I should Cocoro

Pokémonimania, or whatever the fuck we should call the phenomenon, doesn't really interest me. I wasn't into it the first time around, and I have so much of a 'collector' mindset that if I ever started trying to 'catch em all' I'd literally be unable to stop until I did. And I've got better things to collect, like beers.

What this fad does afford me, however, is a rather tenuous angle with which to introduce a blog. Take that, Pikachu! I'm the one exploiting you!

Anyway, I've never been to Japan, and could be completely and utterly wrong, but my view of Japanese culture is that it's more insanely polarised than Brexit Britain.

On one hand you have a younger generation that is creative, exciting and spontaneous, leading the world in innovation, technology and brightly-lit things, and then behind the scenes there is an older Japan with very conservative values - family-oriented with a stereotypically strong work ethic. Quite the contradiction.

The miracle that didn't happen

I'm not exactly an investigative journalist, am I?

Too lazy. Too languid. Probably too self-absorbed (or at least, too absorbed in the stuff I like and a reality with which I'm comfortable).

But since I've been doing the 5:2 diet I've heard a fair few whispers about these 'ere new-fangled 'Miracle noodles', and so a little investigating really had to be done.

Just a teensy bit, mind. Basically just trying the product and then writing about how amazingly great / shittingly bad / soul-numbingly indifferent it is. (It's the middle one.)

After all, I'll try pretty much anything once. I've eaten alligator... ants... silica gel... a meal in Spaghetti House...

Do they have Vanuatuan takeaways in El Salvador?

I remarked the other day that it was almost impossible to find food that identified as 'United Arab Emiratean' in Dubai. (Which is in the United Arab Emirates if you needed reminding!)

This got me thinking.

Think, think, think went my brain, like some sort of vast, organic thinking machine.

And I came to the conclusion that this criticism is possibly a bit harsh, if only because the UAE is far from alone in having a dismally flaccid presence in the World League of Food.

Want to know what I'm banging on about? Hold tight for some Gastro-geopolitical discourse.

Reasons to be cheerful

• Greggs' Helen didn't win The Apprentice and can go back to being a PA to a rubbish pie magnate
• The food at the Lambeth Country Show set new standards for International eclecticness, and
• The beer list for the American cask ale bar at GBBF has been released and it's fucking awesome. And only two weeks away. The GBBF is my favourite event of the beer year, and there will of course be a live(ish) Ben Viveur report comin' atcha from Earl's Court on the opening night, if I'm still standing after drinking 'Palate Wrecker Double IPA' (9.5% ABV!) or 'Brewmaster Flash and the Furious Five Hops' (at a mere 8% a drink suitable only for girls and gays).

Can't. Fucking. Wait.

The good, the bad and the Unagi

‘I look down on him because I am upper class’; ‘I look up to him because he is upper class, but I look down on him because he is lower class. I am middle class’; ‘I know my place’.


These old lines seem rather dated now, and the sketch has fallen out of favour, primarily due to our perceptions of any implicit class system in our self-identity changing drastically over the last 45 years, and also because the visual effectiveness of the skit relies on deploying a trio of actors who just happen to be as significantly diverse in stature as Cleese, Barker and Corbett. Which probably is a solicitors firm somewhere.

Class-ic Comedy?

Anyway, the demise of British class identity aside, the sketch does hint at one of the great truths of life – the rule of three. That is to say that a substantial number of different things can be broadly broken down into three varieties – one good, one averagey, and one that’s just a bit underwhelming, or maybe even abject shite.

Kinda like how the Ford Capri existed in a sluggish 1.3 litre entry-level variant that flattered to deceive, a perfectly respectable 2 litre Ghia, and the big fuck-off 3 litre V6 what The Professionals done drove around in. And John Cleese’s character from that sketch, presumably.

If these three characters were alive and real and happened to be working in Canary Wharf today… stay with me on this one please… if they were real in the here and now and fancied some contemporary Oriental fusion food for lunch today, where would they go to eat?