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.

Broken Eastern Promise

A few weeks ago I went along to Craft Beer Rising, not expecting there to be anything much for me, and came away rather pleasantly surprised.

It didn't take long, however, to find the place where there was nothing for me, and that place is Dubai.

So, what's my beef with this fantastic international city; this emerging gulf hub; this centre of Arabian Nightlife... and what is the food and drink like?

Well, it's too hot, too sandy, too crowded, too 'international', too expensive, no pubs. It really is quite a shitty place and now that I've been there I can confidently tell the next recruitment consultant who informs me about 'spectacular job opportunity in Dubai' that 'thanks, but no thanks, I'd rather work on the moon.'

Just desserts?

If the best starter I've eaten this year was the foie gras at the Gay Hussar, then the best dessert I've had must surely be...

Well, let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

This week my Royal British Legion colleagues and I celebrated the public launch of our MoneyForce programme with a post-launch lunch and were keen to try somewhere new and different, near the office in the Borough area.

The rooftop take on shabby chic?

And so we found The Rooftop Cafe @ The Exchange in London Bridge street.

Merely finding it is a challenge in itself as it's extremely well hidden.

One has to go into a fairly nondescript office building next door to 'All Bar One', up a couple of floors in a lift (or take the stairs as I did), then ascend several more flights of rather shabby, fire-escapey stairs before finally arriving in the loft space where you'll find the Rooftop Cafe - an open kitchen, a few tables and one private dining room where our table was waiting for us.

I try not to be swayed by the fickleness of first impressions, but getting into the place isn't a red carpet experience - it all feels sort of unfinished right now. By the Summer there will be a proper outdoor rooftop bit which will increase their capacity, and being so close to the Shard, you can see where they think the money is.

That does rely on people actually being able to find the place though.

Rising, falling or standing still?

So, this weekend I've been to a beer festival that's a little bit different.

Possibly not as different as the organisers would like to believe, mind, but different enough. They didn't use the word 'festival' for a start.

When, some months ago, I first heard about Craft Beer Rising at the old Truman Brewery in Shoreditch I rolled my eyes in exasperation.

The blurb informed me that the event was 'here to throw off the shackles of a traditional beer gathering by crafting events, experiences and environments that take craft beer to the masses.'

Hmm. Smells a lot like marketing wank to me. Besides, I like 'traditional beer gatherings'!

All rise for craft beer?

Further reading inscribed more horror stories in my jaded mind... Nothing much to do with CAMRA... 'craft' keg beers... trendy location... Probably horribly overpriced, overhyped and overrated. Ugh. Basically everything that's wrong about the current Brewdog ethos writ large.

The beer equivalent of Lapland New Forest, perhaps?

Then, a couple of days beforehand, I saw the beer list and decided that I would go, albeit determined to follow up with a damning write-up about how desperately misguided and disappointing it all was.

It's a good thing I did though, because it was ticket-only and sold out every session over the two days, so they must've been doing something right, even if it's just marketing!

Shrove Tuesday isn't as Shriven as it used to be

My ‘giving up chocolate for Lent’ plan proved spectacularly unsuccessful, lasting as it did a mere three days. (Although on the 'being able to eat chocolate again' scale, it's actually been a roaring success, obviously!)

It wasn’t my fault, mind, it was the beer.

Ilkley ‘The Mayan’, specifically, at the Cask in Pimlico. It’s a chocolate chipotle stout, and certainly the best beer I’ve had this year. (And I've drunk some good beer this year).

Chocolate beers can be a bit hit'n'miss, and I’ve never drunk a chilli beer that I could honestly say I really enjoyed, but Ilkley – one of my favourite breweries at the moment –  manage to get the combination just right.

It wasn't that surprising given that, in just a few years, the Yorkshire brewery has shown itself to be remarkably adept at experimental beers - like their Crafty Jane cranberry milk stout - as well as doing a fine line in big, hoppy pale ales, which, to my mind, should be any credible brewer's meat and drink

At 5.3% the Mayan had enough stouty weight behind it not to be watery, but was still staunchly in ‘quaffable’ territory. The cocoa on the nose was like an upmarket chocolate milkshake, while the heat only comes through at the finish and leaves a nice lingering burn.

It's worth breaking your Lenten fast for!

Huzzah for the Hussar!

'There's nothing new under the sun', goes the appropriately old phrase, and it oh-so-often rings true. Except when it doesn't, obviously.

But, for grumpy, prematurely-old fogeys such as I, it frequently seems like that which is new is no fucking good, and that which is any fucking good is stuff with which I am already familiar.

Music these days? Shit. TV these days? Shit. Films these days? Shit with Ben Shitting Affleck acting all shit.

OK, so I'm exaggerating just a tad. Some stuff which is technically new, though not necessarily widely promoted, is actually pretty good. Look hard enough and you'll find decent music and films and everything else made very recently indeed. And some things - like beer - are probably better and more exciting now than they've ever been. New beers are good, they're fucking, shitting good!

But my point is that, if you often struggle to see the merit in the latest stuff and are baffled by the faddishness around it, there is another path to tread which is a bit more interesting than just sticking with what you know and never expanding your horizons...

Horses for Main courses?

The big news this morning, apart from my helicopter lesson going badly wrong, obviously, was the revelation that some frozen beefburgers made and sold in the UK and Ireland actually contained traces of horsemeat. In some cases 25% 'traces'.

Now, I don't buy frozen value burgers from Tescos, and I've not been to Iceland since about the time it stopped being called Bejams, so I'm not worried that I might have inadvertantly eaten the stuff.

My immediate reaction was: Never mind the horse, the quality of the beef in those things was probably highly dubious!

I know, little predictable ol' me.

But, horse or no horse, cheap beefburgers generally contain the worst cuts of 'meat' from the worst cattle, padded out with additives and fillers and mechanically-recovered anus tissue. I bang on about this sort of stuff because I'm a fan of really good quality beef and really good quality burgers.

The initial media reaction was equally predictable - shock, horror, outrage! How dare they put this in our beefburgers?!? and so on.

And then, continuing the predictability, came the 'but why is it outrageous?!?' backlash with the good old unbiased BBC asking why Britain doesn't eat horses when we eat cows, pigs and other farmyard creatures.

I wasn't asked for my view for some reason, but one or two 'experts' had some, frankly, strange opinions and these rather bizzare arguments for why we don't eat it triggered a bit of friendly office debate.