According to trade mag the Grocer’s Twitter feed, West Cork Distillers have forged an unholy partnership with the Pogues to create a blended whiskey with a high malt content, branded with the name of the notorious Irish folk-rockers. I’m just imagining the tasting notes: halitosis, bar-room floor, melancholy, urban decay. My favourite bit of the linked article is the list of musos who have got into bed with the booze biz, including a beer backed by the Spandau Ballet frontman called – of course! –Hadley’s Gold.
Angela Hartnett and Neil Borthwick’s Merchant’s Tavern was one of my favourite openings from last year: understated, unshowy, with an evolved and alluring menu that changes with enticing regularity. I need to get myself back there before this glorious thing (captured by Zeren Wilson, wine writer and, when it comes to restaurants, in-like-Flynn) disappears from the menu: squid ink pasta stuffed with crab in a lemongrass emulsion. Brilliant.
Among the crimes currently being committed in the name of burgers – burgers sandwiched in doughnuts, or between slabs of fried chicken, or in nests of fried noodles or huge beef tomatoes – this one ranks among the worst. This evil-looking creature is notable not for its offputting green demeanour (the sage?) but for the fact that those ain’t buns, baby. This patty is clamped within the dubious embraces of a Scotch Egg. Every manner of wrongness in one not-so-neat package.
This is graffiti from the heart: pic.twitter.com/XE2BUKmQCS
— Vanessa Woolf (@LondonDreamtime) May 21, 2015
The poignant plaintiveness of this graffiti is echoed in my own heart. The continental breakfast – well, it’s just cheating, isn’t it?
One of those tweets that’s utterly conflicting. On the one hand, what kind of father has prompted the creation of this piece of startling faux reality? A Homer Simpson loser in wifebeater, bucket in hand, in front of an endless loop of mindless contact sports? On the other hand: genius.
New York food photographer Sarah Phillips’s Instagram feed is a kaleidoscope of extraordinarily beautiful photographs of food, teased and tweaked until it hardly resembles food anymore, but draws the eye like a magnet. This 61-year-old is one of the app’s breakout stars, part of a new breed of social media users who actually make money out of it. As Dolly said: “What a way to make a living.” (This to be read admiringly, not snarkily.)
I do not pretend to understand this sushi-inspired furniture. But I want it.
This week’s Gimme comes from London streetfooders Grill My Cheese, who operate out of the Southbank Food and Leather Lane Markets. This is exactly what it looks like, a cheese toastie boosted with “mac and cheese”: organic sourdough, their “signature” three-cheese blend (two cheddars, mozzarella, gruyere, with parmesan and mascarpone in the macaroni). I’m typing this hungry and it’s disturbing me quite badly.
Plating of the week is by chef Louis Robinson of pop-up restaurant Spice in Sarasota, Florida. He clearly likes to play with his food (his little neck clams in braised purple cabbage head is something to behold). I have to salute anyone who takes Jackson Pollock as inspiration for a lobster dish; whether I’d like to eat it is another matter all together.
