Part of the joy of eating out is observing other people and being part of a happy crowd
On Friday in Waterloo, London, there will be an attempt to set a new record for the world's smallest restaurant. It will seat either two or four in a space that's 102cm by 235cm. It might set some other records, too. Hardest restaurant to get into. Dining experience most like eating in a prison cell. Lunch most beset by wondering what the rest of the world is doing, and if it's having a good time without you.
For as long as silly season exists, so will this kind of summer stunt. With the proceeds going to charity, it's not doing any harm. It's also not the only teeny restaurant on Earth. If close quarters or extreme exclusivity – or both – grab you as an appetite-sharpener, you'll be disappointed that Rachel Khoo's Little Paris Kitchen home restaurant, which seated two, is no longer operational. You might find solace at Solo Per Due or Restaurant Kuappi or, if you're willing to spend enough to have it to yourself, at one of the chef's tables, with dedicated staff, that proliferate at hospitality's higher end. But what, really, is the point? If you don't like other people, stay in. If you don't like other people or cooking, stay in and hire a chef. Or get fish and chips.
In my experience there's something odd, and pressurised, about being the only customers in a restaurant made for two, a bit like staying at a B&B with only one room, or accidentally waking up at Downton Abbey and feeling guilty about the servants. On holiday in Murcia we ate some really good food in a really unnerving alcove. It was, effectively, a restaurant for two, kept aside for the English pair hardwired to eat early. It could have been bliss, but there's nothing relaxing about being the sole reason for your host's hard work – and when the locals arrived, we could hear them having a lovely time just round the corner, in the dining room. Unless there are more than four of you, eating out in private means you lose the joy of observing other people, and of being part of a happy crowd.
There's more than one way to eat in isolation, though, and I could sit at a table for one all day long. It's an occupational hazard that's actually a source of peace and diversion. The opportunities for eavesdropping are excellent, you get a proper look at the food, and if you want to pretend to be a spy, knock yourself out – some people will already be thinking you're odd. The one thing I don't understand is this: a restaurant full of tables for one. If no one's talking to each other, there's nothing to listen to. During a clutch of recent restaurant visits, from Michelin three-stars to a curry house, I've seen lone diners, happy as Larry, in six of the 10. Might you have been one of them, or would you rather have the whole place – small as it may be – shared between your table of two?
'The chef delivers the occasional dish to the table himself, a trope that just makes me think, "Needy". And, "Who's manning the stove?" '
Some restaurants are all about the diner, their sole purpose to send you back into your life feeling well-fed and well-disposed to the world. But some appear to be far more about the chef, each tortured dish screeching, "Look at me, Lord Snooty Mr Michelin, look at me!"
If you asked even the hardest-core restaurant fan to create their fantasy dining destination, it's doubtful they'd come up with Adam Stokes and his wife Natasha's new place: a former sandwich shop tricked out in chilly greige, faux marble, the blank stare of bullseye mirrors and a massive slab of trompe l'oeil. Or pine for dishes such as the second on our nine-course tasting menu (more like 12 or 13, once the haute extras appear): little chunks of squid and waxy Jersey Royals, oyster leaves (yes, leaves that taste of actual oysters), astringent bursts of lime, strident crisps of toasted garlic, and black items akin to prawn crackers and made from squid ink. It's admirable, in the way you'd admire a black Goya or a track by Nine Inch Nails. But comfy it isn't.
Britain's second city seems to get its knickers in a bit of a twist about Michelin, far more than London does: Stokes' pre-publicity bangs on about his one-starred past and the febrile possibility that he might bring a fourth star to the city. He's got the chops, for sure: many of his dishes are glorious, technically assured while still being the kind of stuff you want to ram down your neck. Slow-cooked pigs' trotters, say, shredded and mixed with smoked eel, then fried in the lightest, crispest crumb. There's sticky bacon jam underneath, to give it a touch of phwoar. Or an intermediary saucer of rosy rhubarb strewn with shavings of frozen foie gras that melt on to the sour-sweet fruit in an altogether blissful manner. And a witty take on asparagus hollandaise: vividly flavoured Wye Valley asparagus and "hot mayonnaise" with pink grapefruit and garlic croutons for zing and crunch. One dessert – a tube of finely tempered dark chocolate stuffed with a silky milk-chocolate mousse, with wisps of sugar "glass" dusted with espelette pepper – is as beautiful as art, as cleverly constructed as architecture.
Every carefully chosen piece of crockery glints with ambition. Every dish arrives with a solemn soliloquy; and every accompanying wine (some smart, off-piste choices) with a lengthy histoire. A good old bitch session is virtually impossible.
But it's not all foie and trotters: some dishes don't come off, due to what should be rookie errors. Wildly over-salted buckwheat, for instance, mars delicate, saffroned brill. And while using Gentleman's Relish with first-rate lamb is a clever idea – lamb and anchovies are a classic combo, after all – if you try it, you should again steer clear of that salt cellar.
And some of it is just a bit silly: what appear to be tiny chicken croquettes burst robust but tepid stock into your gob, like a Brit xiao long bao, and come skewered with a dot of greyish "stuffing" that might be something brilliantly molecular created with maltodextrin and gellan gum, but that tastes quite precisely of Paxo. Or a "gin and tonic" foamy number, basically cucumber and Hendrick's-flavoured egg white.
Stokes comes across as a lovely and – such a cheffy word, this – passionate chap. As is the current, Noma-inspired fashion, he delivers the occasional dish to the table himself, a trope that just makes me think, "Needy." And, "Who's manning the stove?" Word on the Brum foodie street hints that this might be a warm-up to a big, starry hotel gig (it is, apparently, "a two-year pop-up"; or, as it's otherwise known, a short lease). Sublime trotter cromesquis and luscious Australian semillon-sauvignon discoveries and all, do I really want to take part in what amounts to an extended audition for Michelin and the big time? With matching wines, our meal delivers a dizzyingly Mayfair-sized bill. For that loot, I'd like my dinner to be gaffe-free. And a bit more about me.
• Adam's, 21a Bennetts Hill, Birmingham, 0121-643 3745. Open Tues-Sat, noon-2pm, 7-9.30pm. Five-course tasting menu, £45, nine-course £75; set lunch £16 for one course, £21 for two, £25 for three.
When the chef admits he prefers eating to cooking, you feel warm inside – even before you start eating
25a Warren Street, London W1 (020 7388 6175). Meal for two: £80
There are many things I want from a restaurant; love is not one of them. I do not expect restaurants or their staff to love me, either in that Hallmark greeting-card sense or that moist adult way. Usually this is fine. I have a number of defining qualities; lovability has never been close to the top of the list. When eating in the US, however, nobody seems to notice. There, almost every chef and waiter will announce that the food being served has been prepared "with love". What? You had congress with my enchiladas? You personally dressed my cobb salad? Say it ain't so. It brings to mind the thing the narrator does to a slab of raw liver, destined for the family's dinner, in Philip Roth's novel, Portnoy's Complaint. If you've read it you know. If you haven't – oh, just work it out.
You get the point: I am unwilling to attach the warmer human emotions to restaurants. They are businesses, driven by other (often virtuous) motives. But there are exceptions. Honey & Co, a small whitewashed place with a Moorish tiled floor and a Levantine menu to match, is that exception. It belongs to an Israeli husband and wife. It's probably worth knowing that Sarit Packer was previously the pastry chef for Ottolenghi and executive head chef for the sprauncier place, Nopi. Her husband, Itamar, has his own armful of experience and says he has been cooking since the age of five "and leaving a great mess in the kitchen ever since".
If Ottolenghi marries clean-lined, perfectly poised lifestyle with food, Honey & Co is just about dinner. When a chef tells you he prefers eating to cooking, as Itamar does, you know you are in good hands. The restaurant, at the darker end of Warren Street, is small and noisy, all elbows and knees. Damn and blast. It feels like an act of love.
There is a standard starter-main-course-dessert menu, but the best deal is the set – £29.50 brings you a table-crowding mezze followed by your choice of main and dessert. All of it shrieks of freshness and poise, from the banal – a bowl of kalamata olives with their own crunchy pickled cucumber – to the more involved. Who knew you could get something so luscious and compelling out of carrots and butternut squash formed into deep-fried fritters? Their hummus is a reminder that it does not have to be the sort of thing you'd grout a bathroom with. It is what it should always be: a powerful garlicky condiment that forces you to ask for more hot, soft pitta bread. Even a simple mixed beetroot salad shows unusual care and attention. It dyes the lips and gladdens the heart. To this we added a starter of roasted smokey-charred octopus with chilli and coriander.
I will confess a moment's disappointment. I ordered the lamb shawarma, expecting a plate of the roast meat – often the belly – with a surplus of caramelised fat of the sort to make a cardiologist start calculating the bill for their services to come. Though the sweet-spiced flavour was the same, this was a bowl of long-braised meat collapsing into its own juices. No matter. It was still a very good bowl of meat. To lift things there was the crunch of a cabbage salad and the calming balm of a little yogurt. Beef kofta were spiced balls of quality beef, alongside an exceptional aubergine purée. This was comfort food for people who like to end the day wearing silk slippers, delivered by a bunch of young women who care about your comfort.
The dessert menu distinguishes itself by name-checking Claudia Roden as the originator of an orange cake recipe, and any kitchen which does that is all right by me, Claudia being a bona fide goddess. I'll try it another time. Instead we finished with a soft, warm pistachio cake with the sour punch of roasted plums and an extraordinarily good cold cheese cake, of deep, rich, sweet-sour honeyed cream on a crisp, sugared pastry base. This is indeed food made by people who like to eat. It is food that cares less about how it looks than how it tastes. Call me sentimental. Call me soppy. But it feels like an act of love. Perhaps I'm getting old. ■
With great beaches and seemingly endless parks and gardens, Bournemouth is a fantastic place in summer. But where to eat? Swerving the tourist traps, we winkle out 10 top restaurants and cafes where you can eat for under £10 a head
It's a distinctly no-frills deal, this. The chair I was sitting on needed repairing and Dosa's vivid green colour scheme may well give you a migraine. But, blimey, the food was good and cheap (cash only, of course). South Indian and Sri Lankan dishes are the speciality, not least the eponymous dosa, which, with its crepe-like consistency and lacy edges, they've got off pat. The masala potato filling, with nutty lentils, had been properly spiced for depth of flavour not heat, and the mint-green coconut chutney was good, too. The accompanying sambar, however, was fantastic. It had the heft, both literally and flavour-wise, of a chunky winter soup, but one as spiced as it is warmly savoury, a little tamarind sourness giving each mouthful a twist. • Starters £1.75-£4.95, dosas and mains, £3.75-£7.50. 280 Old Christchurch Road, 01202 318535, dosaworld.net
Chez Fred
No, not a French bistro, but a quaint fish-and-chip restaurant whose lunchtime queues speak for themselves. Located in Westbourne, a short bus ride or an appetite-sharpening walk of a mile or two from Bournemouth centre, Chez Fred is clearly something of a pilgrimage for fish-loving locals. Line-caught haddock, MSC-approved cod and an emphasis on frying the fish to order, are good indications that this is a quality operation. In most respects, it delivers. The bronzed, rustling, fluffy chips were excellent, and the crisp batter had a real richness and savoury depth to it. Homemade mushy peas were, likewise, fresh and velvety. The tartar sauce, however, lacked that rugged texture of chopped gherkins and capers. It was more like a thick, sharp mayonnaise. • Takeaway fish and chips from £5.15; eat in special from £7.25, including bread roll, mushy peas and a drink. 10 Seamoor Road, Westbourne, 01202 761023, chezfred.co.uk
Genève
You wouldn't guess from looking at it, but sedate Westbourne is also home to arguably Bournemouth's coolest restaurant. "Dirty" burgers and slow'n'low US barbecue are the hip order of the day at this small diner. Ingredients are free-range and local: they have their own smoker out the back – using cherry and apple wood to bring a tang to pastrami or Jamaican jerk wings. A notice announces proudly: "Everything we serve is from-scratch and homemade."
Genève's classic burger certainly lives up to that billing. So loosely packed it's almost spilling out of the sides of the brilliant ciabatta bun (firm and durable; able to soak up all the juices), it's a sweet, juicy beef bomb, expertly seasoned and laced with a little onion. Luxurious mayo and watercress are the simple and effective garnish. The fries – long triple-cooked skin-on fingers – were less successful. A significant minority were almost limp with grease. This wasn't what Heston Blumenthal intended when he got scientific on the spud. • Lunch soup/sandwiches from £4.45, burgers and mains £6.95-£10.95. 128 Poole Road, Westbourne, 01202 768864, on Twitter
South Coast Roast
Isn't Bournemouth supposed to be God's waiting room? What's the deal, then, with all these trendy venues? A spin-off from Boscombe veteran Cafe Boscanova, South Coast Roast is part third-wave coffee shop, part bright-eyed cult (everything's "awesome"; the beef sandwich will, apparently, change your life). It certainly justifies its self-confidence on the coffee front. A flat white (£2.50) was superb. The milk was silky; it was served at the correct, drinkable, not madly hot, temperature; and the properly dosed espresso shot shone through, as it should, a little liquorice flickering at its edges.
The food is good, too. Beyond brownies and Anzac biscuits, it includes posh sandwiches and salads (marinated chickpea and preserved lemon; green bean, lemon and almond salad), sourdough toast topped with, for instance, avocado, chilli and lime, and a few hot dishes, such as aubergine parmigiana. I could pick tiny holes in the Vietnamese bánh mì (the pickled veg lacked serious poke; the bread was light, fine, but inauthentic). However, it fizzed with flavour, the chicken and pork filling was alive with herbs, lime and a smooth chilli heat. • Sandwiches and meals £2.40-£8. 24 Richmond Hill, facebook.com/SouthCoastRoast
Bournemouth Pizza Co
Bournemouth is blessed with two wood-fired oven pizzerias, both of which locals rave about. Da Mario is on the way out of town towards Westbourne (12 Queen's Road, 01202 766988), but I tried Bournemouth Pizza Co, near the train station. The young buck of the two, it's a minimalist space with big communal tables, quirky art on the walls and Blondie on the stereo. The dough for its 14in bases is made daily, of course, and has that tell-tale bounce and chew.
There are a few exotic toppings on the menu, such as wild boar and venison, but the better testament to BPC's greatness is that its margherita hit the mark. The tomato sauce was clear and fresh in its flavour and the mozzarella delivered a heavenly hit of sweet creaminess. That base could have done with a little more char, perhaps, but overall this was first-rate pizza. It's BYO (£1pp), and two of you could share a pizza and a couple of salads here for under £20. In fact, if you're walking back into town, spend the money you've saved at Giggi Gelateria (from £1.80). It's tucked away in a dull little shopping arcade, but its traditional Italian gelato is very good. • Pizzas £8-£11. 44 St Swithuns Road, 01202 555125, bournemouthpizza.co.uk
Flirt Café Bar
This is a big, busy space, with kitsch walls decorated with everything from vintage lamps to disembodied dolls' heads smoking cigarettes. Its massive menu is a little bewildering but essentially breaks down into a canteen-style counter of hot and cold dishes, and the usual cafe fare of soups, jacket spuds, sandwiches and, a Flirt speciality, topped waffles. My samples from the hot food were, like Flirt itself, a bit odd. I've certainly never seen kidney beans and sweetcorn in chicken curry before – it's the kind of thing a housewife might have come up with in the 1970s. Nonetheless, Flirt's food is tasty. A vegetable salad dressed in lime, chilli and ginger was interesting, if a little worthy. The jambalaya certainly wouldn't worry any Creole chef, but it was carried by a nice, lightly tangy tomato sauce. On a sunny day, the terrace seating outside is clearly in hot demand. • Snacks and light meals £1.75-£4.80, counter food, small/big plates £4.95/£6.95. 21 The Triangle, 01202 553999, flirtcafebar.com
Kino Lounge
There is an arthouse cinema downstairs, hence the name. But this bleached wood space is perhaps better-known for its menus of soups, salads, meze and hot tapas, popular square 11" pizza and pasta dishes. My tabbouleh could have done more lemon juice, but it had enough clean flavour to pass muster and, as it was my first visit, the owner threw in one of the great Kino flatbreads, that puff up like footballs. Sharing a salad and a couple of meze or a pizza, would make this an affordable light lunch for two. • Nibbles, salads and tapas £2-£4.50, mains £4.80-£9.80. 39 Bourne Avenue, 01202 552588, kinolougebournemouth.tumblr.com
Deli Rocks
Stupidly, I walked to Southbourne from the town centre, in light rain that turned into a monsoon (hop on the bus if you're not staying locally). I was soaked to the skin and grumpy, but within minutes of arriving I'd stopped caring. I had one of this Italian deli-cafe's stuffed rustic loaf sandwiches in my mitt, a double espresso (£1.90) on the go, and the world suddenly seemed a far better place. Olive bread had been hollowed out and filled with numerous items – preserved artichoke, pesto, blue cheese, aubergine, rocket – every one absolutely hollering its flavour at me. From gourmet sandwiches and bagels to pizza slices and frittata, everything else on display looked brilliant, too. The space itself was large and relaxed, the bare brick walls lined with packing cases stacked with deli products, old gramophones and the odd pair of cowboy boots. • Sandwiches £3.90-£4.90, meals £6.50-£7.90. 23 Southbourne Grove, Southbourne, delirocks.com
Little Pickle Deli Cafe
From something as simple as tea (a pot served with a miniature bottle of milk, for £1.30), to its energetic emphasis on seasonal Dorset produce and scratch cooking, Little Pickle is one of those rare places that does everything properly. Others might cut corners on a breakfast sandwich, but here the buttered bread is Dorset Bakehouse and the excellent sausages, from a nearby Boscombe butcher, had been patiently fried and caramelised. Such details make a huge difference. Later in the day, LP dispenses burgers, pies, rarebits, deli boards and sandwiches – from Blue Vinney cheese and chutney to gussied-up steak ciabatta and fish finger sarnies. Such is the place's popularity I overheard one customer ordering her crab sandwiches up front, for the weekend. • Takeaway sandwiches and pies from £3; eat-in breakfast £1.60-£6.50, sandwiches and meals £5-£7.50. 737 Christchurch Road, Boscombe, 01202 900899, littlepickledelicafe.co.uk
Goat & Tricycle
If you're looking for highly satisfactory pub grub, this polished old boozer is the place. They do a sunny egg and chips with home-cooked ham, wintry dishes such as homemade chilli, and liver and bacon casserole, as well as cut-above baguettes and burgers. Cash-strapped travellers should keep an eye on the specials board, where smaller versions of pub favourites like fish and chips (£6.50) pop up. On the beer-front, however, despite its 10 pumps, the Goat & Tricycle was a disappointment.
It's a matter of personal taste but this being a Wadworth pub (whose traditional beers are fairly dull), I'd expected the guest pumps to provide a bit of spice and excitement. This is clearly a house that keeps its beer in good order but, in a country undergoing a craft beer revolution, are guest beers from big regional brewers, like Thwaites and Everards, going to set anyone's pulse racing? No. The prices on the other hand - £3.70 for a pint of Adnam's Ghost Ship – nearly gave this northerner a heart attack. • Baguettes and baked potatoes £4.95-£5.95, mains £7.75-£10.95. 27-29 Westhill Road, 01202 314220, goatandtricycle.co.uk
Travel between Manchester and Bournemouth was provided by Cross Country Trains (crosscountrytrains.co.uk). Accommodation was provided by the Norfolk Hotel (01202 551521, thenorfolkhotel.co.uk). Until 21 September 2013, its double rooms start at £83 a night B&B, or £113 a night half-board. For more visitor information on Bournemouth, see bournemouth.co.uk
Little fresh fruit or veg on offer in major high street eateries, research by Soil Association and Organix finds
Children's menus at the UK's leading restaurant and pub chains are often "unhealthy and unimaginative", and are still dominated by nuggets, burgers, sausages, ready meals and fizzy drinks, with little fresh fruit or vegetables on offer, it was claimed on Wednesday.
The campaigning charity the Soil Association, with organic baby food brand Organix, sent "secret diners" to 21 popular high street restaurants and pubs and ranked their opinions of the offerings for children.
Jamie's Italian, launched five years ago by chef Jamie Oliver, Wagamama and the Wetherspoon pub chain were placed highest, while Burger King, KFC and Prezzo came bottom.
Launching the "Out to Lunch" campaign, the charity and its partner are calling for all young diners to be routinely offered the choice of children's portions of adult meals.
They say all food should be freshly prepared in the kitchen and kids' cutlery should be standard.
Research for the campaign also found that 40% of parents say they eat out as a family once or more in a fortnight, yet 66% think that food provision for children in restaurants is not good enough.
The assessments of the high street food venues were compiled after a panel of 40 families surveyed menus, sourcing policies and children's facilities over a three-month period, with further input from another 1,000 families, the charity said.
Researchers said more than half the restaurants and pubs – 12 out of 21 – offer children's menus dominated by nuggets, burgers and sausages. Eight failed to include vegetables or salad in the majority of their children's main meals, while 10 did not serve any fruit in any children's puddings.
Only 11 out of 21 chains were willing to tell researchers if their food was freshly cooked and where it comes from. Of the 11, only four were actually making and cooking the majority of their children's food in the kitchen – Jamie's Italian, Wagamama, Carluccio's and Cafe Rouge.
In the wake of the horsemeat scandal, only one chain – Jamie's Italian – could tell the secret diners where its meat came from, the charity said.
Joanna Lewis, head of policy at the Soil Association, which promotes organic food and farming as well as certifying products, said: "Our investigation reveals that most high street restaurants are not even meeting the most basic standards families should expect when they eat out.
"Most are still churning out children's menus dominated by the usual suspects – burgers, nuggets and pizzas – turning the table into a battlefield for any parents wanting their child to eat well."
She said restaurants made assumptions about what parents and children wanted, "with very little creative thinking going on. We are talking about unhealthy and unimaginative menus.
"It is not simply a choice between turkey twizzlers and a superfood salad. Restaurants need to raise the bar and listen to parents who are saying they want fresh food not ready meals for their children – and the same kind of variety you would expect as an adult."
Fast food chain McDonald's was ranked mid-way at 11th. It came second to Jamie's for its sourcing of British food – 100% British and Irish beef, free-range British eggs and 100% British organic milk – but could extend its healthy options for children, the charity said.
The appearance of Wetherspoons, which has 883 outlets in the UK, in third position may have surprised some, but the chain's senior food development manager, Jameson Robinson, said: "Wetherspoons serves more than 2 million children's meals each year across our pubs and appreciates the importance of sourcing UK ingredients and offering balanced meals.
"We know that there is still more work to do to enhance the menu further, including offering varying portion sizes, and we will be working towards this."
Jamie Oliver said: "Since the first Jamie's Italian opened, we've always kept things kid-friendly … so to come top of the table is a fantastic achievement, and more importantly, confirmation that we're doing things right.
"We believe that the quality of the kids' food should to be right up there on the same level as the main menu."
But companies trailing in the table took issue with the methodology and questions used.
A spokesman for Prezzo, which came 19th, said: "We are disappointed with the findings of the survey and believe it is not a true reflection of the children's meals served at Prezzo.
"We have served almost 400,000 meals from our children's menu in the past six months and the quality of these meals is very important to both ourselves and our guests.
"The children's menu dishes are made in-house, and our bolognese sauce is made using our own recipe, using fully traceable British beef and fresh ingredients."
Burger King, which was caught up in the horsemeat scandal when some of its burgers were found to be contaminated, and which came bottom of the table, said: "We are committed to offering a welcoming environment for families in our restaurants, and to providing parents with a range of options to allow them to make healthy choices for their children. This includes offering them apple fries, milk, water or juice in our kids' meals."
The campaign is the latest collaboration between the Soil Association andOrganix. The twohave worked together since 2008 campaigning for better nursery and hospital food.
Sex, drugs, ridiculous hours and appalling bullying … thanks to lurid revelations, we think we know what goes on in top kitchens. But a new generation of chefs is keen to change the old culture
Some 13 years have passed since the New York chef Anthony Bourdain laid bare his sweaty, savage, drug-addled life in the brilliant memoir, Kitchen Confidential. All manner of unsettling practices were divulged, from serving nasty old fish on Mondays, to staff ritually spraying blood from their war wounds all over each other. In one brigade, they marked the start of evening service by pouring brandy on the stove to recreate the napalm blast from the film Apocalypse Now. Bourdain wrote about cooking as though he were reporting from the front line.
A new book by Imogen Edwards-Jones, called Restaurant Babylon, sets out to reveal a similarly seedy underbelly of London's current fine dining scene. For this, the eighth of her Babylon series (Hotel and Fashion were both adapted for television), she has interviewed a number of anonymous industry insiders. The high point, she tells me, was when six chefs chewed the fat around her kitchen table one evening. As the wine flowed, the chefs grew increasingly competitive and their anecdotes got juicier and juicier. The many lurid stories in her book are true, says Edwards-Jones, but they are shoe-horned into 24 hours in the life of one fictional restaurateur, giving a "hyperbolic view of everything".
The gist of the book is that, other than improved working hours, little has changed since the Kitchen Confidential days. Bad-boy chefs: tick. Bullying: tick. Sex in cupboards: tick. Drink and drugs: tick and tick. Our narrator awakes, still dressed after passing out the night before, with a strange blonde in his bed. The coke-head chef of his one-Michelin-starred restaurant is grotesque in every way, from his appalling personal hygiene to his penchant for brief, hassle-free extramarital flings with drunken women. A young commis chef arrives at work off his face. In the telling, Edwards-Jones reveals such unsavoury kitchen practices such as "lick and stick", where chefs use saliva to adhere delicate ingredients to the plate.
But doesn't this all sound like the stuff of reminiscence rather than current reality? Surely the lives of the earnest, post-Gordon Ramsay generation would make far less salacious copy; heads down, focusing on upping their games, building their brands and getting some beauty sleep before their appearance on Saturday Kitchen? Even the book's narrator says the "metro chefs" coming through now are softer and gentler.
Take Jackson Boxer, the director of Brunswick House and Rita's Bar and Dining, a twentysomething hipster with a English Lit degree from Cambridge and cooking written into his DNA (his grandmother is the acclaimed food writer Arabella Boxer). "Restaurant work at all levels is hard," he says. "However, everywhere I've worked, there's always been a strong sense that the proprietors take seriously their duty of care towards their employees." He reckons the mythology of restaurant excess is an external perception, although one, it would appear from Restaurant Babylon, that some chefs are happy to perpetuate.
Chef-to-watch Isaac McHale, 33, whose new eatery the Clove Club in Shoreditch Town Hall was one of London's most anticipated openings this year, takes a similar tone. It's his day off and he sounds knackered. "In restaurants I've worked," he yawns, "like the Ledbury and Tom Aikens, people would just finish their shift and go home, because they were back in six hours. Everyone has a professional attitude." Wait: wasn't Aikens alleged to have once "branded" a teenage junior chef with a hot palette knife? "There's high tension," allows McHale.
He and his partners threw an after-after party for the World's 50 Best Restaurant awards this year. The international gastronomic creme de la creme in one room? In high spirits? Surely there was gossip? "People drank, danced, ate some buns and wood-pigeon sausages," he sighs. "There were no stories of intrigue or drug taking that I'm not telling you." Either McHale is the soul of discretion or this truly was an innocuous gaggle of hard-workers letting their hair down.
The cooking arena has in recent years been elevated from a service job to a revered (fetishised, even) vocation – so while there is greater competition and pressure, kitchens also tend to be more serious workplaces. One restaurant publicist tells me that when she was doing service shifts in the early 90s, "everybody was on drugs". Many legendary tales of candle burning hail from that era: chefs curling up on piles of bin bags at work after a heavy night, and sex all over the shop. Allegra McEvedy, whose wild early cheffing years saw her fired from the Groucho Club and the River Cafe, says that when she originally told her school friends that she wanted to train as a cook, "in their eyes I may as well have been taking up plumbing". It was just the dawn of the UK's culinary awakening, with Marco Pierre White as its precocious poster boy, and the stakes have been continuously upped ever since.
But despite today's more studious culture, the fact remains that it is easy to pick up a drink problem working in a restaurant. Temptation is everywhere and there is little chance of drifting straight off to sleep after a frenetic evening's performance. With so many young, outgoing, transient staff around, too, that unwinding beverage can easily escalate. One maître d' told me that when he worked at one of those extremely swanky West End establishments that ooze old money and timeless sophistication, the staff partied like crazy, and were frequently caught on the restaurant's CCTV getting up to no good.
A decade since Ramsay's head chef David Dempsey fell to his death after taking alcohol and cocaine, the benevolent charity Hospitality Action still sees a healthy take up of workers seeking advice on dealing with alcoholism, drugs, bullying, stress and debt. The charity sends recovering alcoholics, such as Michael Quinn, who went from head chef at the Ritz to a Salvation Army hostel, to colleges to warn 11,000 students a year of the risks. "It's a society issue, not just this industry," chief executive Penny Moore points out, "but the message from us is positive. The issues are being addressed and things have changed dramatically."
When Thomas Blythe, who was general manager at St John for 12 years and will shortly launch the Merchant's Tavern in Shoreditch with Angela Hartnett, arrived in London as a 17-year-old chef, 80-hour weeks were the norm. Today, he says, 48-hour contracts prevail, with a clause that managers can ask staff to work longer when required, but that staff can, in theory, refuse. He also says that the industry is now much more enlightened regarding sexism and bullying. The fact that most restaurants have to fight to retain good staff these days helps. However, horror stories still surface.
One manager told me about her time at what is known as the worst London fine-dining restaurant to work in. The famous chef patron there believes that the only way to get the staff to perform is to put the fear of God into them. He exhausts his front-of-house staff by drinking late with customers, and then charges in the next morning, hungover with duvet folds imprinted on his face, and insults them for minor matters such as leaving water in an ice bucket overnight. If front-of-house staff request the lunch menu before 11.45am, he'll tell them to "fuck off" out of his kitchen. They see nothing of the service charge.
Thankfully, reigns of terror such as this are now considered rather old school, and are less common than in the past, when sometimes not even the customers were safe. In the 1980s, Nico Ladenis famously decreed that no customer was allowed to ask for salt, different lighting or a second gin and tonic in his restaurants. And in 1998, Ramsay made headlines ejecting the critic AA Gill and his dining companion, Joan Collins, from his restaurant after Gill had belittled him in print. But what chance of level-headedness did Ramsay stand when one of his early bollockings from mentor Marco Pierre White reduced him to tears? (When I dined with Ramsay and White in the late 90s, shortly after the Gill incident, Ramsay was a pussycat in his former mentor's presence.)
These days, of course, ugly displays of temper are most likely to become public on the internet. Take the shocking spat that erupted late last year after a food blogger gave Hibiscus three out of five in an online review. Claude Bosi, the two-starred restaurant's chef, bizarrely tracked him down on Twitter to call him "a cunt". Then two more top chefs – Tom Kerridge and Sat Bains – rounded on the blogger, encouraging Bosi to "smash him in" and calling him a c#nt and c**t respectively, along with so many other vile things that the blogger closed his Twitter account. Critics may still have the power to make or break, but web reviews can't half stir up a chef's bile.
Running a great restaurant will always be stressful, but these unpleasant tales call to mind an amusing quote from one of Edwards-Jones's sources, which appears in her book: "It's ridiculous. All the shouting and screaming and slapping and hauling around great sides of beef and all we are really doing is making people's tea. It's just a bit of tea."
Restaurant Babylon by Imogen Edwards-Jones and Anonymous is published by Bantam Press at £14.99
Michelin-starred restaurant in Barcelona, famous for traditional cuisine, to close doors after owners declare it no longer viable
El Racó de Can Fabes, one of the first Spanish restaurants to be awarded a Michelin star, is to close at the end of next month after 32 years. The owners said the business was no longer viable.
Can Fabes, which is located in Sant Celoni in the Montseny hills north of Barcelona, opened as a modest establishment in 1981 in what had been the family home of its chef, Santi Santamaria, for 200 years. It acquired its first Michelin star in 1988, the second in 1991 and maintained the coveted three stars from 1994 until shortly after Santamaria died of a heart attack in Singapore in 2011. It currently holds two stars.
In common with his fellow three-star Catalan chefs Ferran Adrià, Carme Ruscalleda and the Roca brothers, Santamaria's cuisine was rooted in local tradition. However, he spurned and at times ridiculed Adrià's experiments with foam, nitrogen and deconstructed omelettes. He dismissed Adrià as "a media spectacle" with his "laboratory dishes full of gelling agents and emulsifiers". He described the so-called Spanish vanguard chefs as "a gang of frauds". However, many of them, Adrià included, attended his funeral.
Since his death the kitchen has been run by his daughter Regina and the chef Xavier Pellicer. In an open letter, the owners said Can Fabes was closing "after 32 years of a marvellous culinary and gastronomic adventure … in which we have sought the best products and perfect cooking and a commitment to our culinary roots". The message added that the restaurant "lacked the economic viability necessary to continue as a project based on excellence".
The demise of Can Fabes comes two years after Adrià closed El Bulli, but Catalans still have two other three-star establishments to choose from: Ruscalleda's Restaurant Sant Pau and the Roca brothers' El Celler de Can Roca, recently voted the best restaurant in the world.
Complaints prompt questions about restaurant that has displayed swastikas and Hitler's photo for two years
Authorities in central Indonesia plan to ask a restaurant owner to explain his reasons for opening a Nazi-themed cafe that has sparked controversy among residents and tourists.
Soldatenkaffee includes a red wall of Nazi-related memorabilia, including a large flag with the swastika and a giant picture of Adolf Hitler. Its staff dress in SS uniforms, and can be seen posing in front of the cafe on its Facebook page.
The cafe, in the West Java provincial capital of Bandung, one of Indonesia's main tourist cities, has been open since April 2011. But a recent article in a local English-language newspaper has prompted angry responses from some foreigners and Indonesians on social networking sites.
The deputy mayor of Bandung, Ayi Vivananda, said a letter was sent on Thursday summoning the cafe owner, Henry Mulyana, to meet officials to discuss his motives for opening the cafe and whether his objective was to incite racial hatred.
"Those symbols are internationally recognised to represent violence and racism," Vivananda said.
Mulyana said his objective was not to breed hatred. Instead, he said he wanted to decorate his restaurant with Nazi symbols to attract customers, both local and foreigners.
He denied being pro-Nazi or supporting Hitler.
"I'm just a businessman, not a politician," Mulyana said. "I have a right to design my restaurant with anything that attracts people to come. I'm sure that I'm not violating any laws."
He said the controversy had forced him to temporarily close the restaurant. He declined to say whether he would consider changing the Nazi theme if authorities requested him to do so.
"Let's wait and see," he said. "I don't want the workers here to lose their jobs."
Fred Sirieix, unflappable general manager of London's Galvin at Windows, reveals the secrets of how to make a fuss without being booted off the premises • More 'How to' tips in Observer Food Monthly, out on Sunday 21 July
A survey showed that 38% of British people would never complain in a restaurant– however bad the food or service. Who can blame us for our reticence? Chefs are sometimes unhinged. Marco Pierre White ejected diners who asked for salt and pepper. His protege Gordon Ramsay created equally priceless PR for dispatching an American customer who had, he said, the temerity to ask for tomato ketchup with a dish of red mullet and summer minestrone.
Waiters seem less threatening, but can be sneaky. In Waiter Rant: Thanks For the Tip– billed as a front-of-house Kitchen Confidential– Steve Dublanica tells of restaurant staff putting laxatives in soup or using a returned burger as an ice-hockey puck before taking it back out and serving it again to the customer.
These are, we hope, extreme and rare reactions, but to guide a path through the minefield, we enlisted the help of the legendary Fred Sirieix, unflappable general manager of London's Galvin at Windows.
Be clear. Be concise. Be calm
OK, you have a legitimate, non-subjective complaint: the dish is not the one you ordered; the food is cold when it shouldn't be. Alert your waiter immediately and, this is important, explain the problem without bluster, exaggeration or threat. There should be no reason to raise your voice at this stage. Mistakes happen; allow the restaurant to correct it.
"There's a difference between a complaint and a comment," says Sirieix. "Somebody can make a comment and say: 'I thought the service was a bit fast.' Or 'I did not get the table I wanted.' People are in business like we are and they feel a responsibility to tell you, because they would want to be told themselves. That I am very happy to know."
Know your onions
Before you kick off in a restaurant, take a moment to check that you are not going to embarrass yourself. Sweetbreads are not what they sound like, and neither is head cheese. Hot-smoked salmon has an all-important hyphen and can often be served cold. "Some people order ceviche and say, 'the scallops are raw,'" notes Sirieix. "And I will say, 'Yes sir, it's the ceviche.' What can I say?"
Speak now, or forever hold …
Do not complain about a dish when you have eaten most of it – say something straightaway. Equally, if you have not enjoyed an aspect of your meal, it is good manners, and karma, to alert someone while you are at the restaurant, rather than venting your fury on Twitter, TripAdvisor or elsewhere.
A salutary tale: last December, a food blogger called James Isherwood didn't particularly enjoy his starter at Mayfair's Hibiscus and wrote an unfavourable criticism of it when he got home. He woke up to a stream of abuse from the chef concerned, Claude Bosi, with fellow two-Michelin-starred cooks Simon Rogan, Tom Kerridge and Sat Bains jumping to Bosi's defence under the hashtag chefsunite. Bosi's justification was that Isherwood was asked about his meal at the time and said nothing.
As the Times restaurant critic Giles Coren wrote in his book, How to Eat Out: "Once you walk out of the door, it's over."
That said…
If you feel your complaint has not been taken seriously, or you remain disappointed with your experience, hit them online. Internet reviews – good or bad – are increasingly powerful for all restaurants; no one in the trade ignores them. "I look at everything all the time," admits Sirieix.
Don't go fishing for freebies
Maybe it's the recession, perhaps we are over-excited after years of suffering in silence, but it is still the prerogative of the restaurant to suggest how to make amends for a complaint, not you. You may be pleasantly surprised. Any decent restaurant will know that if they can turn your criticism into a positive experience, they may retain your loyalty for ever.
"A customer has to complain with honesty and integrity and have high values attached to it," says Sirieix. "If you're just saying something to get a free drink or a free meal, we can see what you are trying to do, you are not going to get it. It won't happen."
Don't believe the horror stories
Tales of restaurant staff tampering with your food once you have sent it back are mostly apocryphal. We live in litigious times and the Food Standards Agency is just a phone call away.
"I'm sure there are sick people who do things, but I've never worked with them," says Siriex. "If I did, it wouldn't be for long."
'There are the inevitable "jokes": pickled mussels whose shells are edible and twigs made of seaweed. I hazard these are more fun to dream up than they are to eat'
There's an Irving Berlin song that goes by the name They Were All Out Of Step But Jim. I've been humming it like a mantra because of The French, goggling at column after column of praise for the place: normally caustic critics wiping away tears of gratification and the blogosphere in even more of a freebie-fuelled froth than usual. Because I just don't get it.
The standout dish for many is "ox in coal oil". Of all the things I don't get about The French, I don't get this the most. Coal oil – oil in which hot charcoal has been steeped – is something of a recurring theme for the chef behind this landmark new Manchester restaurant, Simon Rogan of Great British Menu and two-Michelin-starred L'Enclume fame. He's drenched mackerel in it previously, and scallops. (Me, curious about taste profiles: "What is the difference between ox and cow?" Server: "Ox is bigger and has horns.")
So we have raw beef in an almost Korean yukhoe style, chopped, fat-free, with tiny spheres of kohlrabi, toasted pumpkin seeds and sunflower shoots. But everything is reduced to texture, because all I can taste is that oil. It's all I can taste next morning, too. Unlike barbecuing, where smoke enhances, this meat has given up the ghost and let the oil dance a demented caper all over it. It's clammy and cold. Everyone, but everyone, loves this dish.
We have the full 10 courses, at £79. Well, you feel you must. We have spongey boiled sole on to which is poured an onion broth so powerful and jammy, it gums the lips together. Sole is a delicate fish; it doesn't stand a snowball's. There are the inevitable "jokes": pickled mussels whose shells are edible – pastry stained with squid ink – and twigs made of seaweed. I hazard these are more fun to dream up than they are to eat. Goat's cheese with a beetroot mousse is served at a disturbing blood temperature, and a claggy chore to wade through. Although I do love its apple marigold; they've apparently imported L'Enclume's plot-to-table philosophy by installing polytunnels on the grand Edwardian hotel's roof. A dish called "late spring offerings" is a gorgeous, supremely fresh riot of living flavours – petals, shoots, roots, alliums – and beautiful to look at. There's more. A lot more. But apart from those prepubescent veg and magnificent bread, much of it has a pre-plated quality. I don't love any of it.
I'm so distressed at not falling for this handsome room – an uneasy cocktail of grand hotel, modern Scandi and Vegas bling – that I resort to checking Tripadvisor, that chat room for shills, for validation. But the only people complaining there are the fossils, the kind who chunter things like, "The lady wife and I like it when we return from powder room to find our serviettes folded into the shape of a swan."
Worn out after almost four hours of foofery, of dish expositions as foams congeal and collapse on our plates, we beg for the bill. This causes consternation: I've never before been pursued out of a restaurant by a panicked server wailing, "You haven't had your sarsparilla!"
So voilà: everyone loves The French but me. Maybe it's because there's an unwritten restaurant critic rule to be nicer to places outside London, or the pitchforks come out. Or, for punters, that weird psychological aberration that kicks in after you spend scary loot: "I've just dropped nearly 300 quid. Itmust be good!"
I haven't been to L'Enclume (apart from via Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's glorious The Trip: "The consistency is a bit like snot." "Like Ray Winston's coughed it up"), so I must take everyone's word for its marvellousness. And, despite its mean little room, I was wowed by Rogan's recently closed "two-year pop-up" in London, Roganic, but a lot of that was down to the vaguely loony talent of then chef Ben Spalding. Messrs Michelin are probably hurtling towards The French as we speak. Everyone's out of step but me.
• The French Midland Hotel, Peter Street, Manchester, 0161-236 3333. Open lunch Weds-Sat noon-1.30pm (last orders), dinner Tues-Sat 6.30-9.30pm (last orders). Three-course set meal £29, six-course £55, 10-course £79, all plus drinks and service.
Should you risk the house red? Can you trust the sommelier? What about vintage? David Williams explains all
Avoid the second cheapest
Restaurateurs have long since cottoned on to the practice, and on many lists the slot will be taken by the wine that was cheapest for them to buy, with the price then pumped up. If you're looking for value, you're often better off with the house (aka cheapest) wine: an ambassadorial bottle that most restaurant wine buyers I know take pride in getting right.
This juicy, plummy red is the supermarket equivalent of a good-quality house red at a local pizza place.
If you can't stand the mark-up, BYO
An increasing number of restaurants will let you bring your own for a respectable corkage fee. Wine writer Tom Cannavan has an up-to-date list of restaurants that are amenable to this at wine-pages.com. If you live in London and eat out a lot, you might be able to justify the £99 membership to join byowineclub.com, which gives you BYO access to some restaurants that wouldn't otherwise allow it .
Try this at home (or BYO) Ostler Blue House Pinot Gris Waitaki, New Zealand 2010 (£18.99, Berry Bros & Rudd)
The perfect BYO wine: it comes from New Zealand, too often under-represented on restaurant lists; its luscious quince flavours and texture make it a versatile food match.
If there's no producer, have a beer
The producer's name is the most important information on a wine (or any drink) bottle: it's the most reliable guide to quality. There are many UK restaurants, and not just those at the cheaper end, that, when it comes to wine, may give the country or region, but leave out the producer's name. This is usually a good sign the establishment doesn't care about wine, and I've learnt to retreat to the safer ground of bottled lager, juice or tea.
Try this at home La Vieille Ferme Blanc, Côtes du Luberon 2012 (£7.95, Asda, Waitrose, ocado.com)
This trusted brand from the Rhône shows the value of knowing the producer. Offering good value, this perky, pear and peach-flavoured white is made by the Perrin family, a top producer of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
Mind the vintage
If you're tempted to splurge on an expensive bottle, particularly a red from one of the classic European regions such as Bordeaux, Burgundy, or northern Italy, look for older vintages. Too many restaurants list big name estates for prestige, but only offer bottles from recent vintages that aren't ready to drink. You'd be better off with the house red.
Try this at home Cune Imperial Gran Reserva Rioja, Spain 2004 (£28 if you buy two bottles, Majestic)
The traditional top reds of Rioja are marked out from their counterparts in Bordeaux in that they are released only after a long period of ageing.
Give the sommelier a chance
A good sommelier, of which there are many more in the UK than there used to be, can add to your evening. They get genuine pleasure out of guiding you to their favourite bottles and food matches. You'll need to be firm on your budget (they can get carried away), but why not let them choose for you? At the very worst, it's sure to be better than the second cheapest wine on the list.
Try this at home Quinta do Soalheiro Alvarinho, Vinho Verde, Portugal 2012 (from £14.95, Lay & Wheeler)
The sort of wine that sommeliers love: they can explain that alvarinho is Portuguese for the more familiar albariño from Spain, and that the brilliant Quinta do Soalheiro take 70s favourite vinho verde to a whole new level of white peachy refinement.
The exterior of Ox in Belfast is much like my soul: black and featureless. There is a large plate-glass window which looks into a sparsely furnished dining room. It appears to have taken its design cues from a hyper-efficient car workshop in Dusseldorf. It is all hard lines and hard surfaces; if the food game doesn't work out the space would make for a jolly nice torture garden. Nowhere on the restaurant frontage is its name. Perhaps letters were judged to be messy. Then again they hardly need to advertise. During my three days in Belfast almost everybody I met talked to me about Ox: had I been there? Was I going there? And what did I think? A cab driver took a detour just to show me where it is. I hadn't asked him to do so.
Ox is a collaboration between the former head chef of James Street South and the manager of Deanes, two of the city's better-thought-of places. Local boy Stephen Toman and Brittany-born Alain Kerloc'h have done their time, served their apprenticeships at fancy joints in France like L'Arpège and Taillevent, where heels are clicked and cloches lifted.
What was striking in Belfast was the palpable sense that everyone wants it to be good. In London an opening like this would be a cue for bloodletting and Olympic-quality bitching, rumour, innuendo and sneering, and that's only from the chef's mother. Not, apparently, in Belfast. As the admirable Belfast food blog forked.ie put it recently: "At times here in the North we're still like one big dysfunctional family… happy to knock seven shades of shit out of each other but stop midway through the fight to join together against the outsider who happened to make eye contact at poor wee cousin Janie."
I know this to be true. I have been that outsider. I have said the bad things, and felt the ire. There is local pride, and not unreasonably. There are many cities in the UK where the dining options would be exhausted by lunchtime. On the first day. I knew early on that I wouldn't have enough Belfast mealtimes in which to visit all the places I wanted to try. The newish faux-Georgian Saint Anne's Square development, for example, is wall to wall new restaurants. On one side is an Italian called Coppi, launched by a veteran Belfast chef and restaurateur called Tony O'Neill. It looks like a Jamie's Italian on steroids, all heavy wood tables and white tiling. The intention is similar. It is meant to be a casual place, lighting sparklers rather than fireworks.
Most of the small plates – some pork and fennel sausages, strips of breaded chicken with an underwhelming romesco sauce – are a little a bit ho and a little bit hum. But there is a wood-fired oven for terrific charred breads, and a selection of steaks supplied by the extraordinary local meat producer Peter Hannan, who ages beef from shorthorns fed on clover, in a chiller room walled in Himalayan salt. Yes, really. Apparently the salt acts as an antibiotic.
I've tried the beef, and it is something special. It has a depth of flavour and dense texture without that "something just died in the corner" flavour you get with less-cared-for muscle. Best of all at Coppi was a stonking duck pasta dish, for a very reasonable £12.50, of fat ravioli stuffed with a fine ducky ragu, overlaid with more of the same, the whole spun through with fat flakes of crisped duck skin. It was deep and outrageous and completely unfinishable. Naturally I finished it.
Less happily, next door, is the House of Zen. It's the sort of fancy Chinese restaurant where they keep trying to give you a knife and fork, and all the money appears to have gone on faux Oriental screens and downlighters. The menu reads overwrought and sugary so I played safe by ordering dry, skinless crispy duck, and a beef in black bean sauce that left me clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth just to kill the sensation. Service is of the distracted kind that results in you getting up to pay your bill at the front desk just to speed your exit.
It makes more sense when in Belfast to eat seafood, which I did at Mourne Seafood Bar, a much-loved local landmark situated in what feels like an old boozer near King Street (there is another outside the city at Dundrum). I ate pristine rock oysters, some plain, others with a julienne of cucumber and pickled ginger. There was a rustling bowlful of salt and pepper squid, and the kind of hefty seafood chowder that makes you wish it was colder outside. Each of these was a few quid, and while there are more pricey main dishes from a changing blackboard menu, no one could ever accuse it of being expensive.
And so, on the last night, to Ox. However austere it may look from the outside – and however obvious the ambition of the kitchen – it isn't up itself. Nobody bows. There are no stupid formalities performed because someone was so taught by a scary maître d' who could not be disobeyed. They want you to eat well with the minimum of fuss. Much of that applies to the food, too. Starters can read on the complex side – quail, white asparagus, fresh almonds, cherries, for example; or scallop, egg, curry, hazelnut, cauliflower – but they eat very simply. It's about top-quality ingredients to which the best things have been done.
The quail has been boned and glazed and roasted, the asparagus parboiled. There are fresh white, crunchy almonds and stoned cherries. It is all very balanced. Ditto gloriously sweet scallops seared until the protein is just set, with the crunch of cauliflower and nut. Even a plate of crisped Iberico ham, with dollops of a truffled custard, does not feel like good ham wasted. It is salt and soft and sweet and earthy.
If anything the mains, priced in the mid- to high teens, are simpler. The most showy thing in a plate of local Mourne lamb – some loin, a chop, a kidney, all of them served pink in the right way – is an ultra-smoky aubergine purée. A piece of beef fillet seasoned with a little lardo, the famed Italian cured piggy back fat, is a great piece of meat cooked by a kitchen that knows what it's doing. Rabbit comes with the sweetness of apricot and unctuousness of long-braised pig cheek; pollan, a local herring-like fish, is accompanied by cockles, artichokes and violet potatoes.
The great technique is disguised by superb ingredients. It is therefore unsurprising that desserts – a white-chocolate parfait with summer fruits; marinated strawberries with a sharp limoncello jelly – are overshadowed by a plate of well-kept local cheeses. There is also a thoughtful wine list with lots of choice by the glass and 50cl carafe, at prices which encourage experimentation.
It is easy to get carried away, to overstate what is going on here. Is Ox on a par with the very best in Britain? Absolutely not. But, for all the adoring local chatter, it doesn't feel like it's trying to be that. Ox simply wants to be best in class and then some. It wants to celebrate the best ingredients on its doorstep, and do it with unstudied professionalism. On those terms it has more than achieved its goals. It does not need to show off. Ox knows it's the most interesting thing to happen to Belfast in a long while. And the city seems grateful for it.
Olli Dabbous tells how to make the sinfully rich mashed potato that wows diners at Dabbous. Warning: contains three packs of butter
Two weeks after Dabbous opened in January 2012, it received a rare five-star review from Fay Maschler in the Evening Standard. More rave reviews followed, and suddenly the restaurant had the longest waiting list in London.
One thing Ollie Dabbous didn't want to do was let the hype affect his food, which is clever without being tricksy, and often quite restrained. It's all very well impressing people with exotic combinations, he says, "but it's even more powerful if you can deliver something they've had 100 times before and they think, wow, I didn't know it could taste that good."
Enter the Dabbous mashed potato, which appears as a standalone dish. In general, he says, the food at the restaurant is "very light, very clean, probably quite feminine". This dish is the opposite of all those things: sinfully rich, full of butter, served with unctuous roasting juices on top. "A lot of dishes here are pretty," he says. "The mash is deliberately quite ugly. It's not attention-seeking. It's no frills."
SERVES 8
new potatoes 1kg (Ratte, Desiree or Maris Piper) water 2 litres salt 49g milk 200g unsalted butter 750g
Choose your spud
We use a French new potato called Ratte, which has a buttery texture, but you could also use Desiree or Maris Piper. Wash the potatoes but don't peel them yet. Place them in a pan with cold water and 40g salt and bring to boil then simmer gently for 1 hour until completely cooked but not falling apart. Drain the potatoes and then peel them with a paring knife as quickly as possible.
Push, but not too hard
Bring half the milk and half the butter to the boil in a wide pan, then remove from the heat. Sit a mouli or a potato ricer on top of the pan and pass the potatoes through into the hot liquid. The key is not to push them too hard – you don't want to stretch the gluten. Adding little cubes of butter to the potatoes will help them go through much more easily.
Mix well. Melt the remaining butter in a small pan and whisk it into the potatoes with the remaining 9g salt and finally the remaining milk.
Sieve, but keep it quick
Pass the mash through a sieve, twice. At the restaurant we use a fine drum sieve, which allows you to put all your body weight behind it, but you could use a normal sieve at home. You want to do this as quickly as possible so you can serve the mash while it's still hot.
Matt Hayes is head chef at the Wolseley where they make 200 portions of cucumber sandwiches a day. So if anyone knows, he does …
The British have long associated elegance with understatement. Take cucumber sandwiches – basic and affordable but still a sign of luxury. They're an essential component of afternoon tea, something in which Matt Hayes, head pastry chef at the Wolseley on London's Piccadilly, specialises. They make 200 portions of cucumber sandwiches a day.
"People love the combination of soft bread, crunchy cucumber and lightly salted butter. Our guests would definitely be horrified if they weren't there," says Hayes.
Thin, uniform slices of bread are key so ask a baker to slice the bread. Source British cucumber and use good-quality, lightly salted butter.
Cucumber sandwich
SERVES 4
thin sliced white bread 8 slices cucumber 1 salted butter at room temperature salt and pepper to taste
Lightly and evenly butter the slices of bread right to the edges.
Peel the cucumber and cut to the length of the bread. Using a peeler, thinly slice the cucumber until you get down to the seeds, turn the cucumber and repeat the process until all the flesh has been removed. Discard the seeds – they will make the bread soggy. Place the strips of cucumber evenly on the bread and lightly season. Top with a slice of bread.
Leave the sandwiches for around 10 minutes – this stops the cucumber slices sliding around when you cut them up. To retain moisture and avoid the bread drying out, leave a slightly damp cloth on top.
Carefully remove the crusts and cut into fingers or triangles. For a twist, you can also add chopped mint and a little creme fraiche. thewolseley.com
Every UK restaurant, takeaway joint and supermarket is rated by the Food Standards Agency. We've mapped their inspection data so you can look up your local and spot regional trends
Food safety officers up and down the country inspect the premises of just about anywhere that you can get food: schools, sandwich shops, pubs, hotels and bakeries.
In fact, the list of exceptions probably gives an even better indication of just how much they cover – only childminders, newsagents, chemist shops or "visitor centres selling tins of biscuits" don't need to be inspected for their hygiene standards.
So whether you're eating out or eating in, this is important information to know. Most places are fine to buy food from – the Food Standards Agency (FSA) passes 91% of food outlets – but what about the other 9%?
Anything less than a score of three out of five constitutes a fail. Businesses given ratings of 0 or 1 are those that need to make urgent or major improvements – but they're not closed down. That only happens if the food is so unsafe for the public to eat that there's an imminent risk to health.
So where are the chip shops, delicatessens and care homes that have failed their food inspections? They're all the red dots on the map below, which you can click on to see further detail. If you want to search for the postcode that you live in, try our interactive map here.
Though the FSA is responsible for food safety across the UK, there's a slightly different rating system in Scotland, which is why outlets there don't appear on our map.
Top of the (kitchen) table
Craigavon in Northern Ireland is the only local authority where 100% of food inspections resulted in a pass.
By contrast, Sutton and Bexley fall well short of the national average 91% pass rate – scoring just 68% and 66% respectively. You can also use our interactive map to spot regional trends. It shows that the biggest concentration of unhygienic food outlets is to be found in London.
Scores on the doors
Businesses aren't obliged to put their food ratings in their windows – although many that score well choose to do so with familiar stickers. A recent audit by the FSA found that more businesses are choosing to share their results.
Catriona Stewart, head of the food hygiene ratings team, said: "Many of us make spontaneous decisions about where to eat, so being able to see the rating on the door or in the window is important."
What do they inspect?
In its information pack for businesses, the FSA explains that it can inspect: > premises > the kinds of food made/prepared > how staff work > a business's food safety management system
And, if they feel it's necessary, they can: > inspect records > take samples and photographs of food > write to the business informally, asking them to put right any problems > detain or seize suspect foods
How often do they inspect?
The frequency of visits by the people in white coats depends partly on its hygiene record. Normally, food premises can expect a routine visit every six months or so but a complaint can bring an inspector at any time.
Note: Food inspections take place each and every day. We downloaded, checked, tabled and mapped these results a fortnight ago so they may have changed slightly since then. To double-check the results where you live, visit the FSA's website.
If you are big mates with the food we get from pigs, you'll find a very warm welcome at Friends of Ham in Leeds
4 New Station Street, Leeds (0113 242 0275). Meal for two: £30-50
A late night in Leeds and I am in a basement room with a slice of Prosciutto di Parma ham dangling off the ball of my hand, held in a fist. A fellow food writer has explained that he was told to do this by Ferran Adrià, the überchef famed for the modernist food he once served at El Bulli. "You wait until you can no longer feel the temperature difference between the ham and your hand," he says. "Then you know it's at the perfect temperature." I wait. Quickly the ham is warmed by my soft, soft skin, a dividend from never having done a proper day's work in my life. I lick the slippery fold of cured pig off. Gosh. Adrià's right. It has a deep, ripe sweet flavour that just goes on and on. I slap another bit of ham on my now pig-fat-slicked hand, dead flesh on live skin.
You might assume from this that I was less than sober. You would be right. I was deep down in the bottom of a glass and floating right back to the top again. This does not invalidate the experiment. And anyway, it came with the territory. I was in a fabulous bar called Friends of Ham and having been one for a long time – I think calling me and ham mere friends is to understate the depth and maturity of our relationship – it seemed only right to show the product a bit of serious love.
Is it valid to review this sort of place in a restaurant column? After all, they don't actually cook anything. All they do is buy stuff and sell it on. Ah yes, but they buy really good stuff and they sell it on very well indeed. I would choose Friends of Ham over any number of bona fide Leeds restaurants. What's more, I did. It occupies one of the units in the dark, narrow approach to the city's station, a road usually only used when you are either trying to leave town or locate someone to mug. At ground level is a self-consciously narrow bar. Chatter rises and falls. Downstairs is a larger, floorboarded room with central communal tables and smaller seating spaces around the outside. The ceiling is low. The wallpaper is of filled bookshelves, spine out, which saves on buying the real thing.
To eat, there are hefty wooden boards of charcuterie, cheese and bread with crunchy pickles on the side. Both the food and drink choices run from the obvious to the less so, and come with tasting notes. So there is a full platter of premium jamón Ibérico at £17.50 – with "an unmatched depth of flavour" – as well as cheaper options like the Parma I licked off my hand, or a serrano, for £6 a serving. There is salami flecked with fennel seed, a coarse cut, oily chorizo, and some glorious lardo – "a savoury buttery taste" – the salty cured back fat of the fattest pigs.
Some of these come from mainstream suppliers such as Brindisa, others from the kitchen of a nearby restaurant called the Reliance, which cures its own meats. What matters is that it is both stored and sliced well. The cheese list runs through a bit of Brie de Meaux and Keen's Cheddar to Harrogate Blue and Yellison's Goat from nearby Skipton. There is olive oil-dribbled bread or crackers with which to eat this and little pots of fiery sweet jelly to smear across it. Cutlery is optional.
The ever-rotating beer list is of the serious sort that more manly men than me would frown and nod over, with choices from Oregon and the Sierra Nevada in the US, through Belgium and Sweden to the glorious exotica of Stockport. I taste chocolate stouts, and wheat beers with a salty edge and softer lighter ales that feel as if they were brewed with me in mind.
Some of the staff have beards but, like me, they wear them lightly. They are eager to give tasters wherever possible. There is a short, well-priced wine list, but even I would acknowledge it's not the point of coming here. You come to wear paper-thin slices of ham like a glove and behave like it's a reasonable thing to do. Because it is.
Little fresh fruit or veg on offer in major high street eateries, research by Soil Association and Organix finds
Children's menus at the UK's leading restaurant and pub chains are often "unhealthy and unimaginative", and are still dominated by nuggets, burgers, sausages, ready meals and fizzy drinks, with little fresh fruit or vegetables on offer, it was claimed on Wednesday.
The campaigning charity the Soil Association, with organic baby food brand Organix, sent "secret diners" to 21 popular high street restaurants and pubs and ranked their opinions of the offerings for children.
Jamie's Italian, launched five years ago by chef Jamie Oliver, Wagamama and the Wetherspoon pub chain were placed highest, while Burger King, KFC and Prezzo came bottom.
Launching the "Out to Lunch" campaign, the charity and its partner are calling for all young diners to be routinely offered the choice of children's portions of adult meals.
They say all food should be freshly prepared in the kitchen and kids' cutlery should be standard.
Research for the campaign also found that 40% of parents say they eat out as a family once or more in a fortnight, yet 66% think that food provision for children in restaurants is not good enough.
The assessments of the high street food venues were compiled after a panel of 40 families surveyed menus, sourcing policies and children's facilities over a three-month period, with further input from another 1,000 families, the charity said.
Researchers said more than half the restaurants and pubs – 12 out of 21 – offer children's menus dominated by nuggets, burgers and sausages. Eight failed to include vegetables or salad in the majority of their children's main meals, while 10 did not serve any fruit in any children's puddings.
Only 11 out of 21 chains were willing to tell researchers if their food was freshly cooked and where it comes from. Of the 11, only four were actually making and cooking the majority of their children's food in the kitchen – Jamie's Italian, Wagamama, Carluccio's and Cafe Rouge.
In the wake of the horsemeat scandal, only one chain – Jamie's Italian – could tell the secret diners where its meat came from, the charity said.
Joanna Lewis, head of policy at the Soil Association, which promotes organic food and farming as well as certifying products, said: "Our investigation reveals that most high street restaurants are not even meeting the most basic standards families should expect when they eat out.
"Most are still churning out children's menus dominated by the usual suspects – burgers, nuggets and pizzas – turning the table into a battlefield for any parents wanting their child to eat well."
She said restaurants made assumptions about what parents and children wanted, "with very little creative thinking going on. We are talking about unhealthy and unimaginative menus.
"It is not simply a choice between turkey twizzlers and a superfood salad. Restaurants need to raise the bar and listen to parents who are saying they want fresh food not ready meals for their children – and the same kind of variety you would expect as an adult."
Fast food chain McDonald's was ranked mid-way at 11th. It came second to Jamie's for its sourcing of British food – 100% British and Irish beef, free-range British eggs and 100% British organic milk – but could extend its healthy options for children, the charity said.
The appearance of Wetherspoons, which has 883 outlets in the UK, in third position may have surprised some, but the chain's senior food development manager, Jameson Robinson, said: "Wetherspoons serves more than 2 million children's meals each year across our pubs and appreciates the importance of sourcing UK ingredients and offering balanced meals.
"We know that there is still more work to do to enhance the menu further, including offering varying portion sizes, and we will be working towards this."
Jamie Oliver said: "Since the first Jamie's Italian opened, we've always kept things kid-friendly … so to come top of the table is a fantastic achievement, and more importantly, confirmation that we're doing things right.
"We believe that the quality of the kids' food should to be right up there on the same level as the main menu."
But companies trailing in the table took issue with the methodology and questions used.
A spokesman for Prezzo, which came 19th, said: "We are disappointed with the findings of the survey and believe it is not a true reflection of the children's meals served at Prezzo.
"We have served almost 400,000 meals from our children's menu in the past six months and the quality of these meals is very important to both ourselves and our guests.
"The children's menu dishes are made in-house, and our bolognese sauce is made using our own recipe, using fully traceable British beef and fresh ingredients."
Burger King, which was caught up in the horsemeat scandal when some of its burgers were found to be contaminated, and which came bottom of the table, said: "We are committed to offering a welcoming environment for families in our restaurants, and to providing parents with a range of options to allow them to make healthy choices for their children. This includes offering them apple fries, milk, water or juice in our kids' meals."
The campaign is the latest collaboration between the Soil Association andOrganix. The twohave worked together since 2008 campaigning for better nursery and hospital food.
