Goodbye to Berlin

Well lucky I didn't pack my bowler hat and stockings, I really wouldn't have found any use for them. I was obsessed with the film ‘Cabaret’ for years so a visit to Berlin was a fond fantasy consisting of intimate bars and clubs, divinely decadent people and glamour amongst the ruins...

In reality Berlin is a huge centre-less urban sprawl. It's hard to get a handle on it. I stayed with The Teen in Eisenachestrasse which I never figured out in relation to Mitte (a part of the former East Berlin which is the nearest thing to a centre).

Why does everybody rave about this place? It's grim. It's greyer than London. As my teen said

"Everybody looks ill".

On the U-bahn the majority of the people had hacking coughs. One guy sitting opposite me, who looked like one of Egon Shiele's skinnier nudes, seemed to suffer from tuberculosis. Squeezing away from him as far I could, I tried to cover my mouth and nose. The people still look like extras from a 70s film about Eastern Europe.

This post was supposed to be on my other food blog, The English can Cook, where I write about supperclubs, home restaurants and The Underground Restaurant. I was invited to Berlin by a much-lauded supperclub hostess 'The shy chef' to go eat on Saturday night. Early Friday morning, disturbed by the silence, anxious about the lack of address, I wrote an email, "Please could I have the address as I may not find internet access in Berlin". Casually someone wrote back:

"Unfortunately, due to some complications with both the Chef and the current location, we have had to cancel the dinner evenings for the next couple of weekends. We're very sorry for the late notice but we've been trying everything we could to ensure that it would go ahead, sadly to no avail.

We hope that you have a nice time in Berlin and also hope you will make it to us the next time you're in town.

Kind regards,

The Shy Chef

Whaaat! I spluttered. The whole reason I was going, had paid for flights and accommodation, was to visit this place for my book. I mean, do they live in a world where going to Berlin is a like a trip across the road? Do they know how fucking expensive Europe is for British people at the moment? Do they have children? Commitments? Have to organise their lives differently if they want to go away? Clearly not. They didn't even suggest meeting up...

There have been times when I could have cancelled dinners, due to illness, or legal problems (Amen!) but I never have. Not once. I have too strong a sense of responsibility. I'd have to be dead to cancel.

Bitterly disappointed, I had one more to visit, something cited on several sites and in several articles as a supperclub 'Cookiescream'. Not only that, it was vegetarian and a fixed menu cost 33 euros. £33 in today's prices, more expensive than mine, but what the hell...

Their website didn't give much info so I emailed and a guy called Peter said he'd reserve a table for two at 8pm. I wrote again asking

"is it in your home?"

No reply. Maybe that was a stupid question, I thought to myself, and didn't dignify a reply. Because of course it's in his home. That's the whole point of a supperclub really.

So dragged self and The Teen up to Stansted. Sat next to scary Otto Dix style hard-faced German woman with plaits piled on top of her head, pancake makeup, dark red thin lips and wearing a challenging shade of russet.

We stayed in the room of a family apartment, it was pretty easy to find from the airport but it would have been better to have stayed nearer the 'centre'. Commuting took a good deal of time and as it was all underground, I never felt like I got to see the layout of Berlin.

Getting off at Friedrichstrasse, we were a little early. Let’s get some chips I said. There was a food outlet selling lots of fried things in batter; fried calamari, fried fish goujons, Indian fried potatoes (green) and chips. They had a bunch of sauces which they served in icecream wafers. Not kidding. But good idea as they are strong and disposable. We ordered something called quarkundgermanishspicish. Actually I made that up but it was a khaki-coloured low fat cream cheese. Not bad.

Down an alleyway...

Round a corner...no this can't be right...

Ooh isn't that amazing!

Finally there...

The best thing about Cookiescream was the journey; following instructions to go down an alley between a large posh hotel and another building, it felt like we were venturing into some kind of industrial estate. Surely it can't be here, we thought. Suddenly I noticed a massive chandelier handing from the rafters, this gave a clue to something more happening in this alleyway than deliveries to the back of the hotel. We teamed up with an Englishwoman also wandering around cluelessly knocking on doors, and found the entrance. Winding our way upstairs, we passed a disco, then it opened into...a restaurant, a normal standard restaurant. We were led to our seats.

“Is this a supperclub?” I asked the waitress.

“Well there is a club downstairs...”

“Who is Peter, I thought this was in his home “ I repeated stupidly.

She looked at me pityingly.

I scanned the menu. It was very expensive. The cheapest bottle of wine was 28 euros. That's £28. Gagging for a drink, I ordered it and while not bad, it was sweet white, not something you could drink much of.

"Would you like water?" the waitress asked.

"Just tap"

"We don't do tap. Still or sparkling?"

"Why not? "I squeaked.

"It's like that everywhere in Berlin, no one will give you tap water."

"You'd instantly get a bad review for that in London" I muttered.

They gave us a plate of bread and a little dish of cottage cheese with some kind of herb in it. Couldn't recognise the herb. It lacked salt. I asked for salt. This is one of those vegetarian restaurants that thinks you shouldn't put salt in food. Food fascism I call it. Designed to make life even more miserable than it already is.

My starter...oh what to say? It's the kind of food I detest. It's the kind of food where I want to kill the chef. Pretentious, tasteless and expensive. No salt again. I would like vegetarian food to have a better reputation, to be seen as more than brown slop, but this is not the way. Stupid pompous plating. A quenelle of this, a dirty protest of that. Itty bitty. Ingredients that make no sense, do not connect or converge but look exotic on a menu.

I looked around. People were sitting down at their tables. When their plates arrived they looked happy not angry. I wanted to stand on my chair and scream at them.

"You fucking morons. You know nothing about food. This is food for fucking moron people who know nothing about food."

But the Germans are famously law-abiding (we spent the whole trip resisting the urge to jaywalk, people will stand to attention for hours at crossings, even when the road is empty, waiting for the distinctively leprechaun-like green man) so I quenched the urge to smash the place up in a punk fury.

What was it this starter that so offended? It was recommended by the waitress and was called 'Stuffed brioche with quail egg'.

It consisted of a stale brioche hollowed out to contain some kind of cheese inside, ah no looking at the menu it was 'truffled foam of potatoes’ on a ‘bed of redwine shallots’ that tasted like red cabbage. The red cabbage completely overpowered any other taste. It was disappointing for £9. And small.

The waitress, bless her, did bend 'die regeln' and bring us two glasses of tap water.

Mains: I ordered, again on recommendation, 'puree & grilled Hokkaido pumpkin with gnocci of chive, gelly (sic) of balsamico, redwine sauce, wild herbs'.

I specifically said to the waitress that I disliked beetroot. This main came with slices of beetroot hidden under the school dinners puree of pumpkin. It was absolutely horrible. I've been cooking with pumpkin recently and there are ways to make it taste interesting. This didn't achieve that. The gnocci, all ten of the little bastards, were rock-hard and tasteless. As for the 'gelly' and the redwine sauce, well I suppose that accounts for the little droplets and squiggles.

I've said it before, if a sauce is good I want a jug of it not a smear. A proper puddle at least.

Who likes this kind of food? Dieters, food faddists, Pro-Ana thinspirational 'wanarexic/fauxlimics'? Fashion folk who want to be seen eating but not actually eat?

The teen got 'tomato-tandoori-risotto with baked praline of goat cheese, chickweed and tomato fumet'. The pralines, two, were great, hot and tasty. The only successful element of the meal. The tiny oblong of 'risotto' was flavoured with ready-made curry powder. When I make curry, I grind and roast my own spices. I know the difference between shop-bought instant curry powder and the real thing.

Hey if chickweed is a chic ingredient I’ve got tons of it in my garden due to lack of weeding.

Puddle of tomatoey liquid.

The Teen definitely got the better deal. But both of these mains cost £18 each. I can go to a decent restaurant, hell I can even go to a Michelin starred restaurant and get a nice main for that.

We couldn't even be arsed to order pudding at £9. I imagine it would be a couple of squirts from a squeegy bottle and a quenelle.

Still hungry, we went to a late night shop and bought a load of sweets (Lindt chocolate balls and some salty liquorice) and a dvd to watch on our laptops 'Rachel's getting married' good acting, rather depressing. Anne Hathaway doing her prettier Liza Minelli thing, all lugubrious brown eyes and mobile mouth.

Sat: Big big breakfast in first cafe we saw. A huge spread of different cheeses on a large grey slate. The cheeses were rather processed and tasteless but I made a couple of sarnies for later, wrapped them in napkins and then tussled with the teen about who was going to carry them.

"I've got a camera in my bag" I pleaded

(I have ruined so many cameras by carrying food in the same bag). I won.

The teen had tomato soup. At first sight we were pleased because it looked homemade, it didn't look like Heinz (although I do actually like Heinz Tomato soup). But it was pasta sauce served as a soup. Weird and not very edible. But nice big portions for a reasonable sum of money. Unlike...well I won't bore you to death...

Then we walked down the road and saw some squats...Tacheles. Finally, I thought, a bit of the famed Berlin alternative scene. We took some pix and had a beer (you had to pay a deposit for the glass) at the Zapata bar. So interesting squats but nothing you wouldn't find in Hackney on any given day of the week.

Then we carried on walking. And walking. Because everything is really far. All the streets are enormously wide. Perfect for rolling tanks down. Oops.

We found the holocaust memorial. A subject of contention, according to the guide book for having been built 'on prime real estate with little historical significance'. I found it moving. The large oblong stones ressembled a cemetary, but this time the tombstones were without names. As you got further in, going deeper as the earth dipped, it perfectly summed up a feeling of oppression. I was a little shocked at German youth jumping on the gravestones, pulling funny poses for photographs. I couldn't stop myself from telling one off:

'This is inappropriate, you wouldn't do this in a graveyard would you?'

She stopped 'You are right but we are so happy!'

A cubist portrait of the memorial

We moved onto the bunker where Hitler shot himself. It's now a carpark. A void. It seems Berlin is constructed around embarrassment of one sort or another. There is not yet, despite promises, a museum about the Nazis and yet fascism and communism is what most people associate with this place. The communist past is easier to deal with: there is a section of the wall left standing and 'ostalgie' a play on the word 'nostalgia', a longing for past memories of the time when the East was blocked off, the iron curtain. But even this period is scantily dealt with, a series of temporary looking boards with information in English and German near to Checkpoint Charlie.

On Sunday we did little, the weather looked so dispiriting, except visit a Bavarian restaurant Kuchekaiser (they love that word Kaiser, it's the one part of their past of which they are not embarrassed). This was the cheeriest place we visited. The food was heavy: my starter of blinis and smoked salmon was laid out into a multi-level sandwich, cemented together by the ubiquitous quark, which could eminently grace an upperclass version of 'This is why you are fat'.

The teen's starter of goats cheese on toast was not à la francaise: fine toasts graced by a roundel of chevre but doorsteps of bread, with an equivalently doormat thickness of cheese.

My main dish was two-ton home-made noodles, a gluey net of onions and a covering of shrapnels of fried brown something on top. This is food to fight off the Russian Winter. This is the culinary equivalent of Gore-tex and thermals.

The teen was delighted with her fish fingers and mash: battered goujons, as opposed to Birdseye, with buttered mashed potato.

Dessert was disappointing: apple strudel with heavy pastry, not much filling, cold creme anglaise and irritating irrelevant bits of decorative exotic fruit. Got the feeling it wasn't home-made.

Still we enjoyed our meal. The atmosphere was family-busy, we were asked to watch a pushchair outside, and the waitresses friendly and helpful. Does this reflect Bavarian warmth?

Venturing out into the drab, we were too weighed down to attempt sight-seeing so we dipped into a cinema to see Ken Loach's latest prole-flick 'Looking for Eric'.

To be frank I groaned when I saw that it was a Ken Loach film. Europeans fucking love Ken Loach. Just as they love Woody Allen. I lived in France for years and every Ken Loach film was greeted like the second coming. I like some of his films but many of them are incredibly patronising about the working class who often come across as clueless victims. Still his films afford one of the few opportunities, apart from reality TV, to actually see the working class (or non-working) portrayed unvarnished on mass media. This film has the stellar presence of Eric Cantona, humour and an optimistic ending.

We got the U-bahn to Schoenberg airport in the morning where I had the single most enjoyable gastronomic experience of the trip: a large chewy pretzel bought at an underground stall (I love pretzels small and large and have made them myself) through which was mined a seam of, oh joy, butter. Every mouthful of this tube of lye-boiled dough, salt and butter was divine. Those Germans know their bread.

Sausages in croissants...this is a country where it is pretty much acceptable to put a sausage in anything...

You order a beer and half a metre of it arrives...

Even the U-bahn stations look like beer signs...

Marmite stock

The Marmite Popup shop in Regents street, only there for a month...

The tea and Marmite on toast bar at the shop. You could tell the staff weren't true aficionados because when asked the weirdest Marmite request one of them replied with a grimace 'Someone wanted a peanut butter, Marmite, cucumber and black pepper sandwich!'. Er yeah? And?

The 'keep the Marmite popup shop' petition signed by yours truly.

Spanish tourists at Marmite popup shop, sniffing and examining Marmite. "Ees very hjard no?" one said after spreading it thickly without butter on his bread. People need lessons.

Marmite pot earrings from Rachel Sherman.

All things Marmite are increasingly in the news...I got a tweet today:

cydonia13 @MsMarmitelover I'm from the US. My university adviser is British and introduced me to Marmite. Now I have an addiction to it!!

This is good. Eventually those doubters from foreign climes will be converted and my plan to make liking Marmite a condition for entering Britain will be achieved. Being a tolerant sort, I may even allow Vegemite fans in too.

Last week a new sect, the Marmarati was formed, a sort of Masonic society for Marmite appreciators. Marmite have also opened a popup shop in the centre of London. Admittedly the addition of the words 'Popup' in order to add trendiness to any venture is getting rather tiresome but I'm such a fan of Marmite that I'll let it go...however if the petition to continue the shop succeeds let's hope they add more Marmite products in there. At the moment however it is a little haven in the West End for those of us who need a tea and Marmite on toast top-up during the day.
The staff have had people with Marmite tattoos and a couple with a dog called Marmite. On my visit, the customer base consisted of confused foreign tourists with no idea how to handle the pot of dark brown salty stuff. Frankly there needs to be beginner's workshops.

In recent weeks I've been sent two books: The Bumper book of Marmite and The Mish Mash dictionary of Marmite.
The first is modelled on a kid's annual. It has comics, games, puzzles and a few recipes. It's bit of a gimmicky book, out for the Christmas market. There was obviously a large budget but I don't know why they bothered. Aside from some good recipes from Signe Johansen, there are weak jokes and pointless artwork. I've bought some really amusing annuals in the past, Monty Python and AliG for instance, but this just doesn't cut it. It's all form and no content. I wouldn't say I hated it, but I don't love it.
The Mish Mash dictionary of Marmite at £8.99 lacks the gloss but is rather more interesting for genuine fans of the brown stuff. For a start, I'm mentioned in it under 'U' for Underground Restaurant! Writer Maggie Hall has put in lots of fascinating anecdotes and has obviously spent time researching the all-important subject of Marmite.

Under 'internet' there are more than 430,000 entries if you google 'Marmite'. Under 'C' you will see that cats love Marmite. Under 'J' for jewellery she mentions Rachel Sherman who sells Marmite jewellery (pictured above) on etsy and her own site.

Paul A Young's wonderful marmite and chocolate truffles have an entry under 'Y'.
This is to name but a few entries...you could spend hours reading this book...love it!

Being seen at the Zine scene

Punk wasn't just about music, it included design, fashion and journalism. It led to a movement of home-made magazines, ready to fill the gap of the stuff that wasn't being published in all the straight press. Some of them were fairly rough, traced painstakingly on blue carbon copy paper... This was before photocopiers remember, before scanning, before digital photography...

But the energy and passion rippled off the folded pages, decorated with hand drawings, fiery opinion pieces and interviews. Out of the 'zines, Sniffin' glue' by Mark P. was probably the most well known. I also remember that heady moment, imaginary fists punched in the air, a feeling of having won the war, when zine ZigZag banished long haired whiskery hippies from it's front page and embraced the new wave with it's first punk cover.

Along with the punk style roots of do-it-yourself home restaurants, the 'zine scene has spread to food.

How do we read about food at the moment? The newspapers carry articles, but they tend to be rather short, lacking the space to explore food writing in detail. The Guardian Word of Mouth blog, one of the most popular food blogs in the world, is carrying the banner for lively up-to-the-minute democratic food writing, sometimes even plucking talented and regular commenters from anonymity and urging them to write articles. There are glossy magazines which publish luscious photographs, wonderfully styled and detailed recipes but confusingly will carry ads for junk food on the next page. And of course there are blogs, new ones starting every day, covering every aspect of food from the cup of coffee at your local caff, the dinner they made last night, the restaurant they started in their front room, to Michelin starred restaurants and trips to El Bulli.

But there is something to be said for the tactile pleasure of holding a work in your hand. Otherwise why do books still sell? In terms of comprehension, we read differently on the net. Even with books it is said that we retain only 10 percent of what we read (1). I'm sure this proportion is even less when reading off a screen.

So I am excited about the emergence of two new food zines (what to call them? chow-zines?nutri-zines? No, that sounds like a sweetener). Guardian writer Tim Hayward has started a zine, a rather upmarket one, called Fire&Knives, the first issue due out in November. He describes it as giving

"established writers a place for work that would not be published elsewhere; new writers a place to show themselves and experts in other fields an opportunity to write about our favourite subject"

On Monday night I attended the launch of Galleyslave, a stylish and witty pirate-themed 'zine from food journalist and broadcaster Joe Warwick, it's strapline 'putting the wind up the London restaurant scene'. Printed on folded broadsheet size recycled paper, Galleyslave carries articles on new restaurant openings, gossip from the restaurant world, and classified job ads, a section entitled 'Slave Auction'.

The launch was held at Hix, Mark Hix's new restaurant and bar in Soho. We were served fantastic cocktails, cleverly based on the pirate theme, a rum punch and a gin punch. There were bowls of pirate eyepatches on the bar. You could tell that the food was pretty stunning, even though we only got to try the canape version.

In particular I loved the goujons of battered fish served on a bed of sweet mushy peas. The chips, and readers will know how important chips are to me, were out of this world, served on huge platters with a bowl of mayonnaise in the middle. Standing with some food bloggers, positioned accidentally by the kitchen where the wait staff emerged with the plates of food (2), I noticed that one of these large trays of chips had been left casually on a table of four thin girls. I can't abide waste of that nature, so quickly relieved them of the platter.

Mark Hix, who I tried to talk to, explained that the chips were blanched in water, then in oil, then given a final fry.

Your intrepidly scoffing reporter here, however, got rather upset on this evening. Why? I was introduced to a food writer, Sharp by name, sharp by nature, who snorted with derision when she found out that I was a blogger.

"I NEVER read blogs" she harrumphed. "NOT interested AT all"

"How very 20th century of you! " I quipped lightly, thinking her overreaction was in good spirit, joshing like.

I can't remember exactly what she replied, as I was too busy reeling backwards from the venom spurting from her tongue, but it was something along the lines of

"Go away you nasty blogger, I'm trying to talk to my friend Joe and you are interrupting".

Thinking, well perhaps that was a bit rude of me, I took a step back and went up to her a little while later, apologising... Jesus, I never learn do I?

" I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to be nasty. I do understand how you feel as a print journalist. My dad's a journalist and I'm a photographer, I have exactly the same problems getting paid. Things have changed, but I think we have to adapt..." I gabbled, the words tumbling out in my attempt to appease her.

She eyed me steadily, I thought I was being given another chance. How wrong I was, she was merely gearing up for another mauling. One of the best of the food bloggers, an aspiring journalist, came up to us

"Oh you two have met, oh you will get on soo well, she's amazing this lady she..."

"Er well we've already had a bit of a spat" I ventured

I then go on to explain the dispute when this lady spears me with a look saying

"EXCUSE ME, I think (this food blogger) knows me quite well enough and my views on the subject and doesn't need it repeated by you. Now I'M HERE to speak to my friends"

and swivelled on her heel, turning her back to me.

The young food blogger was pulled away to talk to somebody who'd just come in and I was left on my own, feeling stupid. I hardly knew anybody there.

I'm always going to places on my own, thinking it will be fine, I'm a brave lass like that. I have social skills, I can talk to pretty much anybody. But suddenly I was projected back into the nightclub scene of the 80s when I used to feel like the loser at fashionable clubs. I didn't realise then that much of the arrogant behaviour was fuelled by cocaine and other drugs. The atmosphere of this launch reminded me of the 'greed is good' selfishness of the 80s. I stood back stung by the sight and sound of professional networkers using their metaphorical stilettos (heels and knives) clawing over each other's backs to talk to someone higher up the food chain. So I cried. Yes, that bad lady made MsMarmitelover cry. Hot humiliated tears spilled onto my pink dress with it's peekaboo cleavage.

I was going to leave but Joe Warwick and his lovely kind girlfriend offered therapy by way of more cocktails.

The whole food blogging scene has become quite cliquey, there are practically gangs; not so much the 'crips and the bloods' but the 'chips and bloods'. Food writers lurk in restaurant doorways, spit in each other's food and turn the knife slowly. It's surf and turf wars. Thrusting new bloggers are giddy with perceived power the result of PR emails inviting them to tastings and desperate for the recognition that getting into print will give them. Older established bloggers are bothered by young upstarts ...

"Some of these young bloggers in their 20s, know very little about food..."

Whereas print journalists are threatened by all bloggers, young and old, as evidenced in Nick Davies book 'Flat Earth News' and his talk which I blogged about last year. Murdoch is trying to think of a way to make online journalism pay. You can download everything, music, film, tv, photographs, your latest school essay, for free off the net.

But how is the 'talent', the people who make the content, going to live when nobody will pay ?

(1) I found this quote.. "Memory: We retain: 10 percent of what we read; 20 percent of what we hear; 30 percent of what we see ?50 percent of what we hear and see; 70 percent of what we say; 90 percent of what we say and do "

(2) Standing by the exit hatch is always the best place to position yourself at parties, in order to avoid that terrible condition known as 'canape stress', where you see a platter tantalisingly bobbing through the crowd, invariably empty by the time it gets to you. It's even worse for veggies I can tell you. Coming up to the Christmas season, you'd be surprised how many hosts and caterers don't think of those that don't eat meat. Shut up at the back, you. Vegetarians do count.

Kilburn's Luminaire

Kilburn and the High Road have a gritty rock ‘n’ roll history. Aside from being the name of the late great Ian Dury’s band (Kilburn and the High-Roads), this area, essentially the A5 or the old Roman Road, Watling Street, has always hosted a variety of music venues.

Traditionally this part of town has been Irish: ‘County Kilburn’. The newsagents still sell Irish newspapers and some venues, Powers Bar (Vince Power's tribute to his pub rock days at The Mean Fiddler) and further up in Cricklewood, The Galtymore, retain an Irish influence.

I remember staggering up the dark hill in my punk gear to see various ‘pub rock’ bands (Madness) in the ’70s, kipping down the night in squats. The next day you’d stumble into a working men’s café for breakfast, the seedy atmosphere permeated by Irish men spending Sunday on their own, far from their families, there to earn a few quid in the building trade. The loneliness came off them in waves, their only comfort pints of Guinness in the evenings. This was the era when the IRA were recruiting, collecting donations in Kilburn pubs.

Lingering in a twilight world of inner city grime, before London teeters over the edge into suburbia, Kilburn has come up in the world with the addition of nightspots like The Luminaire, winner of several awards for best music venue. Downstairs is the pub The Kings Head, the monarch being Elvis, which boasts the toughest pop quiz in town every last Wednesday of the month, hosted by Charlie Ivens.

Outside The Luminaire you will see an enormous bouncer perched on a stool, reading, what looks like, in his hands, a miniature novel. Yes, it’s the kind of place where the ‘security’ can read. Once you enter upstairs, The Luminaire is a surprise; plush, cosy and intimate. Red velvet curtains all around give it the air of a speakeasy. On the wall, a no nonsense notice tells you ‘Quiet please, we are a live venue not a pub. If you’ve come to chat to your pals when the bands are on, you are in the wrong place, please leave.’

Tonight an astonishingly accomplished band, considering their youth, Two Spot Gobi, are playing, with clear influences of The Police and Jamiroquai. I hadn't planned to see them, but I get the feeling you could drop into The Luminaire on any given night, and the music would be good. This singer has a raw passionate voice and the musicians, including a cello player and some brass, are sublimely talented. It is impossible not to dance.

The sound at The Luminaire is perfect and the stage well lit. This venue puts a spotlight on performance with no distractions. And the toilets are…amusing; graffiti is encouraged. One felt-tipped message reads: ‘Hoxton RIP’. With places like The Luminaire in Kilburn, lets hope so.

The Luminaire

311 Kilburn High Road

Kilburn

NW6 7JR

Tel: 020 7372 7123

An afternoon with Harumi Kurihara

Harumi showing Valentine Warner how to pound sesame seed Japanese style.

We often think of Japanese cooking as complex, alien and difficult. A book 'Everyday Harumi' by Japan's most popular TV chef and cookbook writer Harumi Kurihara, seeks to change that perception.

A lucky few were invited to watch her prepare some of the dishes, easy pickles, fishcakes and sesame beans, in an exquisite Georgian house in Clerkenwell. This cooking school in a home 'Foodat52' is a similar concept to home restaurants. The kitchen boasts a nine burner Victorian range cooker, an authentic Fridgidaire, burnished copper pans and beautifully constructed wooden shelving and plate racks made by owner and cabinet maker John Benbow.

Valentine Warner was also in attendance, bending down from a great height to respectfully listen to Harumi's instructions.

Harumi is a tiny neat woman with a sweet and precise manner. Untrained, her style is ultimately pragmatic. Her food is obviously healthy, she looks at least ten years younger than 63. Overseeing a Martha Stewart style empire in Japan, she designs cookware such as a Japanese version of a pestle and mortar 'Tsuribachi'. This has grooves inside, enabling you to gently crack the raw sesame seeds in a circular movement, finally ending in a soft buttery paste quite distinct from Tahini.

The paste, which can also be bought ready made from Japanese shops, is used in soups and dressings. Mixed with Mirin sauce and sugar, it is also good with green beans.

Harumi is flexible though...

"Don't stick to what I say. In my house, this is the flavour I create. You can express yourself however"

We watch her mix the beans and paste together. "Don't overdry the beans " she advises. She speaks in a mixture of Japanese and English. We learn some Japanese words: 'scochi' 'a little'...'Oishi' means delicious.

Presentation is very important in Japanese cuisine: Harumi suggests for instance that we put only one thing on a plate or put only a small amount.

Cutting is also an art: the translator explains that she and Harumi spend much time trying to find English synonyms for all the different Japanese words for cutting.

Harumi makes cucumber pickles by rolling them hard, skins on, in salt; this brings up the colour and gets rid of bitterness. I've often salted thinly sliced cucumber to make it crispier. I have never thought of penetrating the skin with salt.

Harumi then 'tenderises' the cucumbers by bashing them with the rolling pin. She tears the cucumber in strips; the tearing lends a different texture, adding interest to the dish.

The cucumber strips are marinated in soy sauce, 'julienned' ginger, and rice vinegar and at the end, a little toasted sesame oil.

Soy sauce and Mirin are the cornerstone of many of her recipes. Mirin, a sweet liquid with low alcohol, adds a "sweetness and silkiness" to the recipes. It's pretty essential to buy good Japanese soy sauce as opposed to cheap Chinese soy. It is worth the price difference.

Harumi shows that if it is difficult to get hold of Japanese ingredients, you can adapt. She makes the same sauce with white wine vinegar, "even better" she pronounces.

She leaves the pickles for about six hours explaining that this technique also works well with cherry tomatoes (their skins pricked with a cocktail stick), celery and carrots.

Next we learn to make salmon fishcakes. We mince salmon and a little fresh uncooked prawn very finely with a knife, adding diced raw onion, pepper salt and mirin.

Palming them into little patties, the fishcakes are fried in vegetable oil and served with finely julienned raw ginger strips and Ponzu sauce. These fishcakes are light, not heavy with potato and starch like our fishcakes.

To make Ponzu sauce: you burn the alcohol off some Mirin sauce then simmer for three minutes, the end result a soft sweetness. If you don't have Mirin, use soy, lemon and sugar. You then add some Kombu seaweed which has had the salty deposits rinsed off to the simmered Mirin. Finally you add soy and lemon juice. It keeps for up to a month in the fridge.

I asked Harumi through her translator if the Japanese still know how to cook traditional dishes, if they are moving towards ready meals. Harumi says there was a period when young Japanese people started to eat takeaways but most Japanese families still know how to cook. There is at present more interest in 'lunchboxes' rather than fast food; making your own fresh healthy lunch to 'takeaway'. Harumi also volunteers teaching young people how to cook traditionally.

When the Japanese want to know how to do home cooking they go to Harumi Kurihara. She makes it look easy. Part of a power couple in Japan, married to a well known TV personality, Harumi's style is ubiquitous with a hugely successful quarterly food magazine.

At the end one of her team who was videoing the session asked me what I thought of the afternoon... For me it was learning to cook by osmosis, for this is how we all learn to cook, standing next to our mothers and grandmothers, talking and watching. Without even being aware of it, we learn. Being in the graceful presence of Harumi, seeing her handle and cut up food, arrange it artfully but without pretension on a plate was an education in itself.

If you are feeling a little intimidated by Japanese cooking, then I recommend her books as a entry point.

I have a copy of Harumi's latest book to give away, if you leave a comment and an email address. I will draw winners out of a hat...by the end of September 2009.

Grandes Dames of cookery

Left to Right: Roden, Jones, Prever and Norman.

Settle in folks, this is gonna be a long 'un (great thing about blogging, no word count, yay!)

A Wednesday in September in London; a day in which I cursed myself for not taking one of the many umbrellas left and lost at The Underground Restaurant. Huge gloopy raindrops, darkened skies, soaked feet in silly high heels, skidding through oily puddles, dishevelled and damp, I arrived everywhere looking like a drowned rat. Despite my sartorial ineptitude, I had an inspiring day filled with the wisdom of a worldwide cabal of what I will term the Grandes Dames of cookery.

The morning I tripped up to Golders Green where a Jewish Literary Festival is being held at Ivy House. I was invited by my friend, Viking wet dream and food anthropologist @scandilicious who was celebrating just having completed her Masters on cheese. (Imagining scholarly treatise on Welsh Rarebit (why is it Welsh?) and Dairy Lea triangles (so hard to get the foil off) but I'm sure it's far more complex and exotic than that!).

I know Golders Green so well. I changed buses there every morning to go to school. I went to a very Jewish girl's school and from a young age I knew words like 'beck' (as in 'she's a right beck' (North Londonese for Jewish princess), 'chutzpah', 'shiksa' and 'I met that boy at 'shul''. I enjoyed Jewish humour, envied their self-confidence and supportive families, sighed resignedly at the high marks they got for exams. I could never compete with the Jewish girls at my school with their designer clothes from Jigsaw and Daniel Hechter. It being the 70s, we still talked about the holocaust as a recent event. All of my Jewish friends had lost family; their families in England a surviving husk of their previously huge extended network. My first Saturday job was at the Golders Green branch of WH Smith. I lurked around the bus station every Saturday night, waiting for word of parties in Temple Fortune, Childs Hill, Barnet and millionaire's row (now populated by Asian families as is Golders Green), Bishops Avenue. Afterwards we'd all go to Maxwell's or Calamity Jane's hamburger joints in Hampstead. Milkshakes and burgers were still new and foreign (the sushi of their day) and trays of lurid green and yellow relish and unlimited Heinz ketchup were objects of wonder.

The Jewish Literary Festival had invited Claudia Roden, Jill Norman, Judith Jones to a round table discussion hosted by Victoria Prever. All of these women are high achievers in the world of cooking: Claudia Roden has written seminal works on Jewish and Middle Eastern cookery; Jill Norman worked at Penguin in the 60s, authoring her own cookbooks as well as safe-guarding the literary heritage of Elizabeth David; Judith Jones, perhaps less well known to British audiences, an editor (Julia Child's) and writer. Victoria Prever is a chef and restaurant critic for the Ham & High and Jewish Chronicle.

These are my notes on the discussion, I came in late and heard Judith Jones talking passionately...

"I hate the words 'fast' and 'easy'. How can you learn any art form overnight?"

Jill Norman:

"Some things are meant to be fast and easy...I was part of a small team at Penguin in the 60s. When they divided up the editing departments, I got 'cooking'. I didn't cook"

The audience laughs, the implication is clear, she got what was considered the female area of expertise.

"But I knew how to eat. I learnt to eat in France when I was a student at the Sorbonne. Nobody was publishing food books at that time except for Penguin publishing.

Elizabeth David was very conscientious about her books. She frequently updated them with footnotes about when ingredients became available in England.

Jane Grigson's book on charcuterie was a classic. We bought the rights. It wasn't an instant best seller but sold slowly and steadily. It stayed in print until four years ago.

Books were expensive and people didn't have much money then. But towards the end of the 60s everybody was interested in cooking, trying new things..."

Claudia Roden on styling:

"Your food was never likely to look like the photographs in the books. Stylists would spray food with oil for instance. Nowadays the style is different. Often they use close-up pictures. But it's easier to produce food now that actually looks like the pictures."

Judith Jones: "I find I have to be there when they are taking pictures..."

Roden:

"The photographs can be misleading. Once I did a stuffed artichoke recipe. The stylist put the stuffing in a huge pyramid on top. But if the home cook did that there wouldn't be enough stuffing for all the artichokes..."

Victoria Prever:

"Who tests their recipes?"

Jill Norman:

"I test everything. Sometimes things didn't work, or a chunk of information was left out. My children grew up with very eclectic food."

Judith Jones:

"You can't just hand over to a tester. Nothing is totally foul proof, you have to use common sense. A chef is hired, who will hire a writer. The writer is at home somewhere. You have to insist that the writer works with the chef and asks questions"

Prever:

"Are professional chefs, who produce cookbooks, a good thing?"

Roden:

"Someone mentioned Gordon Ramsay. In one of his books there were 40 mistakes with the recipes. He'd changed his home economist, sacked her, and got a new one. He was very angry with the publishers Michael Joseph. He blamed everybody but himself. Michael Joseph didn't want to do his next book after that"

Norman:

"You have to test the things that sound most improbable"

Prever:

"Has it put you off food forever?"

All of the ladies shake their heads "No".

Prever:

"What do you think of celebrity chefs, the teaching out there?"

Norman:

"On the whole I'm not in favour of the celebrity chef culture, they don't help people to cook better. It's become a spectator sport. You'll watch them cook, with a ready made meal on your lap"

Roden:

"One thing that is good is that it's made say, young men, previously ashamed of cooking, think it's a good thing to do. Because of Jamie Oliver, my grandson wants to cook"

Questions from the audience:

"There are so many books out there but more and more people are buying ready made food. I just stayed in the US with a family who had the most wonderful kitchen but never cooked"

Roden:

"It is disappointing. Women are all working, there isn't someone at home all day. But you can do a quick meal, quicker than a box in the supermarket"

Judith Jones:

"Young people were inspired to cook for they fell in love with Julia (Child). In 1961, when 'The Art of French Cooking' was published, it exploded. People are sick of celebrity stuff."

Roden:

"Could cooking be just a fashion? Like skateboarding?"

The audience laughs.

Norman:

"Some of it will persist. Farmer's markets. The economic downturn could be positive. Writers and supermarkets explain what to do with inexpensive meat."

Prever:

"Is there a downturn in food publishing?"

Norman:

"About 5 percent. It takes time for it to filter through. There are also issues of greenness, excess of packaging..."

Audience:

"Each of the panellists introduced us to food of different nations. What do you think of fusion foods?"

Norman:

"CONfusion. Unfortunate mixtures of ingredients. It's generally Pacific rim with Western, cooking things in coconut milk. A couple of chefs do it well...Peter Gordon, that chap in New Zealand, where it came from"

Judith Jones:

"American is a country of immigrants. It's kept cooking fresh and diverse"

Roden:

"In the last century, for the first time, there was a big change in the foods of countries. There is this idea of 'creativity'. It's pushed by editors of food mags who have run out of ideas. They've done all the classics so every year they want to do new things.

I do feel like it's betraying cultures. A lot of dishes have lost their identity altogether. Iranian chicken with a Moroccan sauce for instance. Where is this recipe from? The internet! We can lose cultures if we mess with them too much. There is a dilution of the recipes. Recipes are led by editors. Original ethnic restaurants are less expensive than restaurants that copy and dilute those recipes."

Audience:

"When I was growing up, everybody ate everything. Nowadays vegetarianism is popular. Are you sensitive to food intolerances? At a dinner party last night, there were six people. Each one of them had some kind of food intolerance."

Roden:

"With Spanish cooking it can be hard to find a dish that doesn't have a bit of ham. I just say you can do it without ham"

Norman:

"I will say this is how the dish is normally made but you can make it without meat. My daughter became veggie and so it was a part of our family life. I say we do vegetable dishes not vegetarian dishes."

Audience:

"We can now get all types of food all year. The quality and the taste has gone"

Roden:

"We try to help, for instance add sugar to tomatoes. In Spain there are not many herbs and spices. People are encouraged to add more aromatics."

Norman:

"Pity we have so many fruits that taste of nothing much all year round."

Louds murmurs of agreement from the audience.

Norman:

"Ethically it's tricky. I try to push locally grown foods.

Prever:

"Do you try to eat seasonally?"

Roden:

"I don't. I'm always trying recipes. It's always a trial. I'm glad of vegetables that come from Egypt, that Egyptians can sell their artichokes."

Prever:

"What about organic?"

Norman:

"For me it's more important that they are local."

Audience, guy with American accent who turns out to be Daniel Young of @youngandfoodish :

"Since I moved here I've noticed a real distinction between the classes in terms of what they eat. Even the 'peasant' cuts of meat such as brisket are expensive. How can we bring quality cooking to the working class?"

Norman:

"You don't need a great deal of meat to flavour things. But cheaper cuts do need to be cooked longer so there are issues over the expense of cooking something in the oven all night. People who have columns are trying to address this. Using vegetables in season is cheaper."

Prever:

"Jamie Oliver tried to encourage people to eat well"

Judith Jones:

"There are strategies...leftovers, using the same ingredients to create different dishes for next day's lunch. We ought to start a movement also to make supermarkets sell smaller quantities. It's particularly a problem in the US."

Audience (I fess up, it was me):

"What do you think about food blogs? And the new underground restaurant movement?"

Judith Jones:

"I have a blog. We are all in the electronic age, publishers can't ignore it. It's great to google things. Good, intelligent blogs help people"

Norman:

"Blogs that are good but a lot aren't"

Roden:

"I have a cousin in Paris. He joined a blog, or a club. (She seemed uncertain lol)I asked him about the recipes because I've noticed there are such discrepancies...one will say, cook this for three hours, another will say an hour and a half. My cousin told me that there are comments below, people will say if it didnt' work. "

Judith Jones:

"Some of the recipes are contradictory but it is interactive."

The talk ended there. I could have listened to them all day. It made me think that I ought to be more diligent about putting recipes up.

I talked to them afterwards and they were very interested in the idea that people were cooking for others in their homes, being hospitable and convivial.

I bought Claudia Roden's bible 'A new book of Middle Eastern Food', she signed it 'To MsMarmitelover, I think what you are doing sounds great, best wishes Claudia Roden"

You never know, one day I may be honoured with a visit.

Afterwards I made my way to Islington to meet with another Grande Dame of cookery, this time from Japan, Harumi Kurihara. I will write about that in my next post as I'm sure you need a chance to get a cup of tea and so do I.

For any inaccuracies I apologize in advance.

Day trip to Lille

.. Souviens-toi

Ça parlait

De la Picardie

Invited by Eurostar, food bloggers were invited to take a 'little break' to encourage us to visit nearby European cities such as Paris, Brussels and Lille for the reasonable price of £59 return. Lille is probably the least known of this trio.

Lille is situated in the North-West corner of France. The coal and mining industry there, like in the North of England, was decimated in the 70s. Statistics show that the Northern French are poorer and drink more. On the route from Paris, the architecture gradually changes as you near Calais. Buildings are made with red bricks and you see terraced houses with gardens, unknown in the rest of France. The people are known as 'ch'timis'; they add a 'sh' sound to anything beginning with 'c' (eg 'ch'est =c'est). The Picardie or ch'timi dialect springs from early French with Flemish influences. One of the biggest comedy hits last year in France was the film 'Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis' poking gentle fun at this unloved area.

As the best of British manhood, soldiers, come home from Aghanistan, in ever increasing numbers, rotting in their bodybags, sent by politicians so that their own sons can continue to live consumerist lives, I remember also that Picardie was the scene of some of the worst carnage of World War I.

Yves Montand, the French Frank Sinatra, famously sung 'Dansons la rose (Les roses de Picardie)' although the song was originally written by a British officer in 1916, inspired by his love for a French widow while staying under her protection in that area.

Our trip lasted 12 hours, taking the 7am train and returning at 7pm. The point of this promotion is to show that even in such a short period of time, you can take a break, have a change of air, and return refreshed.

You can spot a food blogger a mile off: they aren't slim (bar the Asian food bloggers such as the thorough and hard-working WorldfoodieGuide, who have a horridly unfair genetic advantage). We were a sight with our muffin tops, beer bellies, double chins, pudgy hands, chafed thighs and flat feet. We didn't so much tour Lille as waddle around it. Give us another year and Eurostar will have to provide wheelchairs for a similar trip.

This was our schedule:

6.59 Eurostar leaves St Pancras. We met romantically under the enormous bronze statue of a couple saying farewell to each other. I tried to encourage food blogger duo 'Dinner Diary' to replicate this pose. I noted that Krista of londelicious was wearing sexy but impractical patent leather wedges.

On train: we weren't in First class but some sort of Club class. Nice. Big bucket seats, copies of Paris Vogue, and breakfast: tiny sliver of smoked salmon, two tiny blinis, bit of creme fraiche, coffee or tea, yoghurt, orange juice, rolls etc. Helpful staff. I didn't eat much, had a feeling I might have to pace myself.

On the way I talk to two bloggers/mothers: Margot of coffeeandvanilla, who is Polish, married to a Dominican, hence the 'ebony and ivory' style title of her blog. She creates Eastern European/Caribbean fusion food. Also Michelle of greedygourmet who plans to set up a site for food bloggers to sell their food, a gastronomic 'Etsy'. Great idea! Sign me up!

9.27: Arrival in Lille: the young French PR girls lead us around Lille. It's sunny and the shops aren't open yet. We are shown a belfry, very typical here, and a building with cannon balls wedged into the walls, result of a siege. We are shown Benoit Chocolatier. I thought we would taste some chocolate but the girl behind the counter backs away looking nervous when faced by 15 food bloggers photographing manically.

We discover a cake shop that sells multi-coloured macarons. We get a bit in trouble with shop owner because we help ourselves. I buy two cakes because I never liked macarons. Kang gives me a macaron to try. Amazing. I now love them.

11.00: Coffee and Patisseries at Meert: set in a beautiful 18th century tearoom with high ceilings and an enormous chandelier. Some of us order the speciality 'gauffres' or waffles. But these are not the large waffles you might imagine, they are tiny, slim wafers filled with Madagascan flavoured butter cream. Nice. Up the other end, they'd ordered 'Merveilleux' cakes which were like giant Ferrero Rocher. They were about 1o cms high and 6cms in circumference. Eventually they were passed down for the rest to taste, the summit of gluttony only partially reached.

13.00: Cooking course at L'Atelier des Chefs. We were divided into groups and asked to cook Northern French specialities: Pavé de cabillaud au miel de fleur de bière, palette colorée de légumes de saison: cod sautéed with honey and beer eau de vie/a fricasée of finely cut seasonal typically Northern vegetables and Ch'tiramisu, a ch'timi version of the classic dessert.

I learnt things:

• start with a cold pan and the skin of your fish doesn't burn
• you can cook radishes (treat them like little turnips)
• Not all food bloggers can cook. Some of them are more gifted at going to restaurants and eating other people's food.

I signed my fish plate with my own signature in balsamic glaze. We all sat down and ate together, family style. This was my first ever cooking lesson, very enjoyable and even though this was pitched at beginners, you can always learn more.

I bought a flat pastry brush and some fizz bomb sprinkles at the shop. Eatlikeagirl's bag was getting heavier, she can shop like a champ.

16.00:Beer and Cheese Tasting at La Capsule. Entering into the damp dark cavern of this typical corner bar, which also has a specialist beer shop, even the greediest of us were flagging a little by now. The owner, Aymeric, prodded us through the beer tasting.

Beer is roughly divided into three categories:

Belgian: syrupy, sweet, round

German: lagery, light, refreshing, clear

British: bitter, warm, hard minerally water

Aymeric jokes:

"we have a phrase in French about English food ...'if it's cold it's probably soup, if it's warm, it's beer'"

The beers of Northern France are Belgian in style. For this tasting I sat next to Liz Upton and Andrew of Spittoon. A good idea because I know sod all about beers and they were slurping and sniffing knowledgeably and saying stuff like "coriander!'"and "hoppy!" I tried to join in with words like "aspirin" and "horlicks" but I don't think they were fooled.

Andrew doesn't really look like a wine blogger because he has facial hair, doesn't wear a neckerchief/cravat and isn't gay. Beer bloggers look like Bill Bailey, I imagine.

This joint reminded me of Garlic and Shots, that goth restaurant in Soho. I once had a date there. The bloke had waist length black hair, was dressed head to toe in black leather and kept biting my lips to the point of drawing blood! Nice guy but didn't want to join the undead.

The Lilleputan Aymeric giving us the tasting asked if any of us are members of CAMRA, the campaign for real ale. Liz put up her hand. He is trying to start a French version. Beers are rather swamped in France by wine. Many of the beers we tasted not only could not be bought in England, but wouldn't be available in the rest of France either. The beers were local and distributed within a 20km radius.

1) Page 24: rhubarb, coriander, made 'à la chicorée' which doesn't mean it was made with chicory. It's a 'faux ami' between French and English: chicorée is endive and endive is chicory.

2) La Bavaisienne: darker, caramel, oldest beer, made in 19th century copper tank.

3) Etoile du Nord: a bit like Jenlain, hoppy, bitter, 60 IBU. For comparison Stella is 3/4 IBU.

4) Kaouet pronounced [cowet]: made 20 kms from Lille. Blackcurrant. The owner says the name comes from a village festival which celebrates a Giant in the shape of a cat called Kaou. It all sounds a bit Wickerman.

Goths at the bar

The Batcave

Marcus of Big Brother beer mat

The beer was accompanied by some local cheeses which matched well.

1) Cremet du cap-blanc-nez..ok but bland compared to the others...

2) Maroilles ...really strong, like two day old socks, but my favourite. There is also Vieux Lille also known as Lille Stinker which we didn't get a chance to try.
3) Mimolette Francais, Extra Vieille, dark orange, a bit like Edam
4) Crayeux de Roncq, creamy pungent, strong

These cheeses are available from Phillipe Olivier's cheese shop.

17.45: Shopping and leave for Eurostar. We go to a beer shop which also sells sweets, violet liqueur and gauffres from the region.

Les gauffres/waffles

I adore French sweet packaging

Eatlikeagirl and me get a bit distracted whilst shopping. She is now carrying so many bags, one of which appears to contain a tree trunk, that she is limping. We get a bit lost. We discuss the fact that we don't actually want to go back but then we imagine the poor PR girl, Sarah Oliver, who organised this, getting in trouble for losing food bloggers. Eventually we find the station. Sarah is looking worried. Eatlikeagirl and me feel like the naughty kids at the back of the coach on a school trip.

18.35 Eurostar departs: we are given dinner with champagne. I'm dead full. But order the dinner anyway. The menu sounds fab:

Tortellini farci aux epinards et a la ricotta avec aubergines, pesto et coulis de tomates.

Which turned out to be: luke warm, been sitting there for hours, tortellini, topped with tinned black olives, under-seasoned vegetables with a rusty salad. I taste it, put down my fork and sigh out loud

"Why is the food so bad?"

Foodstories, the Julie Christie of food blogging, with her heavy blonde fringe and big blue eyes, looks round and agrees. I continue...

"I mean you can understand it on a plane but on a train. How hard can it be to do tasty food?"

Suddenly the people that work on the train come over looking concerned

"You don't like it? Normally coming from the Brussels end it's pretty good"

I feel a bit guilty. Sometimes my own food fascism irritates me.

"I know I'm not paying for this, it's a press trip, but why tinned olives?"

"We will pass your comments on..." he says nicely "have some more champagne"

I turn round and notice the other food bloggers such as Cheesenbiscuits haven't even bothered with dinner, they are guzzling champagne, free mini bottles of wine and the contents of their beer shopping from Lille.

Once at St Pancras they all go on to the champagne bar...

I'm really tired. But it's been a great day. Lille is pretty, has plenty of activities, is fantastic for shopping and well worth a visit. Although by the time I arrived home, I realised I had a blister on each foot, nappy rash and two squashed cakes.

Information about @little_break:

Lille:

Eurostar operates up to 10 daily services from London St Pancras International to Lille with return fares from £55. Tickets are available from eurostar.com or 08705 186 186. Fastest London-Lille journey time is 1 hour 20 minutes.

Brussels:

Eurostar operates up to 10 daily services from London St Pancras International to Brussels with return fares from £59. All Eurostar tickets to Brussels are valid to/from any Belgian station at no extra cost. Tickets are available from eurostar.com or 08705 186 186. Fastest London-Brussels journey time is 1h51 minutes.

Paris:

Eurostar operates up to 20 daily services from London St Pancras International to Paris Gare de Nord with return fares from £59.

Tickets are available from eurostar.com or 08705 186 186. Fastest London-Paris journey time is 2hr 15 minutes. Since 11 August there has not been any extra fee for telephone bookings.

Competition alert!!! Win a pair of Eurostar tickets to Lille... take your own ‘Little Break to Lille’

Eurostar have kindly offered this prize to the reader that writes the funniest or most interesting comment replying to this post. If you are on Twitter, tweet a link to this post and you get extra points!

Small print: make your own way to St Pancras. Replies and comments in by end of September 2009. Winner will be tweeted and posted here first day of October!

Hot Stuff

Arriving to eat with Rejina otherwise known as @Gastrogeek1, we were sat in the corner next to a large plate glass window. The evening was sweltering, one of these heavy August days that we seem to be experiencing of late, more reminiscent of monsoon than summer.

There was no air and no room. Hot Stuff is the kind of neighbourhood restaurant we all want, popular, tasty and cheap. But on a night like this, as the smog-hazed sun dipped to orange, and sweat rivulets vanished into one's cleavage, it was unbearable. We ordered a couple of cool and sour cumin lassis but it did not help. My dress soaked through with sweat, my bottom was skidding around on the plastic seat.

"This is suffocating" I said to the waiter "please can we eat outside?"

He looked, there was no room. Temperatures rose, breath shortened, finally I got up and said to Rejina,

"seriously I'd rather sit and eat on the pavement. I can't stand it" escaping outside.

Fortunately a couple outside were just about to leave. Clutching a couple of cold beers bought at the supermarket opposite, we sat, finally relaxing.

Suddenly the chef tumbled out of the door as did some other guests, red-faced, fanning themselves, clearly overheating.

"The fan's blown a fuse!"shouted the owner Raj.

The chef sat on the bonnet of a car, smoking, trying to summon up courage to re-enter the furnace of a kitchen.

"That's my cousin" said Raj.

As locals walked by, they tapped his hand, clapped his shoulder, yelled hi from across the road. Everybody knew him. Hot Stuff has been there 25 years, with his mum behind the stove at the beginning.

"We were going ten years before Time Out did a review. Then it exploded. Everyone came. The F word are coming down soon."

Food started to emerge from the kitchen, delicate apricot hued potato bhajis, soft and spicy in the centre, crispy on the outside, with mango chutney.

Then a plate of paratha, flaky and oily, a dish of aloo and aubergine, slick and fresh, a bean curry, like an Indian take on refried beans, a tangy squash curry, real pilao rice...

"Is that pilao?" I asked Raj.

"Yes"

"But it's not acid yellow, red and green?"

"This is the real pilao rice" stated Raj.

It was buttery and fluffy.

I ordered some raitha, which had mint, tomatoes and cucumber, just what you need on a summer's day.

We talked about blogging, twitter and the iphone. Raj handed me his iphone to set up a Twitter account but was called into the kitchen. While I was attempting this, it rang, I answered.

"Yo!" a moody voice called, completely unfazed by the fact that a strange woman was answering "I want chicken"

"Who is it?"

"It's Senz. I'll be there in five minutes for my chicken"

This is the most casual takeaway service in the world. Raj, returning, nodded, shouted into the interior, "chicken for Senz". Again he knew everybody, all his customers, by name.

"In Kenya, where I come from, people just drive up in their cars, grab their dinner and eat it in their car"

"What are your hours here?" I ask

"Six days a week. Dinner is two sittings, seven and nine. It's hard work you know. Only Sunday off. That's why the wife left. No time for her" he confesses.

"What's the most important quality you need to run a restaurant?" I probe

"To be here. To turn up!" laughs Raj "No, mostly you just need to like people"

Hot Stuff, 19 Wilcox Road, Vauxhall, London, SW8 (020 7720 1480)

Saturday in the city

Francesco Mazzei

Gal Zohar on the right teaching, Dino of Gastro1 in the middle, and future gourmand on the left.

Teaching how to plate up and garnish...

My fresh pasta with mushrooms and truffles, you could smell the forest..

Teenagers drinking: I think youngsters develop a healthier attitude to alcohol if they are given a little wine with food, making it a moderate balanced part of your diet

I was invited to go to L'Anima in the city where Francesco Mazzei was giving a cooking class to teenagers. I'll take any opportunity to learn more about cooking and having a teen myself, it was an offer I could not refuse. It started at 11am. It being a Saturday I decided to drive down. No problem, I thought, it'll be easy to park. How wrong could I be? It was so hard to access, so many streets are blocked off. Most of the parking machines don't work and besides it costs £4 an hour to park although it's free after 1.30pm. I literally spent an hour and a half, on the verge of tears, trying to find the place and park. Eventually I found a street round the back of Spitalfields where I could park all day for free on a Saturday.

However this meant that I missed the cooking bit. I arrived just as Gal Zohar @zoharwine, L'Anima's sommelier took the group of 14 year olds, a birthday treat, to the wine room. He explained wines simply to the group, encouraging them to describe the 'bouquet'. I was impressed by the freshness of their palates.

He started with Prosecco:

"What do you smell?"

The kids were hesitant at first...

"Say what you like, what first comes to mind" encourages Gal "don't be afraid of saying something stupid"

"Apple" shouted one.

"Sherbet"

"Grape" to laughter.

"Well done" said Gal. "Now lets try a Pinot Grigio rose."

This precocious set of youngsters knew Pinot Grigio...however this one was unusual being 'Ramato', going a copper colour when the grapes are very ripe.

Next a couple of reds, which the teenagers enjoyed less, the taste probably too heavy for their young palates finishing with a dessert wine which they all loved.

Looking around the 'caveau' the brother of the birthday girl asked "Which is the most expensive wine you have here?"

"£745" replied Gal "for a Chateau Latour 1995."

"How many have you sold?" asked this kid, a future food journalist in the making.

"Four since we opened"

"How long have you been open?" I asked.

"A year".

Of course, that is how long the recession has been going on, I imagine a few years previously, bottles that price were flying out of restaurants in the city as bankers lived it up. In fact forget the FT index, just ring up City restaurants and ask how many bottles of their top wine/champagne have been sold to get an idea of how well the economy is doing.

Afterwards we all sat down to enjoy the lunch prepared by the teenagers with the help of Francesco. We started with aubergine parmesan, cooked simply with tomato, basil, mozzarella, aubergines fried in flour and parmesan. Francesco told me his mother puts tons of ingredients into her version: eggs, dumplings, it ends up about a foot thick. Melanzane Parmigiana is one of my favourite dishes, it was beautifully cooked.

I particularly love the bread at L'Anima; the sourdough is the best I've eaten in a while.

Next the others had Fettuccini Bolognese while I, as a vegetarian, had an amazing treat: fresh pasta, made by the kids, with champignons du bois and tons of shavings of fresh truffle. Ha! Sometimes it pays to be a veggie...I felt the envious looks and shared it around with Dino, Gastro1 and the birthday girl's parents. Dino had just come back from Italy, he's half Italian, and brought a couple of excellent artisanal Parmesan cheeses for Francesco to try. For a main course I was served fresh salmon with salsa verde while the carnivores ate chicken (I think). It was a lovely family atmosphere, the type that Italians specialise in, and Francesco invested so much time talking to the kids, giving them encouragement to cook, taste, smell, experience food.

We finished with tiramisu and coffee. I felt privileged to attend especially as my own teenager is away in France and I miss her so much. It's no doubt a taste of the empty nest syndrome that I'm due to experience in the next few years and I'm not looking forward to it. It's particularly anxiety producing for me as I am a single parent. But you've got to let them go haven't you? All part of parenting...

So, alone in the city, I wandered around Spitalfields, it's all so posh nowadays. I chanced upon Teasmiths tea shop. I love tea far more than coffee (sorry Fat Les) and would like to see a proliferation of tea shops grow in the same way that coffee shop culture has boomed in the last decade. However just as the price of a cup of coffee has become ridiculous, often for very poor quality (Starbucks), Teasmiths selection were shockingly expensive. A basic cup of tea costs £3.50p, going up to £15. Yes! This is not a misprint! Fifteen quid for a cuppa! Granted, it's some sort of rare tea, no doubt passed through the gut of grass-fed hand-massaged bison, with each leaf individually dried on a copper altar of a cult religion and picked by pygmies up a hillside somewhere, but that's still quite a lot of dosh.

The girls in this shop were lovely; I said to them I'll put myself in your hands, I don't recognise most of these teas. They gave me a black tea, partially oxidised called Oriental Beauty. Normally this costs £12 for a cup but you get three infusions, meaning you can used the same dose of leaf for three teensy pots. Each one will taste different, it was explained. Fortunately they only charged me £3.50p. It was fascinating watching them serve it, an awful lot of pouring back and forth between different porcelain containers. But in the end I couldn't honestly say it tasted better than builder's tea. By the third infusion it was very tannin which as a Southerner, liking pissy weak tea, I wasn't too keen on. They managed to persuade me to have it without milk however. Seeing my disappointment, the girls gave me some white tea for free, just to try. This was much nicer, light and delicate in flavour. I know what I will order next time. Much as I celebrate tea and would like to learn more, I do wonder if in these recessionary times, small Japanese style pots of tea at those prices will do well.

White tea on the left, black on the right.

Arbutus

Close up of the risotto

The moment....

Apparently this is pigs trotters..where are the claws?

Fibroids

Ile flottante

Trifle

When we entered Arbutus there was a funny smell that I couldn't recognize. We hadn't booked so we were sat at the bar.

I've never been to a Michelin-starred restaurant before, Arbutus has one star. I was excited. Most reviews by vegetarians are of vegetarian restaurants. But vegetarians often have 'normal' friends, and we eat out with them. The reality for most vegetarians is that they are obliged to eat in non-vegetarian restaurants. So I do reviews of meat restaurants and let you know if a vegetarian can eat well and feel comfortable there.

Arbutus does have a couple of salads for veggies in the starters and a risotto dish in the mains but fundamentally this is a meat eaters restaurant.

I fully realised this when my friend Fat Les got his main course of tripe with pigs trotters. When they lifted the lid of the little copper pan, a really intense smell escaped, the same smell that I noticed on the way in. The odour of tripe is a mix of sweaty cheese, body odour and dead flesh. I almost heaved on the spot. It's overwhelming. You could see little pieces of skin, stuffed intestine and chopped pig's foot.

I had really bad fibroids a few years ago, I had surgery to remove them. They caused me years of pain, so huge that I couldn't even lie flat on my front. As soon as I woke from the anaesthesia I asked to see them. The doctor brought them in a bucket. The fibroids were huge, one had a stalk, like a massive flesh coloured cherry. Another was cut open. The inside looked exactly like Les' dish of intestines.

I'm normally pretty cool about carnivore habits but tripe is a step too far...

The thing I liked about Arbutus was that they had a carafe of wine for £5. Incredibly reasonable and true to chef Anthony Demetre's French bistro leanings.

For starters I had a goats cheese and watermelon salad with purslane, a succulent leaf which I've never had before, some broad beans and viola flowers. Very nice, an unusual combination of flavours. But £9... for a salad...

Mains was a spring vegetable risotto with soft herbs. There was no other option for me. The risotto was very green with broad beans (again), courgettes and spring onions, soft herbs is a little dish of parsley etc. It was well cooked but nothing special. I asked for extra Parmesan to give it kick.

Puddings: I had the iles flottantes with pink pralines. It was one large ile flottante, like a very soft meringue, in a pool of creme anglaise. Fat Les had trifle.

Both were nice competent bistro food but no wow factor.

I got talking to our neighbours at the bar. You see, even when I'm not at a home restaurant I start talking to other people in restaurants whether they like it or not.

One of the guys was a barrister, the other was an undertaker. They come regularly to Arbutus, they really like the food.

For a Michelin star restaurant it's not outrageously expensive but I wouldn't go back. The food was good but it's not a restaurant for vegetarians. You can tell the chef's heart is not in it. In fact he'd probably prefer it if there was a heart in it.

Arbutus

63-64 Frith StreetW1D 3JW
Tel:	020 7734 4545
Email:	info@arbutusrestaurant.co.uk