Confessions of a Wino

I wanted Bresse Bleu but I just can’t find it in the UK, so I settled for second best, Cambozola, which is a German Cheese available at any supermarket.

For me, eating a German Blue “Brie” is just plain wrong.  It must be like eating a Dr Oetkers Pizza (you really are having a laugh – An Italian product, made in Germany and sold in England – ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha).  I’ve never tried it but surely nobody buys that marketing line?  Have you seen the TV ad?  A loving couple on a first date sat on a suspension bridge in the open air at a fully set table, eating a pizza made in Germany, approximately 1.3 miles from the nearest oven.  I haven’t laughed so much since I found www.hugeurl.com – waging the war against brevity.

But sometimes we can’t always get what we want, so we have to settle for second best.  In my case I can’t afford a decent Barolo so I sampled a bottle of Langhe Nebbiolo de Forville Barbaresco 2005 as my second best.  After tasting the wine I guessed it was from a supermarket at about £4.99.  In fact, online, I found this wine at Majestic at a whopping £7.99.

 

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I used to live in Bingley, West Yorkshire and frequented Valentino’s many a Friday night.  One of my favourite places for friendly and rustic, if slightly over garlicked and over-buttered fayre.

So when invited back for a birthday party recently, I was interested to see if the old fella was still there.  The welcome was as warm as ever and Valentino remembered me (that’s the thing about an Italian welcome – they are great at pretending they know you, I’m sure he must have wondered who the hell I was.)

Valentino’s was founded in MCMXCV which sounds like a long time ago, but by my reckoning is 1995.  I double checked my Roman maths by going to Google and typing “MCMXCV in Arabic” and the answer was duly computed.  Isn’t Google totally awesome (say this out loud in a nasal teenage American twang).

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Cacophony.  That’s the only word to describe the number and range of restaurants on Charlotte Street.  This bustling part of London seems to be the very epicentre of eating out.  I was dining with someone who knew the area and we agreed on Italian so he suggested Bertorelli’s which I learnt had been founded by the Bertorelli family some 90 years ago.

So I was, frankly, bloody annoyed to find that Chez Gérard Group now owned the restaurant and had turned it into yet another one of their chains.  I’ve always considered Chez Gérard to be high on price and low on quality and you may remember my Livebait experience…  I find most chains, in any case, are a triumph of formula over inspiration, of laziness over perspiration.

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Loose end on a Friday night in Batley, West Yorkshire?  Why not try the world famous Frontier Club?  Many a famous name has played the place – even the Grumbleweeds!

Nothing on the particular Friday I was there, so decided to try the restaurant next door – Zucchini.  I heard it is run by the same people as the excellent but smoky (well, used to be before 1 July 07 English smoking ban) Dolce Vita in Birstall, so we expected great things.

I won’t be going back.  The staff were surly, the wine was too warm and the food was average.

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I’ve just been watching one of my favourite TV programmes, Grand Designs.  Every episode is a tale of hope and of human triumph in the face of considerable adversity.  Best of all it shows that if you have a big plan it is always ten times more difficult to deliver than your worst possible estimate.

Kevin McCloud looks on and commentates in his laconic and smug, but laid back and highly entertaining style.  The thing about “reality” TV is that we can all sit back and smile with the expert, at how dumb the subjects are for not realising that they needed building regs approval for the step they are replacing with one that is 1.5 inches lower than the incumbent broken one.  Meanwhile we are led to believe that the whole project is in jeopardy as a result.

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Staying at the Headland Hotel on Fistral Beach in Newquay you have to just sit and imagine how grand it must have been when first built.  The Edwardians must have enjoyed travelling from London and judging by the elegance of the dining room they dressed for dinner.  They probably dressed for surfing I suspect….

We didn’t exactly dress for dinner but we did feel compelled to look fairly smart.

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(With apologies to anyone who speaks proper Italian out there….)

I was mooching around Deansgate in Manchester looking for a quick bite on my own.  I decided to try Pesto (website under construction at the time of writing).  As best I can make out, this is an Italian take on tapas.  Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought!

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Somewhere roughly east of the Eden Project in Cornwall you may stumble across Newquay and Watergate Bay.  Here you will find another highly commendable charity establishment.  Fifteen Cornwall is Jamie Oliver’s project to give young (and often disadvantaged) young people the opportunity to make something of their lives, by learning how to cook very very expensive food.

As it was the first anniversary of the opening of Fifteen Cornwall and this marked the graduation of the first batch of trainees we thought it would be rude to turn down the opportunity to try the highly popular place.  OK then it wasn’t exactly a personal invite from Jamie but it was nice to be there.

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My day job took me to the City and after a morning of extreme hard work, a lunchtime visit to TKs on Lovat Lane.

Paul Hacker took me so I figured we might be there all afternoon.

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“Put a Yorkshireman in charge of an Italian restaurant???” I said.  “Next, you will be telling me a Swede is being appointed as England Football coach!”

So it came to pass that my predictions for the year 2001 were (as ever) way off the mark, since Martin Pickles bought the Flying Pizza in Leeds and……….well let’s not discuss the other appointment.

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