The accidental vegan

Sometimes strange things occur accidentally. 

The other night I cooked a meal that was technically vegan - without even realising it!

There's no way I'd have done this deliberately, unless it was for some sort of project or challenge, and I only realised while we were eating it, but, hey-ho, I did my little tiny bit for a cause I don't believe in.

(This isn't a 'Veganascene Conversion' post about how I've seen the error of my ways and am now discovering the joys of plant-based life - sorry-not-sorry to disappoint!)

The best fish and chips in the world?

The aroma hit me as soon as the car door was open. 

Modest, unassuming...

Like a siren's musk, it attracted my senses instantly, wholeheartedly and unreservedly.

Chips. Frying - as our Lord, in His infinite wisdom, undoubtedly intended - in beef dripping. 

I say 'attracted my senses' because it's really more than just an aroma. It gets into your system on another level, possibly even engaging with ones sixth sense. Deep, rich, barely describable umami.

Before anything got to interact with my actual tastebuds, I knew it was going to be totally fucking awesome. The best chippy ever? In the entire world? It might well be.

Burgers in the rain

With the Government 'Eat Out to Help Out' scheme about to come to an end, I wanted to make sure I availed myself of the discount at least once, having been let down in this department by the Real Jerk last week.

So a trip to Bleecker Burger Victoria was very much in order as Bleecker had been marketing themselves on the back of the scheme fairly aggressively on Social Media, and I'd wanted to try their burgers for some time anyway.

So here's a quick-fire review of a pretty decent no-frills burger joint. We haven't done one of them for a while...

Yes, I think they probably know it's Christmas by now

If, like me, you grew up in the 1980s, you probably have a view of Ethiopia that is pretty hard to shake off, defined largely by the media and celebrities of the day.

As impressionable children we witnessed Band Aid, Live Aid, Sport Aid (Remember that one -  'Everybody wants to Run the World'?) and the inaugural Comic Relief. Loads of money raised for a good cause. A cause that was relentlessly branded upon our collective conscience, pretty much all the time. For some years.

Ethiopia was deserts, flies and starving children. Ethiopian food? Well it wasn't anything was it? There was a famine. OK, maybe the diet consisted of the contents of those food packages paid for with the moneys raised by Bob, Midge and Lenny.

And that was the virtually intractable image we all had in our minds. That was Ethiopia.

Why nostalgia ain't what it used to be

We all know that things aren't as good as they used to be. Wagon Wheels have been getting smaller for years and must now be viewed under a microscope. Coca-cola doesn't taste as good as it did when we were hyperactive toddlers. And British Saturday night television was the finest on earth in the days when we still had 'good old-fashioned variety'.

We also 'all know' that this is mostly bollocks. As humans we view the past through nostalgic spectacles so heavily tinted with rose petals that we can't see the newly planted trees for the pile of aged wood. We have a keen sense of nuance and self-awareness, enough to understand things on the second level. We only think that stuff used to be bigger and better.

Or do we?

What if there is a third level of thinking to analyse? What if the revealed truth is that food, drink, entertainment and everything else really can get away with dumbing itself down, because people who are going to complain about it not being as good as it used to be will complain that it's not as good to be whatever happens, and everyone else will think that it probably is just as good as it used to be and we only think it isn't because of all that rose-tinted nostalgia stuff that blinds us. Except that it isn't actually blinding us and stuff really isn't as good as it used to be?

Does this make sense?

Libertarian rantings

January is undoubtedly the favourite time of year for puritans, killjoys, and illiberal scaremongers, all of them seeking to get inside our heads and extract vengeance for any pleasure we might've gleaned from the festive season.

Top of the list is the lowering of the 'recommended drinking limits', which were already impractically low, to the point where no amount of alcohol is now considered safe, and neither men nor women should regularly consume more than 14 units a week. One glass of wine or a pint of weak beer per day, basically.

Government guidelines.  The very phrase makes me reach for a glass. And as usual, the science backing it up is pretty dubious when you actually scrutinise it.

Bodeans, Bodeans, Bodeans, Bodeans, I'm begging of you please do cook me meat!

I wrote the other day about Masterchef contestants not getting much of an opportunity to slow-cook, and it got me thinking:

What would John and Greg make of Bodeans? A place that smokes and slow-braises meat over many, many hours, if not days. If not years.

'You've got one hour and 15 minutes?' I suspect not, somehow.

Flap-Jack-Jock-Beef-Cock

Like 45% of the people in Scotland I was disappointed with the referendum result, even though it panned out exactly as I predicted.

Not because I'm a Nationalistic Scot or have any kind of Nationalistic Scottish interests, but because I care rather more passionately than most about answering the West Lothian Question and the unfairness that is the Barnett Formula. Independence for Scotland would have provided a clean and fair resolution to these issues and left the Jocks to do their own thing without impacting unreasonably on the rest of us.

For that reason I was staunchly and unashamedly in the 'vote YES and FUCK OFF' camp. I'm surprised there weren't more of us really. (Not that we got a vote.)

Utterly Paphotic

Having an e-Passport is great.

It means you can breeze through immigration at Gatwick in no time, whilst pointing and laughing at the suckers in the lengthy queue with their manual passports.

'So long, losers!' you get to say, as you merrily scan your way across the border and into the Arrivals Wetherspoons.

Of course, as the new e-passports are phased in, the balance will shift. Soon we'll start seeing queues, and then they'll be the same length as the non-e queues. One day the last remaining people with old fashioned documents will be having the last laugh when 99% of us are waiting in line to scan.

But for now, it's the golden age of the electonric passport, and I fully intend to savour the schadenfreude.

Capital Breakfasts

You might remember, way, way back at the very dawn of the year, I enjoyed a rather fine breakfast at Duke's Brew and Que and resolved to seek out London's other great breakfasts to see if the Duke could be matched or perhaps even bested...

It went the way of most resolutions made at that time of year, obviously.

Yes, I know. I've let my readers down, I've let myself down, but most of all, I've let breakfast down.

It's the-most-important-meal-of-the-day, so it is, and I've done gone and let it down by utterly failing to stick to my pledge.

Well, until now that is.

Look, I'm not really a morning person. It's a lot of effort getting up and leaving the house before I've even properly woken up. It's hard enough on work days. And I don't even have an appetite until lunchtime usually.

But enough excuses. You've had to wait a long while, so, to celebrate Ben Viveur post No. 150,  here's a double review of the breakfast fayre from two of London's big meaty heavyweights: Simpson's in the Strand and the Hawksmoor Guildhall.

Can silly money buy the best breakfast in London or just the most expensive?

The ultimate Stroganoff

I was saying the other day, following the trip to Moscow, that I can cook a tastier Beef Stroganoff than the rather bland version I found in Russia itself.

Inexcusably boastful, I'm sure, so I wanted to back that up with something concrete. Something on a plate. Something you can actually fucking well eat!

Stroganoff

Now, it's not a dish I've cooked all that often, and my recipe has probably been slightly different each time. But now I've sampled it in Moscow, it's clearly was high time I came up with my definitive 'Strog'.

The influences are myriad, drawing upon research into very old and traditional Russian recipes for the dish, but I've added a wider Eastern European angle through the inclusion of chicken livers.

There's even a hint of the good old curry house about it, as I looked for ways to include tomatoes, which are apparently one of the traditional components, along with the wine and cream.

And so, this is what I've come up with. Enjoy.

You can't overdose on beef, right?

Another day, another great burger...

I'll resist the temptation to make a cheap bus-related pun, but having had my faith in burgers thoroughly restored by Lucky Chip, I've been on something of a beef spree lately.

Like all those dodgy beef products with traces of Horse DNA, I'd probably test positive for beef if I was minced up and flogged on the cannibal market.

But it's a testimony to the great choice of quality burger places we now have in London - something I'd personally longed for for a very, very long time. Probably since my first visit to the USA.

There's Haché, there's MEATliquor, there's Lucky Chip. And there's always somewhere new to get a credible beef fix. For all the horsey furore around bad beef, there's actually never been a better time to eat the good stuff.

Meat Market

One of the perks of working close to Borough Market is that there's no shortage of options when the clock turns lunchtime.

So many eateries, so little time, and fasting two days a week as part of my diet means that it will take me a while to try everywhere - but given my penchant for the market, I was familiar with a fair few places in the area anyway.

I already knew, for example, about the good value lunches at the recently-reopened Brew Wharf, and the stunning Spanish street food at Cafe Brood. And, frankly, an unmanageably huge number of other brilliant places.

What I can't get my head around though is what will happen once the Shard is fully open for business and full of office workers (plus a few residents and hotel guests). How many pubs and restaurants and food stalls will the area need to cope with that lot once they move in?!? 

Who wants pork? Get your hot pork here! £6.50 to you, guv

I guess they'll have to build another, even taller Shard next door to accomodate their eating and drinking requirements...

Talking of big, impressive things, everybody knows that I'm a bit of a sucker for a large hot meat sandwich for my lunch, but it has to be said that I've yet to find somewhere that does this anywhere near as consistently well as Birley Salt Beef in Canary Wharf.
 
There are a couple of contenders in Borough Market which needed checking out, even if it's hard to stand out with so much competition going on in the area.

The unanswered question

Re-reading that article I wrote for a doomed airline, and indeed my first ever foodie blog post reveals a theme. A theme about which I've been jabbering on for many years.

I love pubs and I love burgers.

Or, rather, I love good pubs and I love good burgers.

But there is one question to which I've never really found the answer: Why can't pubs do decent burgers?

Maybe the question is actually why don't pubs do decent burgers, but the underlying point remains.

It should be simple. They should be able to do it. The fact that they can't or don't bothers me. A lot.

See, in the good ol' US of A, any reasonable pub or bar - not even especially good ones - will probably serve you a perfectly good burger and fries for just a few bucks.

Here you can get such a burger in a few dedicated specialist burger restaurants and pop-ups. Byron,  Haché, and the MeatLiquor/wagon/easy chain. And there are several others on my 'to-do' list with burgertastic reputations.

But in our pubs the quality of burgers is pretty lamentable.

BV London Pub of the Year - part two

Visiting lots of pubs and drinking pint after pint of beer can be gruelling work.

Why, oh why did I ever come up with the idea of the Ben Viveur London Pub of the Year? I must have been mad. Or just very, very thirsty.

Oh well, mustn't grumble. Here's the first batch of contenders (apart from the Craft Beer Company, which started this whole silly business, obviously)...

Montaguan Bicenquinquagenary

As many people predicted, England’s strategy of playing for penalties coupled with being quite bad at taking penalties means that we’ll have to wait a while longer for national sporting pride to be restored.

Maybe we'll do better in the Tennis? Or maybe we won't. Andy Murray's first round match at Wimbledon is a ridiculously tough one against Davydenko, and if he gets through that, the giant Croat Ivo Karlovic will likely await him in the second round. Two very strong opponents who in previous Championships would have been amongst the seeds.

So prepare for the crushing disappointment of an early Murray exit. Our best hope of getting a player into the second week might be Laura Robson who won the Jailbait singles a few years ago.

Murray's not even English, anyway.

But one thing we true Englishmen, women and children can – nay, must - celebrate this year is the 250th anniversary of our people inventing the sandwich. Go England! Go John Montagu! Hereditary Peerage is the mother of invention!

I've blogged about sandwiches before, of course, as like many people I often eat them for my lunch, but now there's a (relatively) new sandwich shop in town: 

The Earl of Sandwich on Ludgate Hill looks very nice on the outside, with a fairly classy branding that emphasises the heritage and history of stuffing bread with tasty fillings.

The Duke of Pork (and Beef)

I've been having a tough time lately - mostly work-related stuff, though there is an end in sight, but also my ongoing health issues - and so I frequently need cheering up.

Fortunately I'm quite easy to cheer up. Good food. Good beer. Indulgent treats. (Although these probably don't do anything for the health issues, admittedly - the doctors in their infinite medical wisdom have decided now that my calcium channels need blocking, as well as my ACEs inhibiting!)

So the other night we opted for one such indulgent treat. Several pints of excellent beer (including Arbor 'Goo Goo G'Joob' at a hefty 11%) and a few bags of Pitta Chips at the Craft Beer Company, and then on to Duke's Brew & Que.

Blog-o-nese

Spaghetti Bolognese is boring.

It's the most boring type of pasta, coupled with the most boring type of pasta sauce. 

Boring, boring, boring. Fuck off.

Actually, don't. Because I've been having a lot of thoughts on this subject lately. Sort of.

The Ravensbourne Blandburger

I quite like Antic pubs.

From humble beginnings a few years ago they’ve slowly and quietly encroached on the South London drinking scene, with little fanfare, and have done so by being decent little individual pubs rather than a uniform chain.

They are probably a reminder of what Wetherspoons must have been like during their early years (not so much in their style and ethos, but in the fact that they have a style and ethos, if that makes sense).

In their dimly-lit, cluttery homeliness, Antic pubs are home to vast quantities of second-hand furniture, with old lampshades that look like the ones we had when I was a kid, and comfy, tatty sofas whose cushions once accomodated the tired arses of people now long-dead.

OK, so they’re completely different from Spoons. They have music playing, they don't have a chain newsletter or limited beer list, and they’re bringing bar billiards and jug glasses back into the mainstream.

Plus they always seem to take over existing pubs, whereas Wetherspoons like their shop-, bank- and church-conversions.

But there's a drive to turn each and every pub they own into something better - and they've taken over some right shitholes, like the Royal Albert in New Cross which is fast becoming my local (despite being a long walk away).

While the beaming, avuncular presence of Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin is decidedly visible at all times, Antic head honcho Anthony Thomas prefers to keep a low profile – at least for now - and uses Social Media effectively to build a loyal fan base without 'over-branding'. It's as though every one of his pubs is an individual child of his, free to develop in it's own way and largely do its own thing. And nobody has any idea what his views on the EU might be!

'The Antic Collective', as they call themselves, have brought decent beer back to pubs that had lost their way under previous management, and it’s usually interesting beer too. Some of their pubs might only have three or four real ales on but it’s an ever-changing range, and it’s far better for a pub to have four beers that change every couple of days than ten beers which remain the same ad infinitum, no?

A proper pub indeed!

I’ve also been impressed with their approach to food, having enjoyed a duck egg Welsh rarebit and some fried pigs cheeks in the Royal Albert in New Cross recently.

The menu changes every day and is concise but varied, with about 10 different dishes available, and the quality has always been good with everything seemingly cooked fresh, to order.

So, when we popped into the Ravensbourne Arms in Ladywell the other day for a lunchtime pint of Saltaire Rye Pale and a game of table football (in which I defeated Mrs B-V 11-2) I was intrigued by the Aberdeen Angus Burger on that day's menu.

I'd spent the morning having strange, diagnostic things done to my eyes at the hospital and my vision was a bit blurry, but I can see the word 'burger' from miles away, and my eyesight didn't stop me reading the menu any more than it stopped me winning at table football. Nah nah, na-nah nah!

Beef me up, Scottie

It's eight quid, or nine with the additions of Stilton and bacon which I went for, and for that you get a huge plate of food - more than I could comfortably manage at lunchtime.

There was a veritable mountain of chunky, skin-on wedge-chips which were excellent and nicely seasoned with just the right balance between softness and crunch. These went very well with the pot of house mayo, which has a hint of chilli and garlic.

Also eminantly eatable were the onion rings (although there were only two of these, on the plate - one medium and one large). The batter was thick and unctious, with a flavour of it's own and reminded me of the king prawn/chicken/pork balls you get from Chinese takeaways.

There was also a nicely dressed salad, which I like to have with a burger as it refreshes the palate between big gobs of dripping, cheesy meat.

So far, so calorifically good. But what about the actual burger?

Well, I'm sorry to report that it was the most disappointing thing on the plate. By far.

Actually, I'm not sorry to report this. That's why I spend literally minutes writing this blog, after all!

The patty was big and thick, and cooked medium-ish, with some pinkness and juice. It certainly looked alright on the plate (to my blurry eyes) but where was the flavour?

Appearances can be deceptive...

Seriously, it was blander than watching My Family, with the sound turned down whilst listening to Daniel O'Donnell. While heavily sedated.

Whereas high-end burgers these days often use flavoursome forerib and rump meat, this was definitely assembled from lesser cuts, with too much fat and gristle and an almost absolute lack of beefiness.

Oh dear

I suspect that decades of marketing wank has led consumers to believe that 'Aberdeen Angus' somehow always indicates the highest quality, when in reality it's just a breed of cow. And while I understand why they might do it, people who put the menus together really ought to know better. For fucks sake, guys, please just stop trying to exploit this misleading stereotype, and it might go away in a few years.

Before I get complaints from the Aberdeen Angus marketing board, yes, meat from Angus cattle can be very good indeed, but I'd rather eat the tastiest bits of another breed than the blandest Aberdeenshire has to offer, thank you.

The bun was of the everyday sesame variety, perhaps a little over-toasted, and did nothing to de-blandify the affair.

Worse still, the single rasher of back bacon and tiny quantity of Stilton inside also added remarkably little in the way of taste. It's like they took the least smokey bacon and the mildest Stilton they could find to top off their insipid burger, which is a great shame because the onion rings and chips were excellent.

OK, so compared to a burger at a Wetherspoons pub, or a fast food chain it's a modest improvement, mainly due to the other stuff on the plate, but in 2012 when London diners are used to the standards set by Byron, Haché and MeatLiquor, pub kitchens should at least be raising their game in the burger department.

They could start by researching where the superior burger vendors source their meat and buns and follow suit - if it costs a bit more, then charge us a bit more. Please!

I like Antic pubs for lots of reasons, and maybe one day I'll give the burger a go in another of their pubs, in case this was a one-off.

It reminded me of my experience a few weeks ago at the Cask Pub & Kitchen. Decent pub does decent food, but when it comes to the burger the clock strikes disappointment.

Where to find it

Ravensbourne Arms
323 Lewisham High Street
Ladywell
London 
SE13 6NR (map) 
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But, for the burger:

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Antic pubs offer a changing daily menu and have pubs across London (though concentrated in the SE area)

Cattle of Waterloo - Browns vs Rouge

What do you lie awake at night wondering about?

(If indeed, you lie awake at night wondering about anything at all, obviously)

Perhaps you're a City tosser worrying that the FTSE is losing billions of pence at the expense of the Franc, whatever that means?


Perhaps you wonder whatever happened to Ringos crisps or the original entrance to the Louvre?

Or maybe you're just extremely curious about which mid-high-level 'smart-cas' chain restaurant does the best steaks: Is it the classic quintessentially English Browns or the cheeky French pretender Café Rouge?

I rather hope it's the latter, actually, because I've been doing a little research in this area by eating steaks at both places in the last week.