Meat and two veg

Or two veg and one meat, or six veg and no meat, and preferably as un-messed-about-with as possible.
I was fascinated to read Jay Rayner's review of 'Le Cinq' in Paris, a gastro-palace the likes of I am very unlikely to step inside even if I did win the pools which again is highly unlikely as I never do them.
If I did win them, or went out to celebrate the publication of my latest book and its handsome advance ;o) I would probably choose a good Indian restaurant or perhaps somewhere very beautiful with a menu of say forty pounds a head, or perhaps just the small fish restaurant I went to with my son the other day where we sat on a covered terrace looking over the sea and ate lovely fish that still looked like fish.
When did all this farting about with food really start? In the 70s? Nouvelle cuisine, I suppose, but then I just looked that up and Wiki told me that N. Cuisine was actually a movement away from over-faffed food - simpler, fresher, less rich ingredients, etc. So the stuff in eateries such as Le Cinq must be a combination of the two: old classic/ haute cuisine and nouvelle - rich sauces, marinades, gold -leaf, aspic droplets, stuff hanging off bits of other stuff and/or balanced precariously/sizzling, on fire, dry-iced and so on.
When I worked in a 'French restaurant' in Farnham in the early 80s, there was a lot of piddling about with food: placing small bits of meat on top of a carefully sculpted potato with a crescent of sauce, etc, but it still was generally food that you could recognise unlike some of the oddities in Mr Rayner's photos and other over-elaborate messes I've seen while trawling Google for Michelin signature dishes.
Then there's the cost . . . Which would you rather eat?
This fresh fish salad with goat's cheese which cost fifteen euros at the afore-mentioned sea-side restaurant.

                                               


Or this depressing lamb thing at a price of ninety-five euros

                

                      Jay Rayner iPhone photo

Okay, their overheads will be a little different - small town in Southern France compared to a spot on Le Champs Elysees but there must be a happy medium . . .

My favourite part of Mr Rayner's review - the bit about the chocolate pud:

A dessert of frozen chocolate mousse cigars wrapped in tuile is fine, if you overlook the elastic flap of milk skin draped over it, like something that fell off a burns victim.

                                Yum

And it's true. My son turns grey at the sight of milk skin, and I don't think most people find it that appetising, so why drape it (or leave it in a rumpled heap) on some dessert that was probably going to set the diner back sixty odd quid? The subtle use of an edible flower or a nice honest blob of clotted cream instead? But then what do I know? I get excited about a buttered and Marmited crumpet or home-made coleslaw. You eat to live, not live to eat . . .

Love this line I happened to read this morning in Will Self's Psychogeography Too tome:
'Food is just shit waiting to happen'.

Further proof that we have gone somewhat wrong somewhere . ..

My son, often quite fascinated with food (eating and preparation of, and nothing wrong with that) was trawling through Youtube looking for the most absurd signature dishes of Michelin starred restaurants.
He found some pretty good examples - lentil-sized vegetables trailed across plates the size of a hub-cap; smears of pale yellow foam that looked remarkably like dog bile and many other 'components' fiddled and faffed with by deadly serious chefs wearing medical gloves and armed with tweezers.
I think that's what I find most repellant - the over-handling of food, turning it inside out and squirting it into tubes, cubes, balls and just about anything else . . . including a lamb's skull. Yes, a (obviously bleached clean one - Oh, well that's okay then) lamb's skull. But not just putting brains back in with perhaps a nice simple tomato sauce - flies, worms and garlic flowers . . . I stared at this video and said: 'Nah . . . must be a joke'. But it seems not. 
The Alchemist restaurant in Copenhagen specialises in such wonderments as part of a 45 course menu at around three hundred pounds.
So, it was lunchtime and we decided to make a small foray into the Nouvelle Cuisine world - maybe not quite so exciting as a lamb's skull full of worms, but really quite tasty and cost about eight quid.

Organic veal strips in Banyuls wine with a julienne of carrot and courgette, fresh pineapple timbale with bonnet chilli, garden chives and 'fait maison' cherry coulis, served on a white, circular plate.

After too much looking at all this we decided to make our own Nouvelle
Cuisine experience, just the one course though.

ridiculous things

In a world filled with problems, one such being, many, many people not able to afford to eat so much as a bowl of rice, I was amazed to find this part of a review on a certain Michelin star restaurant that we were vaguely thinking of taking our son to when he finishes his high school studies.

I am used to my napkin being unfolded and passed to me. This did not happen. 

What! Really, the napkin was left, unfolded, not even passed to you . . .
I kept repeating this to myself on a dog walk this morning. How could anyone actually admit to thinking that, let alone write it down for everyone to see.
I suppose if you are in the habit of regularly spending 130 quid or so on a meal (per head) then perhaps the way the napkin reaches your lap is of extreme importance, not to mention the food . . .
Anyway, on further investigation I discovered that the special CHEAP lunch menu of this particular establishment is booked up weeks in advance so, sorry Ezra, it'll probably be something more like this . . .

                                       

wonderful greek salad I experienced at 'Le Bout Du Monde' near Cerbère, for the sensible price of twelve euros



rather than this: