Cafe Rouge

Another day of staycation, and as we had been to the exhibition of funerary decorations at the Korean Cultural Centre at the top of Northumberland Avenue (well worth a visit before September), Cafe Rouge at the top of Villiers Street was a reasonable choice.
I have been to CR many times, and it represents predictable eating, sometimes with French flair. They all look pretty much the same as a mock French Bistro. I tried the set lunch at £8.95 for two courses.
I tried to check on line for exactly what I had, but what is on their website does not match.

I had a somewhat strange meal of mushrooms followed by mushroom. The starter as shown above is a sauteed mushroom in a light sauce with excellent French bread. This was followed by linguine with mushroom (not very French). The linguine dish was a trifle bland, but both dishes scored an 8 on the CHOF scale. Ruth had the Salmon fishcakes with chips, which was deemed to be excellent.
I came away with the feeling that I might have been better served by the main menu, and that having opted for the set lunch, I got something more suited to English taste. Given that London is awash with international olympic visitors, this may be what is being sought. I am pleased to see that unlike some cities, the Olympics have not been a reason to escalate prices noticeably. Others may think differently.
With one beer and a coffee, the bill came to £25 without service. I just had it in my head that it might be a bit more French, and I guess I should have gone for the main menu which looked a bit more promising. However at the price, it is difficult to complain. It made a change from sandwiches.

Angelo's

28th July.
Last weekend, we went for an unscheduled visit to Al Fresco, and this weekend in a short lived escape from curry, I booked Angelo's. They do not have a web site, but the information on TripAdvisor is sufficient:http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g186338-d2363686-Reviews-Angelo_s_Italian_Eating_Place-London_England.html

This is another local place for local people, and contrasts starkly with the Al Fresco in most ways. No photo's as I did not have a camera, and my phone battery was dead, but my description should help.
It is a small place on the High Road in Whetstone, in a small parade of shops/businesses. It attracts locals of a slightly less flashy nature than Al Fresco. The front of house is run by the lady of the house, and those on tripadvisor seem to know her better as Carmela. She knows us by sight, but she greets everyone as a long lost friend, and lets you understand that this is personal. It is a family run business, and they used to have a place in North Finchley, but this more out of the way place is busy. In fact I have tried to get a table for two here on a Saturday night as a same day booking many times and failed. You have to book in advance for the weekend, as it is small (holds about 25-30 tops), and they don't seem to be in the business of extracting as many covers as possible. I probably got in because it is the start of the summer holidays, and the first full day of the Olympics where the Team GB hubris is starting to disintegrate, but no one knew that the day before.
The food is typical old fashioned Italian with lots of veal, and other favourites.
I had the stracciatella soup (which is a Roman egg drop soup, and you don't find it everywhere) followed by calves liver. Ruth had a prawn cocktail followed by Veal in a cream and mushroom sauce.
To my way of thinking the soup is tasty, unusual because of the added egg and Parmesan at the last moment.
My liver was tender and tasty and was accompanied by sauteed courgettes and potatoes (possibly a little too greasy for my taste). Ruth said her cocktail was good, and I tasted her veal which was soft and cooked to just the right amount. We finished off with a shared pannacotta with blackcurrant dressing, which was very rich. The meal was accompanied by a bottle of pink pinot grigio.
The whole meal scored a 10/10 on the CHOF scale, meaning it was served hot, and was sufficiently hot that one had a wait a minute to eat it. 9 is as hot as one would want to eat something.
This is not a fine dining experience, and apparently the place operates as a cafe during the day, but it is a friendly honest place and we have found that the food is consistently good. The place is basic in appearance with a few pictures on the walls, a list of daily specials, and a cafe like work serving counter. It is not as noisy as many modern Italian (and other) eating places, and we have found it a good place to dine in company. Portions are big, and frankly we should not have even shared a dessert. Pricing is average, and the bill was almost exactly the same as the similar meal at Al Fresco (a shade under £60). The difference was that we came out of there with a feeling that our presence had been welcomed, and we were expected to return. Many of the people in there were regulars. It is interesting that even in these times of austerity, there is no shortage of people eating out in London, and you still need to book on a Saturday night.

Eat

23rd July. Staycation. I have some leave to use up, and luckily today is a good day to do it. Visited the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy and the museum/legacy collection of the Association of Anaesthetists. Late lunch at Eat on Regent's Street on the way back to the tube. At 1430 Eat is pretty much empty, and their shelves of Sandwiches the same. They say that they make fresh each day, so the shelves may be sold out. Ruth had a chicken and mayo and I decided to be different and tried their retro chicken curry soup. The sandwich was judged average (Pret seems to be the winner at the moment) and the soup was hot (8 on the CHOF scale) and spicy, but seem to have its legacy in a tube of curry powder rather than original taste. Perhaps that is what they mean by retro. This is what their web site says: 'Retro Chicken Curry
It's curry sauce exactly as you remember it...cooked with chicken and peas to make a mildly warm soup.' 
Well, that is probably not far from the truth, but in temperature it was actually hot, and in spiciness I would put in in mulligatawny but not Madras. I think it was fair value for money, and 2 coffees, a sandwich and the soup cost £9.30. I will probably use them again, but Pret is winning the battle of the light lunch at the moment. Service was good, and the staff greeting was appreciated.

Al Fresco

After the British Museum we managed to get a table at Al Fresco in Whetstone. http://www.alfresco-restaurant.co.uk/ . A local Italian Restaurant for local people. Have not been there for years, as our last experience was less than satisfactory.
This place is amazingly popular and always has been, but we think we got a table at little notice as we agreed to come at 7 pm, and they have extended so much at the back and front that they say on their website that they can accommodate 100 people. Looked like more to me.
No pictures this time.
Suffice it to say that the food we had was excellent and hot. I had a pasta starter and veal in a mushroom sauce for main. Can not fault this.

We found we remembered why we did not frequent this restaurant. With a Saturday night crowd, it is very noisy, being mainly made of hard surfaces and bare tables well packed together, but this is a common thing. The staff are not exactly welcoming, and whilst not unhelpful, it is service with a surl. We simply did not feel as welcome as we do in other establishments, and the head honcho seemed sad to have a full house.
It depends what you want: the prices are reasonable, and the food was excellent, but it is not a place for a quiet meal out.

British Museum Cafe

21st July.
To the British Museum for the Shakespeare exhibition. Surprisingly entertaining. A snack in their courtyard cafe. This has changed franchise since we were last there, and is now run by Benugo, a name with which I am unfamiliar. Apparently they took over on 9th May after a competitive tender, and they operate in other museums. Seemingly a retrograde step, as the choice is less and the prices have gone up. I guess that is how they won the tender.

One sandwich, a piece of cake and two coffees came to £9.23 after 10% member's discount. The sandwich (£3.25) was fresh, and fairly well filled with tasty filling, but a similar sandwich at Pret (see previous comment) cost half the price. Honey and oat cake was a little dry and crumbly - maybe it had been out too long. If you have a family, this would be a big hit. As the museum is largely full of tourists, no one cares, but most of them are taking advantage of the BM being a cheap day out. 

This is simply too expensive for simple fare which can be purchased outside for much less. No wonder there were lots of free seats.

Devonshire Arms

19th and 20th July
To Bolton Abbey to the country house hotel that is The Devonshire Arms. A strange choice for a business meeting, but at least no one will bunk off. The place is full of walkers of a certain age, and a lot of them seem to have brought their dogs with them. If you don't like dogs, then this place is not for you. The hotel has a Michelin starred restaurant (which I did not really get chance to try) and lots of rosettes.
Nice touch is fresh milk available in rooms for coffee.
Dinner in private dining was a pate with a mustard crust, then lamb followed by a panacotta.

The quality of food was excellent, and adequately hot. The appearance is clearly of paramount importance to the chefs, as we discovered at breakfast, and when I ordered scrambled eggs, sausage and mushroom, this is what arrived:

The toast was my addition. Full English Breakfast (FEB) is a pleasure, because I don't do it at home. The best FEB I have had at a hotel in recent times was at the Langham in London, and the best breakfast ever was at the Westin Hotel in Taipei.
See my movie of the Taipei breakfast on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcPg1aVYYSo&feature=g-upl
Working lunch was a buffet:

What you cannot see is the excellent beef stroganoff.
So, excellent quality food throughout with high attention to presentation. If you are in the area (unlikely) it is definitely worth a visit, or if you want a small business meeting this is an unusual venue if you don't mind the dogs.

OK Diners

19th. July. En Route to Bolton Priory.

Stopped at the OK Diner in Carlton-on-Trent on the A1M for lunch. The placed looked vaguely familiar inside, and I recognised it as a remodelled Little Chef which had been a convenient toileting stop. There are a few Ok diners in the UK now, and they seek to model themselves on 1950's American diners of the 1950's. Check out their website at http://www.okdiners.com/  . Basically the website tells you that you will have an American diner experience.
The appearance is an immediate fit to expectations, and the fitting are like the films and media, a spatting of typical road signs, and there is also 1950's rock music as a background.

Now, over the past 30 years, I have eaten at many American Diners in the US ranging from roadside stops, to big city breakfast type diners, and the American experience in OK diners stops at the appearance. The food is definitely British, and the quality and quantity and pricing bear little relationship to the American experience. As I did not want a burger or hot dog or hot wings, I ordered the breakfast bagel with scrambled eggs and smoked salmon at £5.95 (I have never paid that much for much more in US breakfast outlets even in dollars. In fact I have never spent more than $5 per person in a diner (based on 2012 prices) and have usually staggered out full enough to not need lunch.

As you can probably tell from the picture, the egg was dry and somewhat overdone. I suspect a microwave egg here. The bagel was dry and no butter was offered (you usually get sides of butter and jelly in American American diners) and the portion size was indifferent. A very un-American experience at UK motorway prices. The plethora of positive comments on the website suggests a consensus view that does not match mine. The service was OK, but the thing is, if the staff don't have American accents, then it just does not feel right to be addressed by the local Lincolnshire voices. Food was therefore mod satis but only just, and service was ok, but no better. The moral of this story is 'I would rather starve than eat at motorway stops'.
Gets a 7 on the CHOF scale.

Tanks and then Morocco

Wed 17th July
To the members preview of the Tanks exhibition at the Tate Modern. We have members tickets, and I had a day off work. The tanks are 'art areas' created out of the old oil tanks of the power station that was the Tate Modern. Not a lot to see, and at the moment, frankly underwhelming. The quilt was there.
On to a very late lunch at Del Aziz http://www.delaziz.co.uk/locations.php which is just at the side of the Tate and stays open all day, serving lunch until 5pm. We have eaten there before for dinner, but the set price lunch seems a good choice.
I had ‘Harira’ Moroccan vegetable soup  ( Morocco’s famous tomato and lentil soup. It’s fragrantly seasoned with ginger, pepper, and cinnamon, and also boasts a robust quantity of fresh herbs: cilantro, parsley, celery and onion. Apparently some recipes call for lamb, but this was sold as suitable for vegetarians) followed by Merguez sausages (Grilled Moroccan spiced lamb sausage). There is a fair choice for lunch and an a la carte choice but at £12.50, the lunch is a good choice. The restaurant was not busy at 1500 when we went, but can get busy in the evenings.

It is an atmospheric venue, and the staff were friendly, if not totally efficient. For some reason despite ordering for three, only two meals were delivered. I took the hit, but my main dish was brought alarmingly quickly (well, I suppose they had enough time to grill the sausages). This had a bonus effect, as it was freshly cooked and hot, scoring an exemplary 9.5 on the CHOF scale. Quantities were generous, and even I was defeated after the plate of soup.

Verdict: tried and tested before, and no disappointment on this visit. By the way, we had a small baby (and my daughter) with us, and at that time of day, the restaurant made no fuss about such tings

Pret

Saturday 14th July.
A trip into central London to visit the exhibitions by Grayson Perry and Henry Moore and another small one in Southwark.
Stopped for lunch at Pret a Manger near the Tate Modern, on Southwark Road. We quite often consume sandwiches and coffee on our days out in London, and Pret is a favoured brand as is Eat, Tend to avoid Starbucks. The sandwiches at Pret and deemed to be well filled. Coffee is ok. Unlike some of the other coffee shops, Pret have gone the way of offering only one size of coffee, but in two strengths. In addition the choice is more limited than some shops, as I suppose, as the name suggests, they are more interested in the food element.

A sandwich is too frequently the offer of least complexity. The Pret sandwiches taste fresh, and have lots of stuff inside. The cost is reasonable, with a simple egg mayo costing £1.50, and say a smoked salmon costing 2.99. I think this is fair compared to other catering outlets. Lunch of two sandwiches and two coffees set me back £9.30, and included a  civilised place to sit (the branch down there was pretty quiet on a Saturday), and sanitary toilets.  Pret tell their customers that at the end of the business day, their surplus food is offered to the needy at hostels and the suchlike. Lucky them.

Honiton: Boston Tea Party and Combe House Hotel

12th and 13th July.Off to an advisory board in Combe House Hotel near Honiton in Devon. Dreadful drive in the monsoon.
Stopped for a very late lunch in Honiton, well past lunch time, and came across the Boston Tea Party.
http://www.bostonteaparty.co.uk/cafe/honiton
Apparently there are several branches of the same in that part of the country. Being between meals I opted for the all day breakfast, and chose Baked Eggs and Chorizo Sausage. This is a dish of local chorizo, potato, an egg and yoghourt  with some bread:

I have to say this was a superlative dish, and I thoroughly recommend it. It also scored a 9.5 on the CHOF scale, with 10 being too hot to eat. (The yoghourt cooled it a little) Have a look at their menu. Pity there are none in London, but they depend on local produce.
Then on to the Combe House Hotel. This is a country house hotel in the middle of nowhere with 15 rooms and excellent food and staff. Our dinner organised by the facilitator was a buffet served in the Georgian Kitchen and taken into an informal area in the bar.

There was a choice of dishes, and I opted for beef:

You may detect the steam coming off the beef, but once I had taken my plate back to a table and sorted myself out, it had lost some of its CHOF points. This is a perennial problem with buffet food, and there is rarely an establishment that can figure out a way of serving any kind of buffet food really hot. However, the quality was excellent. I went back for a second helping, and had a salmon en croute which looked very attractive, but the loss of temperature, and it somewhat uberfishy taste left me a little underwhelmed.

Breakfast was excellent, and alongside an excellent fresh food salad with yoghourt, I also tried the scrambled egg with smoked salmon, which I rated highly.
The highlight was lunch, and I chose guinea fowl. This was truly excellent and scored highly on every count. Well cooked and presented, tasty and hot. Prior to that was an amuse bouche combination of smoked salmon with salmon caviar served on spoons that looked as if Uri Geller had been a guest in the hotel recently and a sort of black biscuit (?olive) with goats' cheese.

This was followed by some excellent local cheeses. The hotel uses a lot of local produce and the quality of all the food served was excellent.

I would recommend anyone to stay at this hotel, but in the rain, there is not a lot to do, and it is a short drive back to Honiton. Not a townie's hotel. Quite expensive. Check out the booking sites. Much fuss made of Arab Stallions in neighbouring fields. Not being a horsey person, this went straight over my head, but many thought otherwise. It must be the sort of thing that interests country folk. The food was great and the rooms comfortable if a little rustic.

A varied week of eating experiences

Slightly out of sync, because this was consumed a couple of weeks ago, but the rotisserie chickens from Costco under the Kirkland branch are truly excellent. They are hot (a 9 on the CHOF scale), fleshy and tasty. Compared to other supermarket rotisserie chickens they are in a league above, and a bargain at £3.99. Worth joining  Costco for this. I would also recommend their fresh salmon

Where I work is devoid of catering, and when we bring in visitors over lunch, we are forced to bring in sandwich platters. Now, over the three years we have been in our new premises, we have tried a variety of different outside caterers for the provision of working lunches. In my opinion they are universally indifferent. and I believe that when we start with a company they send in the 'new customers only' platter, which then degrades with repeat orders. Some of the choices are bizarre, and there is a ubiquitous habit of sending lots of Tuna and Mayo sandwiches which no one will touch. At the moment we seem to have found a supply from Waitrose, and I believe this is a Waitrose lunch platter. Not bad. 0 on the CHOF scale, but variety and decent bread. I try to find reasons to not order in the lunches, but there is little choice. So if anyone thinks they can provide excellent working lunches in the Dartford area, please leave me a note.

11th July

I get my internet from BT. This has not always been a happy arrangement, and in Spring, I had a big outage. It was so big, that I contacted the CEO of BT (I'm a shareholder of minuscule proportions). So I decided to go to the AGM to make sure he knew my face. The AGM was held in the old Billingsgate market in city of London. You probably know that one of the reasons the elderly go to AGM's is for the free refreshments. This is what you are offered:

Sandwiches if you had not worked it out. Many did not stay until the end of the meeting, and by the time I got into the lunch queue the smoked salmon was all gone (no surprise there), so I opted for the egg.and the lower picture is what you get at a shareholder meeting. It is amazingly similar to what I got on the Virgin train, and the brown bag lunch is now a global commodity. It obviously scores a 0 on the CHOF scale,and was adequate but no more.It was said in the meeting that the board of directors would be served the same sandwiches and I can only hope they did not put the salmon aside for them.

Tonight I went to a meeting where tapas was provided.from the local tapas restaurant in Barnet:

http://www.riojayole.co.uk/ . I have to say I have never eaten in the restaurant, and will probably try it.

This is a selection of what was served.

It actually looks pretty good. For me tapas never tastes as good as it does in the heat of Spain, and on a wet Wednesday night, it lost some of its charisma. The food is tasty, but because it was laid out in advance, I cannot give it a score on the CHOF scale. However, in Spain hot food appears to be a criminal offence, so it may be perfectly authentic. I will report back when the restaurant proper is tried, but the signs are good.

KFC: a truly global brand

The last time I ate KFC, it was at a service area near Basildon, during a huge snow fall, and we stopped to break a difficult journey. The first time was when I was a student in the early 1970's when fried chicken was not as ubiquitous. I am a believer in KFC, in whatever incarnation it comes in. It used to be simply Kentucky Fried Chicken, but layers of M and A activity and numerous owners have changed the branding. The menu has changed to reflect the times, but being old school, I still regard it as fried chicken.
In these days of austerity, it have acquired a new status of being something affordable. Whilst the well to do will go and sit down in Nando's, for a cheaper fix, the Colonel will do the trick.
The old thing was the secret mix of herbs and spices that were supposed to give the product its unique flavour. I suspect that this has changed over the years, and the internet confirms that to keep the price down, the flavour is more dilute. The secret is now not so secret, and the suggested make up is:

This is obviously a best guess, but seems to be sort of right according to consensus.
In my opinion, KFC chicken (not speaking about the other variants or the side dishes) represent a decent product sold at reasonable price: last night is was possible to buy food for four (providing they are not greedy) i.e. 8 pieces of chicken and four portions of fries for around £11. This is good value, and represents a cheap and very convenient way of shoveling calories in. This appears to be a global phenomenon, and one thing I learned when I went to Australia in 2005 was that one thing Aboriginals have taken to is that KFC is cheap food. Some anthrosocioligists are concerned that their diet should have turned so radically to calories dominated by fats.
So, how many calories are there in KFC. Another internet resource suggests the following:

Mains

.	Calories	Sugars	Fat	Saturates	Salt
Crispy strips*	112	0.2g	5.4g	1.3g	1.3g
Popcorn chicken (L)	477	0.7g	28.8g	5.8g	3.5g
Popcorn chicken (R)	294	0.4g	17.8g	3.6g	2.3g
Fillet burger (R)	441	5.4g	15.6g	3.4g	2.8g
Tower zinger burger	668	9g	33.3g	6g	4.3g
Zinger burger (R)	481	5.4g	20.8g	2.3g	2.8g
Tower burger (R)	628	9.2g	28.2g	7.1g	4.3g
Hot wings*	93	0.1g	6.4g	1.4g	0.5g
Original recipe chicken (drumstick)	153	0.2g	9g	2g	1.1g
Original recipe chicken (breast)	267	0.5g	12.5g	2.9g	1.4g
Original recipe chicken (drumstick)	153	0.2g	9g	2g	1.1g
Brazer salad	110	2.2g	1.4g	0.5g	0.5g
Brazer Twister	377	3.4g	14.4g	4g	0.9g
Brazer Burger	430	38.3g	25.3g	5.8g	1.1g

·         per item (eg. wing/strip etc)

Best main: Brazer Salad
Worst main:Tower zinger burger

Sides

.	Calories	Sugars	Fat	Saturates	Salt
Coleslaw (R)	134	7.1g	11.2g	0.9g	0.5g
Coleslaw (L)	268	14.2g	22.4g	1.8g	1.3g
Corn cobette	145	1.7g	8.7g	1.3g	Trace
Fries (R)	275	0.4g	13.2g	2.9g	Trace
Fries (L)	377	0.6g	19.4g	4.3g	Trace

Best side: Regular coleslaw BUT it has a very high sugar content
Worst side: Large fries BUT it has low salt and sugar

Given that an average british adult male should have about 2500 Calories, it would seem that two portions of chicken and a portion of fries would offer about 750 with no extras. So in moderation, you can see is ranks with other fried/fat containing take-aways but there is a lot of fat there..

There is much information about the KFC company and its history, and the article on wikipedia is as good as any http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KFC . There are explanation of how the colonel got his title which was metaphorical rather than military. There is very little independent information about KFC. Most of it comes from the company, and clearly they are telling the story that is best for them. Conversely, there is little objective critical information.

For me one of things is where KFC fits into the social hierarchy of food. A visit to a branch tells you that very quickly. By and large, they are not the sort of places that middle England wants to hang around for too long. Similarly the employees are part of that structure. This is not a village tea shop. Looking around a KFC it is clear that the company wants to do the best by everyone, but at the end of the day, those at the bottom end of the team may not get the best of deals initially. However, there does appear to be a career structure, but I have never met anyone who has climbed it. Similarly the business is run as a franchise.There is very little easily obtainable information about how to get and run a franchise, and what sort of profits a franchise owner would make. However, the outlets have a remarkable resilience, and unlike some independent food outlets, they seem to stick. You know where you are.

So KFC gets my vote as good value food, and if you are lucky not bad on the CHOF scale.