before I knocked it down (yep, that's right, please don't say the one thing you'd want is a huge, oversized bar). But what should I replace it with? It would be a great daytime seating area for drinking coffee or wine, a comfy area to wait in or even act as a casual overflow dining area for a few walk-ins. Or we could squeeze a couple of small tables in. The thing is, I want customers to enjoy the space, stay for the evening, maybe have an extra glass or two of wine. If they're comfortable enough to stay for three courses, I think that's worth more than the extra revenue of trying to turn a table.

The more I write the more questions come … I need to get on with making the kitchen workable (and easier to clean), so no doubt there will be more questions to come, from menu to front of house staffing issues. But in the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts on style. What brings you into a restaurant and, more importantly, what brings you back? What are your "must haves" and "don't do's" for a restaurant in terms of space and design?

(GU: Original Article)

The economic downturn and a bout of bad weather has caused a punnet plummet, leaving the industry in a bit of a jam. But has the fruit has simply fallen out of favour with us? And will it ever be top of the crops again?

Admit it - there was a time when we just couldn't get enough of them. Luscious, juicy British strawberries whose arrival signalled the beginning of spring, stunning in their simplicity and needing little more than a lick of cream or even a glass of champagne.

But research earlier this week suggested that the Great British love affair with strawberries has ended. According to market research firm TNS, the volume of strawberries fell 9.2% in the 12 months to the end of April, prompting fears that the quintessential summer fruit has fallen from favour. It blamed the recession for the decline of strawberry sales, and said consumers were increasingly opting for a different, cheaper fruit or even something else for dessert.

For families on a budget, picking strawberries on a summer's day outing at a pick-your-own farm has been a time-honoured pursuit. But in another ominous move for our favourite berry, insurers have told the owner of one of the oldest pick-your-own farms that he will have to install walkways and bridges, place handrails round ditches and fence off potholes, while his insurance premiums have rocketed after a claim from a member of the public who injured herself.

But if you thought the poor old British strawberry was heading for the great compost bin in the sky, put your hanky away and whip out your strawberry set. (Yes, my mother was the proud owner a Wedgwood one - a bone china basket with two separate compartments for cream and, yuk, sugar). The combined might of retailers and the strawberry industry itself - now gearing up for perhaps the UK's biggest strawberry-fest, Wimbledon, later this month – insisted strawberries are as popular as ever, but that sales had slumped because of the cold and wet weather last summer.

The trade body representing the - don't laugh - berry industry (British Summer Fruit if you must know) said sales of British strawberries more than doubled last week compared with the same period in May 2008. It said there is huge demand for British strawberries as consumers enjoy picnics, barbecues and other al fresco entertainment, while consumers could take their pick from an unprecedented range of varieties, including the naturally sweet types favoured by Brits.

This year's strawberry-seekers can look forward to sweeter and juicer berries, which, according to Laurence Olins, chairman of British Summer Fruit, is a result of the "mild and warm spring weather, with no frosts and good pollination, lots of bees as well as a good amount of uninterrupted sun to ripen fruit".

Sainsbury's will reveal today that despite the overall slump within the industry, sales of its basics strawberries - costing just £1 a punnet - are up 87% year-on-year. Its experience is that customers buy basics strawberries to use for sauces or smoothies, and upgrading to the standard variety as a pudding or on their own. Those who hate the over-the-top plastic packaging with lids on punnets will be be pleased to hear that the supermarket chain has also introduced simplified and greener packaging.

So - share your strawberry-buying habits with us. Have you cut back on them in a belt-tightening, recession-busting exercise? What do you do with the manky ones? And, of course, we'd love to know your berry best recipes too!

(GU: Original Article)

Once thought to be in danger of extinction, the waiter's most esoteric skill has been spotted in use in a seaside restaurant

Picture this scene. I'm sitting in a restaurant in the benighted, south coast necropolis I'm forced to call my home town. I am treating the loose confederation of dysfunctional sociopaths I begrudgingly call my family to a meal. The restaurant has few pretensions save a jaunty, nautical theme and a menu which runs deep to frying and is untroubled by foams. The meal, criss-crossed with the kind of catastrophically unpredictable stresses unseen since the Tacoma Narrows bridge disaster draws to an uncomfortable close and I move to attract the attention of the waiter with that faint-smile-and-eyebrow business that has served me in the finest restaurants in the world.

As my eyes seek his to communicate that age-old message - I wish to complete our transaction, to give you my money and leave - his glazzies swivel like turrets in his head, ranging randomly around the dreary room. At first I'm confused. Some sort of seizure? Has someone, without warning, released a bat? And then I suddenly twig … a surge of recognition tinged with nostalgia. The bastard is trying to give me waiter's eye. I haven't seen that in a commercial dining operation since 1986.

You may have experienced waiter's eye yourself, if you're old enough. It probably reached the level of an artform in the UK around 1953, while menu requests could be refused because of rationing and two world wars had made deference uncomfortable to those forced into service roles. The trick was to avoid the customer's eye until they felt that they had no power to command you. At which point you could drift to the table as if it had been your own idea and be as rude as you could to them without being hit.

I think it was TE Lawrence in The Mint, his record of life as an Air Force ranker, that best explained the offence of dumb insolence. Military codes defined hundreds of ways one could be punishably insubordinate, but found it impossible to deal with a man who just stood, silently radiating resentment. With the invention of dumb insolence, it was finally possible to have him strapped to a gun carriage and flogged for it.

Dumb insolence is easy. Waiter's eye is a trade skill and I've worked with some real pros; people who could plausibly ignore you if you were trapped together for eight months in a space capsule. In Chicago I once dated a waitress who was so good at it she wouldn't catch your eye during intercourse.

But all floor staff bow in honour to the master, Bruno "yeux mort" LeClerc, a waiter at Les Deux Magots who on a dark day in that bleak November of '49, over a period of eight and a half hours, actually ignored an American tourist to death. Sure, he was a manic depressive existentialist with a debilitating astigmatism, but you can't let innate advantage detract from the man's genius. We are not worthy to fold his napkins.

To really have what it takes you need steely, ninja-like self-control, a perfectly-tuned sixth sense for punter tolerances and, most important of all, the ability to always appear to have something more important to look at. That's the trade secret. Find something to fix your eyes on - it doesn't matter if it's the back of that guy's toupee or the wen on his date's upper lip - and look engaged.

It does my heart good to watch it done well, by a pro. It gives me a great welling of nostalgia for the generations of waiting staff who've perfected it. I might not have minded this waiter's eye but as he stood there, slack-jawed and staring like freshly stunned tuna, I could see he just didn't have the focus, the attitude, the professionalism. I wanted to jump up and shake him. If you're going to do it, kid - do it right.

Have you experienced waiter's eye, up close and personal? Ever feel the need to shake the staff out of their stupor?

(GU: Original Article)

Vicky Bhogal, author of the recipe book Flavour, challenges you to Take Three. She suggests a trio of ingredients; you include them in a recipe, and the best recipe wins some goodies.

Plus, a recipe exclusively extracted from Vicky's book, Flavour, for Word of Mouth readers: Courgettes stuffed with coffee rice and oregano

"Don't play with your food!" Many of us remember this reprimand from our childhoods, usually as a justified response to grumpy cross-plate pea-pushing or the sculpting of mashed potato snowmen. However, even though being serious about food is important - the quality and ethics of ingredients, traditions and techniques are all important to me - it's also refreshing sometimes to have a little play.

I don't mean some sort of boisterous, unruly activity that could land you on the naughty step, like beating your dinner with a Lego truck. I mean the considered, intuitive art of connecting with your own tastebuds and experimenting a little with combinations and expressions of flavours. A little avant-garde creativity, if you will.

They don't have to be wildly exotic or expensive flavours. The sort of thing you might have lurking in your cupboards or pick up according to season is perfect. It's not what you have, it's what you do with it that counts.

I generally like cooking with three flavours: sometimes a classic combination that is subtly adjusted by using alternatives with similar profiles, such as apple and mint with lemongrass instead of lemon, or by taking a classic pair and adding an unexpected third, such as lime, basil and mandarin (the citrus note making them all friends).

Other combinations can be made just for the simple reason that they intuitively appeal. The third ingredient is often used in less intensity than the main two. There may be other flavours used too, but they are usually in supporting roles and not the star players.

An example is this recipe here which I've extracted from my book Flavour especially for Word of Mouth readers, where I decided to use coffee, courgettes and oregano together (playing on the bitter and vegetal notes) after seeing the ingredients used in an entirely different dish in an American magazine. I've always been voyeuristically fascinated by what other people cook and eat, so I thought I'd launch the Take Three recipe competition to nosily find out what people would do with the same ingredients.

The rules

I pick three ingredients and you send in your recipe interpretations of them (and pics!). Please comment below or email me to be in with a chance to win (do feel free to ask any questions you might have about the stuffed courgette recipe, too) and post your photos on our Flickr group. In future weeks new trios of ingredients will be posted on my website.

So, the first three ingredients are:

• Cantaloupe melon
• Ginger (in any form)
• Black pepper

You can cook and prepare anything you like as long as it uses these three flavours. And you can add anything you like to them too.

The recipe that I cook and eat the most (very scientific, I know) will win a hamper from myself with lots of edible goodies, spice packs, a copy of my book Flavour, (which you can buy here, in case you were wondering) and a few surprise trinkets.

To be honest, absolutely everything and anything will spark my desire/greed for flavours and recipes - from mood to music. Thus for June I am inspired by the recent sunshine hinting of summer sunsets to come, the tropical spiciness of Matthew Williamson printed fabrics I keep seeing on posters on London buses, and that sharp nip still punctuating the air.

Over to you - how are you going to turn these base ingredients into cookery gold?

(GU: Original Article)

It seems Little Chef's publicity-hungry chief executive Ian Pegler has taken a unilateral decision

Time to add a very little meat to the bones of the story that Little Chef chief executive Ian Pegler has started rolling out Heston Blumenthal's revamped menu - the braised ox cheeks, the macaroni cheese, the rather spiffing all day breakfast - without consulting the chef.

It seems the first he heard about it was on Monday night at the Craft Guild of Chefs Awards where he was picking up a gong. He was approached by Amanda Afiya, deputy editor of Caterer magazine. "She was the one who asked me about it, because apparently there had been newspaper reports," Blumenthal told me, in a break from developing a dish of fennel with goose powder (no, me neither).

"None of us have been consulted. Not me, or Ashley, my executive chef. The suppliers also don't know anything about it and we know that because we've asked them. Presumably if Little Chef were going to roll it out they would need to get those suppliers to quote on it, but that hasn't happened."

He admits a concern: that while they might be working to move the well-reviewed Blumenthal menu into the other branches nationwide, it could be without the suppliers he specifically identified. On the upside the suppliers to the one existing Blumenthal branch, at Popham in Hampshire, have had their contracts extended a number of times and are now employed to supply their products until the end of the year.

There has, he says, been some contact with the company, but at no point did they mention the possibility of a roll out. He is due to go back to Little Chef in the next few days to film a follow up to his January Channel 4 series for broadcast later this year.

"I would dearly love the Little Chef stuff to be rolled out across the country," he said last night. "I'm proud to have been involved. They've got a great product and it's done amazing things for the business there." During a talk to 1,500 people at the Hay Literary Festival last month, Blumenthal explained that the Popham restaurant even received a call from someone wanting to know the location of the nearest airstrip. "They wanted to fly in for lunch. Happily it was only on the other side of the A303." Clearly, the rather curious Ian Pegler wants a bit more of that high altitude custom.

(GU: Original Article)

Food blog: Take Three recipe challenge - the best original recipe including cantaloupe melon, ginger and black pepper will win a hamper of goodies

With a name like 'dirty rice' it was impossible not to try this when I came across it whilst flicking through a copy of Oprah magazine: a recipe for rice cooked with coffee grounds. What struck me was the use of oregano with the coffee. This made me want to pull out herby, green vegetable notes to contrast with the intense coffee flavour, which is why I decided to use it to stuff courgettes. I absolutely loved the results. I added a crumbling of goat's cheese on top, grilled till golden. This is one of my favourite dishes and a satisfying meal for vegetarians.

4 courgettes
1 tbsp butter
2 shallots, finely chopped
100g basmati rice, washed and drained
1/2 chicken stock cube
2 tsp instant coffee granules
1 tsp fresh, chopped oregano, plus extra for sprinkling
70g goats' cheese
Olive oil, for drizzling

Serves 4.

Bring a large pan of water to the boil, add the courgettes and cook for 7 minutes. Remove from the pan, allow to cool, halve lengthways, then
scoop out the pulp using a spoon, without breaking the skin, to leave a shell. Set the shells and the flesh aside.

Melt the butter in a deep non-stick frying pan, add the shallots and fry until golden. Add the drained rice and stir well. Add 240ml water, the stock cube half, coffee granules and oregano. Bring to the boil, then cook, covered, on a very low heat for about 7 minutes, or until the water has absorbed and the rice is cooked. Season with a little salt and set aside to cool.

Remove the rice from the pan and use the same pan for the courgettes. Don't add any oil, just put in the courgette shells, skin-side down, and dry-fry, still over a very low heat, for a couple of minutes to brown a little. Remove and set aside on foil on a grill pan. Now add the courgette flesh to the pan and fry for about a minute and a half, stirring all the while, until it feels like the liquid has evaporated. Turn off the heat, add the rice and stir well.

Preheat the grill to hot.

Spoon the mixture into the courgette skins. Top each with some crumbled goats cheese, sprinkle over a touch more oregano and a drizzle of olive oil. Place under the hot grill for about 8 minutes or until the cheese is browned.

Try the rice alone or with some chicken or fish; chargrilled salmon would
be particularly good. Perhaps try stuffing mushrooms instead.

(GU: Original Article)

Fine tea can be as expensive as the highest-quality wine, but is it worth its bank-busting price tag?

My visit to the Tregothnan Estate in Cornwall, where they have a tiny tea
plantation, was so fleeting there wasn't time for a tasting. I had a stroll around the tea plants in the early morning drizzle and noted that camellia sinensis has narrower leaves and looks a bit, well, scraggy compared to the species cultivated for their vivid flowers.

I had a chat with garden director Jonathon Jones, who pointed out that, so keen are we on tea, that during the second world war Churchill, fearing the deleterious effects of a national shortage, first considered the practicalities of growing tea here on a mass scale. Then, realising this would take too long, instructed stockpiles to be kept in secret locations around Britain. And then I bundled onto the train back to London, with a big bag of tea samples to try once I got home.

I was curious to know what English-grown tea might taste like. But it was only when I got back from Cornwall that I realised my error. It was all in the small print: the tiny packets proclaimed themselves to be English Estate Afternoon and English Estate Classic Tea, but they weren't pure. They were blended with specially-imported black tea from India and China. "Sorry," said Jonathon, when I called him, "I should have given you some of the single estate tea. But don't worry, you can get it from Fortnum's."

And so you can. I found it behind the tea counter, where dozens of speciality teas are kept in majestic, oriental urns and carefully weighed out by men in crisp shirts with starchy collars.

"How much would you like?" asked a young starchy collar.
"Oh, I don't know, say 100g?"
"Well, it'll have to be 125g. That's the smallest amount we sell."
"Fine."
"Actually," mused starchy, "we've had this six weeks and you're the first
person to ask for it."
I nodded absently.
"It's the most expensive tea we sell," he added, as a friendly afterthought.

That did get my attention. Tea can be as dear as fine wine. But presumably tea grown in a damp, rainy garden in Cornwall couldn't command the price of a first growth claret in a good vintage - could it?

"How much?" I asked.
"£180."

I absorbed this. 1000g divided by 125g is eight, then 180 divided by eight, so that would be £22.50 for the tightly-curled, reddish-black mass of dry tea resting in the pan of the weighing scales. Certainly pricier than PG Tips but, as an experience, manageable. There was just one thing I needed to check.

"That is £180 per kilo?"
Starchy collar looked surprised. "No, for the 125g."

Christ on a bike. In the absence of an expense account, or a roving MP who might kindly agree to put it on his, I resorted to calling the press office who agreed to break the 125g rule and sell me a minuscule quantity. It still cost £30 for a few teaspoonsful, but as I was en route to a tasting with speciality importer Jing Tea, I thought that at the very least I could get an expert opinion on it.

The average price of the tea crop sold in auctions in Kenya last year was $2.33 (£1.40) a kilo. Much of this is the stuff that goes into teabags. High-end Chinese pu-erh, on the other hand, which is formed into cakes and, like wine, may be matured for decades, costs even more than the £1,440 per kilogram retail price charged for Tregothnan Estate.

Can such tea ever be worth the cost? Jing's Edward Eisler describes the act of drinking a truly fine tea as being akin to "a religious experience" which might sound a bit intense, but it certainly provides an adjustment to the price scale. A couple of thousand pounds for a few religious experiences doesn't seem too steep. And I do know what Eisler means. When you sip a good wine, or a good tea, the rest of the world drops away, suspending you in a calm, meditative state of clarity.

Please stop swivelling your eyeballs. Fine tea - it's not a great name for it, but it's better than artisan tea, which as Eisler says has the off-putting air of the phrase 'craft fair' - is an entirely different drink to builder's tea, but it need not be so stratospheric. Good tea is nuanced and stimulating, to both the palate and the mind; because it satisfies these desires, it's what I choose to drink on on non-alcohol-drinking days (yes, I do have them) and I find I don't miss it one little bit.

Such teas are better drunk out of smaller cups - large mugs are just too overwhelming. I'm about to buy some of the small, Chinese-style cups that you refill over and over. "Straight-sided cups are good for drinking on your own," advises Eisler, because they feel cosy. "The ones that open out like saucers feel more sociable."

He is right. Eisler is also keen on glass teapots, that allow the aesthetic indulgence of watching the leaves swell and unfurl: "It's good to get intimate with the leaf."

I'll report on the Jing Teas I tried next week. For now, the verdict on the Tregothnan Estate, which I asked Eisler to taste blind went as follows: "Looking at it, from the colour and shape of the leaf and the flecks of green, it resembles darjeeling. It has good body and richness, but it doesn't have clarity of presentation of flavour, which is the key thing I look for in whatever tea I'm buying. It's also slightly burnt. I'd guess someone would use it for blending."

It wasn't an ecstatic experience for me either. Though when I did tell Eisler where the tea was from he admitted to being surprised by its quality: "For a Cornish tea it's much better than I expected!"

But not, I would say, worth £10 a cup.

(GU: Original Article)

Mixed messages over nationwide roll-out of Heston Blumenthal's revamped menu to all restaurant's branches

It was an unlikely partnership, dubbed Big Chef takes on the Little Chef. When award-winning chef and restaurateur Heston Blumenthal last year agreed to help revive the fortunes of the ailing roadside cafe chain, he started by redesigning the menu of its Popham, Hampshire outlet as part of a trial that has been scrutinised and analysed by food critics and rivals.

But the eagerly-awaited outcome is less clear. It was revealed that the triple Michelin-starred chef had not been consulted about the company's plans to roll out the menu - which has seen the trademark mixed grill ditched in favour of ox cheeks - to the rest of the 175-strong chain.

This week, Little Chef's chief executive Ian Pegler appeared to suggest in a newspaper interview that a national roll-out of the menu to every UK restaurant was on the cards.

But a spokeswoman for Mr Blumenthal's Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, said he had not had any contact with the company since last December, when a Channel 4 special about the trial was aired. She explained: "Heston is due to revisit Little Chef for a further TV programme, but until this point we have had no idea what Little Chef's roll-out plans are."

As part of Mr Blumenthal's menu revamp at the Popham restaurant, out went Little Chef classics such as the mega mixed grill at £9.49, which includes the artery-clogging combination of rump steak, chicken breast, gammon steak, sausage, onion rings and chips or, for the health-conscious customer, jacket potato and peas. And in its place came melt-in-the-mouth braised ox cheeks at £9.75 - cooked in red wine for three days and served with mash.

Little Chef, which turned 50 last October, was rescued from bankruptcy in January 2007 and efforts are being made to put its finances and fortunes on a firmer footing. A company spokesman said: "It's highly possible that we will go for a national roll-out, but it will be done gradually. At Popham there has been a 17.5% increase (in sales of food) as a result of the new menu, so we consider the exercise a success."

(GU: Original Article)

The next interactive online cookery class will be on Tuesday 23 June. What we're going to be making is still a secret ...

The internet's only live, interactive cookery class is making a triumphant return later this month. We warmed ourselves with a hearty vegetable curry in the gloom of February, roused our tastebuds from hibernation with salmon and chilli bulgar in March, and felt the warmth of spring courtesy of spice-rubbed pork escalope and coconutty sweet potatoes in April. Now June is upon us and Allegra has another specially concocted recipe for us to cook together.

The idea is simple. We'll post a list of ingredients in good time for everyone to add them to their shopping lists and get the gear in. If anyone has any questions about substituting ingredients (some people just don't like coriander) or anything else this is the time to ask and Allegra will get back to you with alternative suggestions.

Then on the night itself you'll need either a sticky-finger-proof laptop in the kitchen or an eager volunteer willing to perform essential duties like typing, taking pictures, relaying instructions, taunting the chef and pouring drinks.

The cooking will start at 8pm with Allegra posting step-by-step instructions and pictures and we should all be tucking in at about 9 o'clock. Easy!

Don't forget to document your exploits via the miracle of digital photography and add your pics to our Flickr group (or anywhere else we can lay hands on them) so we can concoct another gallery of everyone's efforts.

(GU: Original Article)

Big, bold graphic type and an even bigger bird: see how the design of Kellogs's familiar cereal box has changed over the decades

(GU: Original Article)

Why don't we carry food on our persons in the manner of our forebears? Have you ever been known to produce a pie from a pocket or carry an emergency condiment?

"With intense mortification he saw that the piece of meat he had hidden at yesterday's dinner had oozed grease through his handkerchief and his pocket. 'How wonderfully strange,' he thought, 'to be upset by this trifle; yet I am upset.' He sat down and ate his piece of meat (the eye of mutton chop) …"

This scene from Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander came to mind as I produced a half-eaten piece of cheese on toast at work one morning last week and proceeded to munch.

Yes, cheese on toast. The secret to portability by pocket or satchel is to grill it well beyond the gooey stage – to the point where the edges of your toast are on the brink of burning and the cheese has nearly vaporised. Upon cooling it fuses hard and dry. Take a few bites then, since you're running late, stow it on your person, run to catch the train and surprise your workmates later. Wrap it in a piece of snatched paper kitchen towel as you nip out, if you're fussy that way.

O'Brian's seafaring surgeon, Stephen Maturin, had an endearing habit of whipping out comestibles from about himself:

"Aye?", said Stephen, setting a cabbage-leaf parcel on the table and taking an egg from his pocket and a loaf from his bosom. 'I have brought a beef-steak to recruit you for your interview, and what passes for bread in these parts ... "

So why don't we do it any more? What's wrong with having a sausage in your pocket like Stephen – won't you be pleased to see it later? (In one scene, Stephen produces a "Catalan sausage", pares off chunks with his surgeon's lancet and feeds them to a lady patient:

"You must allow me to warn you against any indulgence in lowness … Were you to give way to melancholy, you would certainly pule into a decline.")

To me the hard-boiled egg has big potential as a pocket edible. Every day I go to work on an egg, but the hard-boiled egg can go to work on you. It may even get nicely cracked in the rush-hour commute and then you can shell out while you log on. Eat promptly, though, to avoid that greenish halo around the yolk.

Hunks of hard cheese lend themselves to similar casual carriage and gustation. None of your smelly, gooey Frenchie ones, mind – unfortunate discharges may result.

And give me a plain scone any day for this purpose. Ooh, or a chicken drumstick – even if it's KFC, which is better the next day anyway, when it's cold and stiffened up.

Here's my as-yet incomplete list of ground rules for pocket eating:

1. Bananas, apples, mandarins or KitKats and the like don't count.

2. Item must be carried unwrapped, or wrapped in a handkerchief, kitchen paper, newspaper, cabbage leaf etc. We're talking improvised - no cling film or any sort of purpose-built sheath or carriage receptacle. Paper kitchen towel is fine. Paper bags are acceptable, but not plastic ones.

3. Preferably the item is home-cooked, and extra points are scored if it is a cooked item that is normally consumed hot, but you eat it cold from your pocket. Extra extra points if it is a meat item, especially a particularly greasy one.

I hear there's another strain of pocket eater: the condiment carrier. The type who can't do without Tabasco or L&P wherever they eat out. Food blogger Ms Marmite carries garlic around in her pocket, in the advent of a food-flavouring emergency.

Any other pocket eaters willing to break cover? Feel free to lend a hand with the rules, too.

(GU: Original Article)

In our new monthly series, the renowned chef of the top London restaurant discusses technique, training and his signature tagliata

"You look like you've just woken up. Take a coffee and we'll start in five minutes," says Francesco Mazzei, executive chef and patron of Broadgate's L'Anima restaurant.

Lanky, with a resemblance in face and spirit of adventure to Anthony Bourdain, Mazzei is probably London's hottest chef. Both Square Meal and Tatler declared his restaurant best newcomer. The Observer's Jay Rayner called L'anima one of London's best restaurants and the Independent called it "ravishing". Most recently Gordon Ramsay voted him one of Britain's "faultless" chefs.

As I waited for him to return, sipping the velvet crème from my Musetti latte, I became mesmerised by staff tenderly sponging the rice-white leather chairs in the dining room. They made a daily responsibility look balletic.

Mazzei's CV reveals a butterfly. From the age of eight, he worked in his family's pastry and ice-cream shop in Calabria (Italy's toe). Ten years on, he established a fish restaurant with the president of his catering college before moving to the deluxe Grand Hotel, Rome in his early 20s. Inspired by the international environment, he took a sabbatical to learn English and landed at The Dorchester, under luminaries Willi Elsener and Henry Brosi. He soon fell in love with London's vibrant restaurant scene which "has the best of all cultures and is a great place for a chef to be – I couldn't have realised my dreams in Italy".

Using these formative early experiences, he has since opened a series of legendary restaurants. He was head chef at Jeremy King's and Chris Corbin's St. Albans and is grateful to them for teaching him the "commerce behind cooking". He also launched the restaurant for Thailand's Royal family, while touring Cambodia and Bali.

A gently burbling water feature besides L'Anima's bar bears testament to an awareness of Feng Shui learnt from Alan Yau, the force behind Sake No Hana, Hakkasan and the original blueprint for Wagamama. Mazzei considers Yau a long-term mentor and has opened several venues for him. Their paths remain intertwined with more projects currently under way in Istanbul and Miami.

Despite being so tucked away that my terminally lost cabbie waived the fare, Mazzei no longer worries about L'Anima's furtive location. "If anything, it's made me work harder. Where I come from people are prepared to travel two hours for suckling goat." When the restaurant opened last May after five months of planning delays, during which Mazzei twice overhauled the menu, he put in 22-hour days. "Although my hands were burnt blue, I kept going. This is the realisation of my dreams so far. I put my heart and soul into this." Hence the name L'Anima, Italian for soul.

Mazzei is is fuelled by five espressos a day, but never later than 3pm, because his 18 chefs "might become frightened" of him. I wondered whether he can switch off. Apparently he does so "only on Sundays, the family day" devoted to Maria, his "Sicilian, rather than Italian" wife and their two-year-old girl, Mia Sofia.

Nonetheless, it is an exceptionally difficult time to run a restaurant, especially one of this calibre. Unlike the River Cafe, another high-profile Italian eaterie, Mazzei acknowledges the credit crunch and keeps prices sane. Whilst he is delighted to "accommodate expense diners who wish to spend £1,400 on Super Tuscans", he also offers a tender £25.50 set lunch. "There are good buys on the à la carte, like the Sicilian rabbit, which is £16.50."

I am taken into L'Anima's cellar where guests can dine amongst the tantalising racks filled with obscure treasures from Calabria. Mazzei loves these concentrated wines, with their ancient Greek influences. For example, he sourced the rarely exported, black fruit and leather-scented Polpicello from Scavigna's steep slopes as a dramatic collaborator to his signature dish, aged beef tagliata. "I feed potatoes with truffles, chives and parmesan, then stuff a marrowbone and lay the beef on top." Built like a mushroom, the beautifully balanced dish delights aristocratic fans like Lady Hamlyn and legions of serious foodies alike.

We move into Mazzei's immaculate kitchen, tasting as we tour. He is from a family that makes their own salami, right down to raising and killing the pig. Everything in sight is prepared from scratch. To a soundtrack of Pavarotti, I see a cauldron of fish bones bubble into stock, whole carcasses, bat-shaped turbot, hefty salt cod and long octopuses. Another fridge contains white roses from the tables, "protected overnight".

There are at least six trays of different pastas. From the cedar sweet wood oven, (in front of the charcoal josper) I taste a warm breath of ciabattini with precise, emerald Calabrian olive oil. Mazzei doesn't like it too fruity. "Spring is the best season for a chef," he says. "Just look at the vegetables: pea shoots, borage, nettles, wild asparagus … I find myself taking 25 ideas at once to my head chef. I even love simple soups made from greens."

Throughout the interview, I've noticed how difficult it is to eke criticisms from Mazzei. Probably wisely, he is frustratingly diplomatic and sincerely charming. "It's key to respect people in this industry. As a teenager I was in charge of much older people. I learnt quickly that you learn from everyone, including you, Douglas."

But what does this polished chef of rustic food think of the likes of Blumenthal and the molecular gastronomy movement? "There is only one Ferran Adrià. I met him once, although he was hard to understand, even in Spanish. I'm not sure about the others. Technique is important. There is a lesson I want to stress for every chef starting out: do it step-by-step. You can't leapfrog legwork. If we're not careful, we'll end up with no one able to cook a steak properly or prepare a jus. Everyone will be eating fucking pills!"

So what of the future? Whilst Mazzei refuses to give details of another major project in London, expect to see him in print. He is writing a semi-autobiographical book about southern Italian food. But thinking a little wider, if this dynamo of the kitchen keeps focused on making the finest food rather than the trappings of television, I foresee a day when an endorsement of Ramsay, rather than Ramsay's endorsement will mean so much more …

(GU: Original Article)

Pub meals served up at hundreds of ­outlets in Britain's most popular chains are laden with salt and saturated fat, a report reveals today.

One in three puddings were found to contain as much salt as two bags of crisps, while more than half the main courses had more than half the recommended daily allowance of salt, according to an analysis by the campaign group Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash).

Environmental health officers from London boroughs sampled 57 popular menu items from 16 of some of the UK's favourite pub chains – including Pitcher And Piano, JD Wetherspoons, All Bar One and O'Neills. Samples were ­purchased from the restaurants and analysed for salt, fat, saturated fat and calorie content.

The researchers found that more than half of the main course dishes contained 3g of salt or more – half the maximum recommended intake for a day – and 91% contained more than 2g of salt.

Government health guidelines recommend that adults should not consume more than 6g of salt a day, but Cash's figures suggest the average adult daily intake in the UK is typically 8.6g.

The saltiest starter was spicy coated king prawns from JD Wetherspoons's Moon & Stars in Havering, east London, with 4.4g of salt a serving. Even desserts contained a lot of hidden salt with the family favourite, sticky toffee pudding, being the saltiest. A portion at the ­Goldengrove JD Wetherspoons pub in Newham, east London, contained 1.95g of salt, the same as two rashers of bacon. And a third of the puddings sampled contained more than one gram of salt, the same as two packets of crisps.

Some healthy-sounding dishes also fared badly. A pasta dish from The ­Beaufort, a Young's pub in Barnet, north London, contained 40g of saturated fat – twice the recommended daily limit for a woman. A white chocolate cheesecake with winter berries served with vanilla ice cream from The Slug and Lettuce contained a whopping 33.2g saturated fat – more than the maximum recommended daily intake for a man.

Carrie Bolt, a nutritionist with Cash, said: "I think that customers would be shocked by how much salt is in their favourite meals and, in particular, in their desserts as these taste sweet. How many people would guess that a sticky toffee pudding could contain as much as 1.95g salt, equivalent to two rashers of bacon? More and more of us are eating out on a regular basis and when we buy a meal in a pub or restaurant we generally have no way of knowing how much salt or saturated fat it contains."

Professor Graham MacGregor, Chairman of CASH and Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at St George's Hospital in London, commented: "These high salt pub meals make us very thirsty, encouraging us to drink more. Keeping our salt consumption below the recommended maximum limits is vital. If we are to reduce the numbers of people needlessly suffering and dying from heart attacks and strokes, then we all need to reduce our salt intake. Too much saturated fat leads to raised cholesterol, which in turn is also a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke."

Helen Clark, area manager for Wandsworth Council's food team, said: "This is the first London-wide nutritional survey carried out by environmental health teams. What surprised us was not only the wide variation in levels of salt and saturated fat between different meals, but also the variation between similar menu items from different pubs."

A spokesman for JD Wetherspoons said: "Wetherspoons has carried out its own independent analysis of the salt and fat and other nutritional content of its meals. This information is on the company's website and in the pubs themselves.

"We give this information to people but they have to make their own decision about what they choose to eat."

(GU: Original Article)