Confessions of a Wino

I woke up with the sweetest hangover.  The type that brings hazy memories of the day before.  Not caused by alcohol.  Oh no, something far more important.  Football.

But, one has to eat, and drink, and get on with life so, in anticipation of victory, I had booked us into Barbecoa, Jamie Oliver’s new venture in Cheapside in the City.  And as a hangover cures go, you could do worse than select from the “Bites” menu.  The mountain of bread with home made butter was as filling as it was delicious.  A “portion” of pork crackling (£4) was large enough to serve 16 Northern beer drinkers based on the size of pub bags when I was a nipper.  And needless to say the flavour and crunch was in a new class, (but I am known as a bit of a porker).

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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.

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