August 2008 Archives

We've had so-called celebrities taking part in a showbiz version of Masterchief and now comes the prospect of Gary Rhodes strutting his stuff on Strictly Come Dancing.

He's a chef I greatly admire, not least because over the past decade or so he's done so much to champion great British cookery. He's also got good taste, great technique and writes excellent cookery books.

How disappointing, then, that he's so hungry for fame or a big fat pay cheque that he's willing to take part in a television programme that is so profoundly dumb.

Put the dancing shoes away, Gaz, and get back behind the stove.

She who cannot handle a cooking implement or ingredient without behaving suggestively returned to our television screens last night.

Am I in a minority in my dislike of snooty Nigella Lawson's "cookery" programmes?

I hate the way she pouts. I hate the way she camps up her alleged allure. If she's so attractive, why so many soft focus shots,? Why so few shots showing her bulky bottom?

Above all, though, I despise the slapdash style of her cooking.

Is it any wonder that Scotland is such an unhealthy nation when the diet is so bad....and delicious?

On the last morning of my visit to Edinburgh, I sat down to a late and hearty breakfast of haggis, a couple of sausages, two fried eggs, bacon and, I guess as a gesture towards healthy eating, a grilled tomato and a few mushrooms.

Then it was time to buy something for my colleagues so I settled on a couple of boxes of tablet, a unique Scottish sweet made from butter, condensed milk, sugar, sugar and more sugar.

There seems to be some confusion over those big vehicles that trundle along Birmingham's roads, picking up passengers.

They are buses the purpose of which is to convey people to their destinations in return for a fare.

They are not restaurants nor even cafes, which are generally located in buildings that do not move along our main roads.

All this seems to be stating the obvious, but step on board any Birmingham bus and you'll understand what I'm getting at.

I'm sitting in the study of my sister-in-law's rambling Victorian flat in a posh bit of Edinburgh as I write this blog before deciding where my wife and I should eat tonight.

Only one thing is certain about this evening - it will involve a final visit to Bennetts Bar, a wonderful watering hole near the Kings Theatre.

We arrived here on Saturday and have been mightily impressed by the standard of food and drink over the past few days.

We've been more impressed, though, by the buzz that exists here. Much of it down to the Festival.

Many people are sniffy about sweet wines, imagining they are somehow unsopisticated. Absolute tosh.

It's true that there are artificially sweetened horrors that are to fine wine what take-away pizza is to fine dining and that no-one other than drunken teenagers and demented grannies could possibly enjoy such a tipple.

But there are other sweet wines - their sugars intensified either by late harvesting or the actions of a fungus that sucks the water out of the grapes - that are divine.

King of these, in my view, is sauternes.

Eating out is one of the great joys of my life, which is why I delight in my role as the Mail's restaurant critic. But even I am beginning to feel a little bit jaded after dining out four times in six days.

One of those meals was at Edmund's, a place I visited purely for the pleasure of eating Andy Waters's food and because I needed to review his new gaff.

But the other three meals out came about because our kitchen is being re-tiled and is out of bounds. So not so much a night on the tiles as a night off the tiles.

Each of these meals has been delicious and have been eatenn at restaurants that are among my favourites. There was also the pleasure of knowing that I would not have to write about the food.

Chips is chips? Wrong!

I visited the Great British Eatery near Five Ways last night first because our kitchen is our of bounds while building work is carried out and secondly because I've been desperate to try the place, which offers high-quality British classics such as pie and mash, sausages and, of coure, fish and chips.

The battered haddock I ate was fabulous - moist, flaky and fresh. The chips, cooked in beef dripping, were so good that I continued eating long after I was full.

There'll be a review in Food + Drink in the paper soon.

My colleague Laurence McCoy writes with great authority (and no little panache) on the subject of wine in the Food + Drink section of the Birmingham Mail each Thursday. So I'm wary of staggering tipsily into his terrirtory.

But I'm going to have a good old moan nevertheless because I'm becoming weary of Australian wines.

At the cheap end of the market they display about as much grace and composure as an Australian sportsman who's just lost. Which is none at all.

At last! I finally got round to eating at Andy Waters's new restaurant Edmunds. And it was every bit as good as I'd hoped.

There'll be a proper review in the Birmingham Mail soon, but in the meantime I'll say the decor is stylish and welcoming, the service is friendly and efficient, the food is fabulous and the prices are very reasonable for cuisine of such high quality.

I'm hopeful that Edmund's - and Purnell's - will soon gain a Michelin star like that other great Birmingham restaurant, Simpson's.