On British Food for the Observer

Chris, Helen and EuWen performed admirably in their interviews with Jay Rayner on the topic of British food. Sadly, I couldn't join in because it was filmed on my first day of my new life in Sweden. But I was able to submit a short piece on the topic which was featured in Observer. The irony of having my first piece or writing published in my favourite newspaper on the first Sunday that I don't have access to it, is certainly not lost on me. In fact I still haven't seen it for myself yet!

So, is there really such a thing as British food?

"Sometime you don’t realise what you have until its gone. So to see if there really is such a thing as British food, let’s conduct a thought experiment.

Suspend your current beliefs and remove the likes of sausage and mash, fish and chips as well as steak and ale pie from your life. Imagine they don’t even exist. And if you can, try to remove the idea of tucking into a full roast rib of beef, replete with Yorkshire puddings and crispy potatoes that have been roasted in sinful goose fat followed by apple crumble with gallons of custard.

Now, if you can imagine life being exactly the same without all this lovely, generous food, then unfortunately British food doesn’t exist. However, if when you temporarily erased all these hearty dishes from your mind, you broke out in cold sweats and started singing Jerusalem, then we can be fairly sure that British food is very definitely a real thing."

The timing of this was very meaningful. Various strands of my life converged and sparked prophetically. And it made me really think about the fact that by moving to Sweden I have left a litany of things behind that are proving very hard to live without. Cowie, British food, friends, family, London, the British countryside etc.

But by conducting the same thought experiment, it's very clear that they all still exist. And on a beautiful day in Gothenburg I couldn't think of anything better than tucking into rare roast lamb followed by rhubarb crumble and custard. But I'll have to wait until I return home at Easter for that.

(PS I love the pose that EuWen is frozen in. He appears to be describing a girl with particularly enormous breasts).

A lunch worthy of beatification at St. John

I’ve re-written this introduction four and half times now. Which is quite apt given that the occasion was to celebrate my departure from my current job after the same number of years of busy toil. And for the same amount of time I’ve been gagging to eat at St. John and have developed a zealous love of off-beat cuts of meat and English cooking styles. So to say I had high hopes is like suggesting that John Terry has got an eye for the ladies. I just prayed that all my pent up enthusiasm wasn’t going to be let down. Fortunately, it wasn’t.

From the moment we arrived in the stark but light atrium, surrounded by institutional white paint and police station glass, until the moment we left four and a half hours later, we were treated with informal efficiency. The sight of Fergus Henderson enjoying a light lunch just made the whole experience even more special.

We started with a pint of savoury Black Sheep ale whilst a colleague got sidetracked on the phone. This gave us time to delve deep into the bowels of the menu whilst tucking into perfectly baked bread. We had to be careful not to wolf it all down and spoil our appetites.



Langoustines were magnificent specimens that begged to be sketched by someone with more talent than me. They were sweet. Fishy. Juicy. A more classically inclined individual might describe them as the Platonic ideal of shellfish. The yellowy-green, mayonnaise they were served with made for perfect dunking as the slightly bitter taste helped to highlight the langoustine flavour. Whilst fiddling with the claws, in an ambitious attempt to get the last shard of flesh out, I remembered a story my father tells about how on a holiday to Brittany when I was still in a pram, I was parked opposite a lobster tank and fell under the mesmeric spell of the shellfish. The next time I was fed I rejected my pappy baby food and demanded langoustine which promptly made me very ill! This whole episode probably explains an awful lot!



Bone marrow with a parsley and caper salad is famous. And rightly so. I now know why dogs are obsessed with the things (minus the parsley). Is there anything in the world that visually promises so little but delivers so much? Spread on hot toast and sprinkled with salt and we were all in bliss.

Sprats with tartar sauce were tremendous. I’ve had them a few times recently and these were definitely the best. Crispy, juicy and well sauced.



A single native oyster from Mersea was the best I’ve ever had. It deserved to be put in one of those memory capsules that school children fill with things they want people in the future to discover. Crucially it tasted purely of itself.

It took us a while to decide what to have for our main courses. Guinea fowl with lentils turned out to be delicious as did a Flinstonian sized pork chop. But I was delighted to be ushered in the direction of chitterlings and chips rather than a safer option. Chitterlings are exactly the sort of thing you should eat in a restaurant like St. John. You can cook guinea fowl, pork chops and steak at home. But chitterlings require expert knowledge to ensure they are prepared properly. Failure to do this can result in illness owing to fact that they are only inches away from a pig’s anus.

The only previous time I’ve encountered chitterlings was at Chilli Cool, where they were prepared in a Sichuan style to great effect. But this time they were simply served having been poached and then grilled over charcoal. The meat was soft, juicy and salty. Not unlike eating roast ham in sausage format. I’ve been in raptures about them ever since. The chips and sauce they came with cannot be faulted either.

Ox heart with beetroot and horseradish was magnificent as well. The heart had been sliced into livery slithers and quickly grilled. It was soft and lean like Rowan Atkinson wrapped in an acre of velvet, but a lot more edible. I just wish they served ox heart in sandwich format on a regular basis.

Excellent Eccles cakes and blackberry ripple ice cream added a triumphant full stop to our meal. It’s rare when something you’ve hyped up to biblical levels lives up to your high hopes. St. John, didn’t live up to them. It rewrote my expectations and has inspired me to eat more boldly. Thank you for the best lunch I’ve ever had in London.

The Vintner, Stratford

Dad went a bit mad before Christmas. He booked the whole family in for a marathon Shakespeare experience. We spent the entire Saturday between Christmas and New Year sat in the theatre at Stratford watching:

Henry IV i
Henry IV ii
Henry V

Far from being exhausing we emerged at 11pm gagging for supper and buzzing with energy. The performances had been sensational. I'm always amazed that the English language could have been masterd four hundred years ago and has been going backwards ever since!

Henry V was utterly awesome. The 2 big speeches, "Stiffen up the sinews" and "We happy few. We band of brothers" were so powerful I was left shuddering. Gripped by the passion. Inspired to attack France! Geoffrey Streatfeild was terrific as Harry V. The quintessential protean King. The model of what it is to be English in contrast to the poncey French!

I found myself nodding along in agreement to the two reviews below. David Warner was wrong as Falstaff. I barely laughed when I should have been in stitches. And Geoffrey Streatfeild was brilliant and will be a star of the future as Hal/Harry V:

Henry IV in the Independent
Henry V in the Guardian



In the past we've eaten at the Mucky Duck after the theatre. But this time they were full. We were very lucky to get the last table at The Vintner before it closed. The staff were charming despite being in the twilight of their ten hour shifts. They kindly let us eat but insisted we only had one course because the chef was going home.

I chose their grilled lemon sole from a menu where you'd be delighted to eat all of it. My fish emerged looking plump and well cooked. It teased easily away from the bone and shimmered in the mouth after a squirt of lemon.

I was naughty and ordered some chips which were good along with some delicous roasted vegeatables. Suz had a massive burger and Cowie had a main coursed sized scallops with chorizo which looked great. It's just a shame I wasn't given a look in!

We guzzled some cold white wine and relaxed into our comfy seats eagerly discussing our thoughts about the day's drama. What a day. Really impressive alternative to the Mucky Duck if you're going to the theatre.

I can't wait for Henry VI i, ii and iii! Not to mention Richard III.

Nothing like a day sat in a seat watching Shakespeare to get your appetite up!

Canteen and Spitalfields Market

Cowie and I have been looking forward to paying Canteen a visit for Sunday lunch for ages... probably more than a year now. We've just always had other stuff to do and find the trek to Liverpool Street from Clapham a bit of a mission! Getting the bus from Shoreditch home once took 3 hours and involved a detour via Trafalgar Square the night the Italians won the football work cup...

So we zoomed up to Spitalfield eager to get stuck into some bartering and haggling... but were disappointed to find the old market is being renovated and is due to reopen shortly... so we had to make do with the new market stalls just outside Leon, Giraffe and most importantly, Canteen.

Stalls that pop up at Borough, Albeville Road, Good Food Show, London Food Show etc were all on show selling divie chocolate brownies and bananna cake, gorgeous focaccia with olives, amazing pies, stunning chocolate and every other goodie you could think of... London's markets are brilliant. It made us want to give up our day jobs and start a stall...

Having got over our disappointed at the market being somewhat truncated we nipped over the road to Brick Lane to check out the Shepard Fairey exhibition at Stolen Spaces. Just as we set off I overheard an American girl call out to her friend, "Hey Shepard...". How bizarre!




The exhibition was immense. In a vast, industrial space above Brick Lane we emerged into a cavernous space that probably used to be a clothing factory. On the bare concrete walls hung powerful images showing Shepard Fairey's evolution of his Obey/Andre propoganda into a collection of posters/stencil paintings that couldn't hammer home his anti war, pro freedom message any more explosively. The message that we are all being watched in an Orwellian state is particularly apt in London, and even more so on Brick Lane as London has the highest proportion of CCTV cameras per person in any city! He managed to sell 90% of his work on the opening night... not bad for what a lot of the art world would call a vandall!

We ventured back to Canteen via a vibrant market on Brick Lane which could't have had more imaginative stuff on sale... full of originality. Great T shirts, awesome belt buckles, delicious food from every culture of the globe. And we popped out at the rear to see a red London RootMaster bus set up as a restaurant in between a clapped out car by Banksy and a meteorite type thing by D-Face... so cool. I've promised to take Cowie there for a quirky evening of vegan food and bus passes! Very appropriate because Cowie sat us next to a stinky tramp on the bus this morning!

Back at the ranch in Spitalfield we had to queue for about 10 minutes for a table at Canteen which, in conjunction with the school dinner tables, reminded us of Busaba and Wagamamas... no bad thing. The menu is a tour de force of British classics. From macoroni cheese, through potted shrimps, roast duck, veal pie, abroath smokies, smoked haddock and mash and fish and chips. We couldn't find anything we didn't want! No mean feat.



We were seated at the end of a long communual table right next to the kitchen... perfect. It gave us a chance to see all the goodies flying out. Our first observations were that quite a few of the plates seemed to spend too long on the pass. And we weren't sure putting a salad under the hot lamps was a wise move either! On top of this we were quite surprised that not one of the chefs (5 of them) were British bearing in mind this is a British restaurant. And come to think of it neither were any of the waiters or greeting staff. But then again it doesn't matter because all of the food was sublime. In many ways its a great endoresement of how good British food is... and of what a brilliantly mixed culture we are lucky to have in London.

We ordered some apple and tomato juice whilst we filtered our way through the totally delicious menu. When Cowie wasn't looking I asked the waiter for some home made pork scratchings which arrived in a little kiln jar and put a massive smile on my face. The combination of salt and fat is a bit like a class A drug... except more addictive and probably worse for me in the long run!

Our water was from the eco friendly Belu which gets another tick in the box. I love the little icon of a penguin with a smile on his face... and the fact that all profits go towards bore holes in Africa and other great water projects in the developing world.

All this boring stuff aside.... Cowie had smoked haddock and mash with spinach and holandaise which was so, so good I could have licked her plate after she had finished.



Luckily I didn't get food envy because my veal pie was so epic! Stunningly crispy pastry and rich gooey innards took all the pain away from playing hockey on Saturday. The greens were great too... mainly because they were smothered in gravy and veal juice.



All for £32... what a great place. I can't wait to go back.

Anchor and Hope, London, SE1

I've been gagging to go to the Anchor and Hope for bloody ages. It hasn't helped that Oli who sits opposite me at work has now been twice and reminds me of it as often as he forgets to make me tea! So this week the perfect excuse to go came up. Mum rang out of the blue and asked if Cowie and I wanted to go to the theatre on Friday night at the Old Vic... and would we like to go for an early supper as well.

Now the thing everyone always says about the Anchor and Hope is, get there early and be prepared to queue. So we arranged to meet at 6 in order to be able to scoff down two courses and a slurp some wine before doing battle with an obscure Spanish play full of transexuals and transvestites!

Typically I arrived late because of a marathon, delayed conference call, to find everyone already assembled and ready to order on my behalf! I soon put an end to that and opted for potted crab on toast followed by roast Middlewhite pork with crackling... although in my haste I had meant to say pot roasted pigeon! It's weird what comes out of your mouth under pressure sometimes. But the thing with their menu is that you could have accidentally ordered anything on it and come up trumps.

The dining room is literally curtained off from the rest of the pun a bit like the scene in Hamlet where Polonius gets stabbed, or the division on planes between business class and thrift. I guess it makes it easy to open the whole venue out of necessary and also gives the room a nice relaxed texture. Tables are plain wood and chipboard and I don't think any of the chairs match. It's just how I like things. I think the Japanese have an expression for it called "Wabi Sabi"... which is a celebration of the imperfect. It makes you feel at ease with your surroundings, happy to be wearing trainers, late, in a rush and keen to enjoy some gorgeous food.



We loved the mini school glasses for wine. They must be so much easier to dish wash and are almost unbreakable. Practical. That's the word for this place. Practical. Very British.

Cowie's crayfish arrived looking like beasts out of hell... dangerous little claws and deep, blood red in colour. She must have had half a dozen of the little devils on her plate alongside her small glass of garlicy mayonaise... I managed to steal one of them, purely for reporting purposes of course, and can reveal that they were far less sweet and saline than langoustines... more earthy and really juicy. I remember reading an article about them saying that they are impostors from America an are decimating our native versions. If this is right then good on the Anchor and Hope for perpetuating the cull... if not, well they're tasty little lobsters!

My crab on warm buttered brown toast was exquisite. Slurpy, salthy, sweet, well textured and plenty of it. You'd have to go a long way to better it. The only times I have had better crab have never been in this format. My crab at the Riverside in Dorset was stunningly fresh and showstoppingly good, as was wok steamed crab with ginger, chilli and black bean sauce on Lamma Island off Hong Kong. But this was the best potted crab on toast that I've eaten... Yum.

Mum had terrine which she said was OK and Suz had a salad that almost filled the entire table which kept her quiet for 10 minutes so it must have been good!

The next door table ordered a leg of kid. It arrived looking slighly smaller than a leg of lamb and was greeted with great reverence by the table of four men keen to devour their meat. A chap in a red jumper did such a bad job of carving that Dad was tempted to offer his assistance but instead declared that it made him ill to even watch someone carve that badly! He was carving with the grain, giving his mates vast hunks of meat rather than Dad's slender chunks! Schoolboy! If you're going to order a whole leg of goat you'd better practice your public carving skills in advance!

Cowie and Suz shared an enormous fish soup from a communual couldron that could have been a prop in Macbeth. The vast pot was chock full with gunard, mussels, scallops and all sorts of other goodies and probably made from the stock of Cowie's crayfish!

Mum and Dad tucked into their Dover Soles with equal enthusiasm. Two each seemed excessive but neither complained. They looked beautifully cooked and judging by the lack of commentary from Dad must have met with his approval. His laparotamy on both fish was perfect so they must have been cooked perfectly.

My pork arrived to a small sqeal from Cowie when she realised that it wasn't a dish for two. I valiantly tucked into my enormous mound of swine savouring every forkfull of juicy, tender white meat and light crunchy crackling. It's hard to do the crackling justice using words alone. It was as light as a wafer, warm, crisp and simply divine. I'll never forget it. Simply spectacular.

This was British cooking at its most authentic. Top quality ingredients. No mucking around and posh French names. Just good, solid, brilliantly cooked food in a charming, low key setting.

I simply can't wait to go back so we can spend more time enjoying it... and to do some carving! Luckily Mum and Dad enjoyed it so they are keen too!