Simon Wroe's Blog, page 5
March 16, 2014
A la cartel
Crime and nourishment GANGSTERS used to send their enemies to sleep with the fishes. Today they are more likely to mislabel the fishes and sell them at a profit….
Forget drugs, food is increasingly the black-market commodity of choice.
March 8, 2014
Cannibal restaurant 'with roasted human heads on the menu' shut down by police
From The Independent: Police arrested 11 people in Nigeria this week after two human heads wrapped in cellophane were discovered at a hotel restaurant that had been serving human flesh.
The article contains a nice quote from a pastor who ate at the restaurant, and who seems mostly shocked by how expensive it was.
March 3, 2014
A kaleidoscopic collection of kitchen condiments.
A kaleidoscopic collection of kitchen c ondiments.
February 28, 2014
A chef’s brain at work.
A chef’s brain at work.
February 4, 2014
Heston's Woes Regurgitated
Heston Blumenthal was forced to close his London restaurant, Dinner, this week after an outbreak of a vomiting bug.
It’s not the first time it’s happened to the molecular gastronomist. In 2009 he temporarily shut his 3 Michelin-starred restaurant The Fat Duck after diners caught the same norovirus bug.
This latest incident has been widely reported in the press, but you won’t find a stranger article than the one in the title link above. It’s worth a read for its crimes to language alone. I’m not a doctor, but the piece seems to be suffering from some sort of word vomiting condition…
January 28, 2014
TEN THINGS RESTAURANTS DON'T WANT THEIR CUSTOMERS TO KNOW
1. Many restaurants will wildly overprice one dish - usually steak. This is a rich tax, for those with more money than sense.
2. The specials are often the oldest stuff in the fridges. They are special because they need to be sold quick or chucked.
3. The biggest mark up a restaurant makes is not on the luxury items, it’s on the sides. The standard mark-up on meat or fish is about three times what the restaurant pays their supplier, but the mark up on a bowl of chips or a green salad is closer to ten times the original price.
4. More food is cooked in the deep fat fryer than you could possibly imagine.
5. Chefs have put their fingers and saliva all over your food. Sorry, but that’s how it’s done.
6. Never order a burrito or a curry in a place that doesn’t serve other food of that nationality. It’s a way to use up meat which is too old for anything else.
7. A restaurant will never admit that some of its dishes are worse than others – so look for the signs yourself. If there’s one exotically-spiced item on the menu, for instance, spice is not a priority for that restaurant and should probably be avoided.
8. Waiting staff have been told to push certain dishes. If you ask your waiter what their favourite dish is or what they would recommend, you will be told the dish they want you to buy, not the one they like the most.
9. Chefs and servers are hungry. Desperately hungry. Between the stove and the table, things are often sneaked from a diner’s plate. If you send your food back for any reason, the portion will almost certainly be smaller when it returns to you.
10. This might sound obvious, but the head chef is rarely, if ever, cooking the food themselves. All restaurants would like you to think everything goes through the top guy, but there’s no guarantee they’re in the kitchen at all. This is doubly true for celebrity chefs: it would be a miracle to find them in their restaurants. They may not have devised a single thing on the menu. This isn’t necessarily bad, but don’t kid yourself: Gordon Ramsay did not personally wash the mushrooms in your risotto, he’s not harassing chefs to get your food out. He’s thousands of miles away, shouting at someone else.
Of course, some restaurants are excellent and would commit none of the above crimes. Others may stoop a whole lot lower. If you have any restaurant crimes to add, send ‘em in.
January 22, 2014
True Tales of Hell in the Kitchen
New York chefs recall some of the more unusual things that have gone wrong in their kitchens: infested oysters, exploding chickens et al. (Link in blue above)
December 16, 2013
Pub fires head chef but forgets he has the password for the...
Pub fires head chef but forgets he has the password for the Twitter account. Happy Christmas!
December 13, 2013
The Record Breaking Chefs of Mexico
Mexico is a country obsessed with records. The world’s fattest man, the most mariachi musicians in one place, the largest number of people kissing simultaneously, the longest catwalk – all these hard-won accolades are theirs.
But it is the nation’s chefs who pop up time and again in the record books. Over the last 10 years they’ve set records for the longest torta, their version of a sandwich (44 meters); the largest cup of hot chocolate (2,400 litres); the biggest meatball (109 lbs); and the hugest (technical term) taco (1,654 lbs).
My favourite record attempt by Mexican chefs is shown in the picture above. It’s for the largest gathering of chefs in one place. The attempt (2,333 cooks) failed to set a new Guinness World Record earlier this year (they were 511 short of the top spot – that honour belongs to the United Arab Emirates). But let’s consider the record itself. It doesn’t ask for the chefs to be cooking simultaneously in the same place. Their profession is entirely irrelevant. It might as well be a record for the most IT consultants without their laptops, or the most jugglers who are not at this moment juggling. It’s an insane and utterly meaningless record, and Mexico’s wish to hold it aptly demonstrates the country’s infatuation with records.
“It’s a way for us not to think about all the difficulties, the conflicts, the killings, the economic crisis,” Rocío Valdéz, an inhabitant of Mexico City, told the New York Times in 2009. “Yes, we’re in bad shape, but if we can make the biggest taco in the world…”
November 26, 2013
Some very particular restaurant artwork, Islington, London.
Some very particular restaurant artwork, Islington, London.
