Staying at the Headland Hotel on Fistral Beach in Newquay you have to just sit and imagine how grand it must have been when first built. The Edwardians must have enjoyed travelling from London and judging by the elegance of the dining room they dressed for dinner. They probably dressed for surfing I suspect….
We didn’t exactly dress for dinner but we did feel compelled to look fairly smart.
(With apologies to anyone who speaks proper Italian out there….)
I was mooching around Deansgate in Manchester looking for a quick bite on my own. I decided to try Pesto (website under construction at the time of writing). As best I can make out, this is an Italian take on tapas. Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought!
Somewhere roughly east of the Eden Project in Cornwall you may stumble across Newquay and Watergate Bay. Here you will find another highly commendable charity establishment. Fifteen Cornwall is Jamie Oliver’s project to give young (and often disadvantaged) young people the opportunity to make something of their lives, by learning how to cook very very expensive food.
As it was the first anniversary of the opening of Fifteen Cornwall and this marked the graduation of the first batch of trainees we thought it would be rude to turn down the opportunity to try the highly popular place. OK then it wasn’t exactly a personal invite from Jamie but it was nice to be there.
My day job took me to the City and after a morning of extreme hard work, a lunchtime visit to TKs on Lovat Lane.
Paul Hacker took me so I figured we might be there all afternoon.
“Put a Yorkshireman in charge of an Italian restaurant???” I said. “Next, you will be telling me a Swede is being appointed as England Football coach!”
So it came to pass that my predictions for the year 2001 were (as ever) way off the mark, since Martin Pickles bought the Flying Pizza in Leeds and……….well let’s not discuss the other appointment.
My second favourite film of all time is “The Italian Job” - I mean the original one with Michael Caine, Noel Coward, Benny Hill et al. So this barmy April weather had me on the balcony humming “On days like these” by Matt Munro and that got me thinking “hold on lads, I’ve just had a great idea!” and searched my collection of Pinkos for an Italian Job.
Southampton Row is a funny old street. Well funny yes, but mostly old. It looks like it is stuck in a time warp from the 1960’s and 70’s.
However, there are one or two secret places I know where you can find food amongst the best value in London. One of them is Old Amalfi. An unremarkable establishment with tacky decor and no expense wasted on fine table linen or other unimportant items.
However, the food is terrific!
Have you ever seen (Dr???) Gillian McKeith on “You Are What You Eat” on Channel 4 here in the UK?
She is frequently seen picking up a slice of white bread, then screwing it into a disgusting “gob” of snowball proportions and then throwing it across the room. It makes you think just how bad white bread really is. But this is exactly how Simply Heathcotes (Manchester) served my Yorkshire pudding on Mothers’ Day 2007. Only it was colder.
Stumble It!