Great British Menu

The Great British Menu this year was for a banquet celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Women's Institute.

I watched it solely to follow the progress of Michael O'Hare.

He now runs the quirky and glamorous Man Behind The Curtain on the top floor of Flannels in Leeds. But before he set up shop there, he was chef at a place called The Blind Swine in York. And we managed to get a table on my husband's 40th birthday, just before the restaurant's lease expired.

A blind swine?

We had no idea The Blind Swine was about to close. Although the fact that it was nearly empty that night did raise mild alarm, not to mention disparaging comments about the people of York not knowing a good thing when they saw it. So "managing" to get a table wasn't much of a mean feat in our case, although it was a wet Tuesday in December and would have been a different story on a weekend.

We nearly didn't go as our three-year-old, true to form, had been poorly all day. But it was my husband's 40th. And our lovely babysitter said she didn't mind if she had a disturbed evening. And if we hadn't taken the risk, we would - it turned out - never have got to go, as three weeks later, The Blind Swine ran its last service.

The Blind Swine was never your average fine-dining restaurant. It was very dark, in both lighting and walls, and played loud, grungy music. There were a lot of tattoos. It was primarily a bar, but not one I would have voluntarily stepped into off the street. It looked too scary. Too death metal. Too not me.

And yet.

And yet it served the most finessed, exquisite and delicate food I have ever eaten.

There was no menu. You just turned up and were brought food. You had no idea what was coming. And you weren't always sure what had come when it arrived. You just took the plunge and let your senses take over. Sheer extravagant exhilaration.

It's surprisingly hard to recall all the details of our meal now, given that it was so unforgettable at the time. I suspect that this has a lot to do with us ordering a cocktail flight to go with each course. And to do with us being 40 with a young child and no longer having a head for alcohol. (I don't think I ever had a head for alcohol.) It didn't help that we got only two hours' sleep after returning home before our daughter woke up coughing and then sat awake in our bed watching Pingu DVDs until dawn. The next day, nursing a sick child and the mother of all hangovers, was the longest of my life.

My diary reminds me that we had Lindisfarne oysters, foie gras with potato, bread, gazpacho with hake, pork cheek with chorizo risotto, saffron and pomegranate ice cream, passion fruit souffle, chocolate crispies and campari sweeties. But the one dish that has stayed with us is Whitby crab with Granny Smith apple. It was deceptively simple, but so incredibly fresh and pure. Palate cleansing. Mouth enriching. Life enhancing. It was presented to us by Michael O'Hare himself, as it was a new creation. He was peroxide blonde at the time, like a young Noddy Holder - a comparison he may not relish. I certainly wouldn't have said that to his face, since he looked mildly terrifying. And yet he was utterly charming and soft-spoken and gracious. You couldn't imagine that his big beefy arms had such a lightness of touch in the kitchen.

Crab and Granny Smith apple. Not how it was presented.

How come he was here? Why wasn't he in some triple Michelin starred restaurant? Was it that he couldn't fit in, with his taste in music and loathing of light? Had he been too restless to settle down? I was fascinated.

The waiter said O'Hare had done a stint at Noma in Copenhagen, and it showed. It was very special to get a taste of the best restaurant in the world on our home turf in York.

We haven't managed to go to the Man Behind The Curtain. Friends have, and apparently the food is still out of this world, but Michael O'Hare has upped the glamour, and upped the price. The Blind Swine was stupidly reasonable for the quality of food on offer.

How lucky we were that we got to taste his food while we could still afford it. I imagine, following O'Hare's success on The Great British Menu, that managing to get a table at the Man Behind The Curtain will now definitely be a mean feat. He is about to get massive. Go global. Be on telly a whole lot more. And it is a richly deserved success.

A Taste Of Britain: York and North Yorkshire

Janet Street Porter and Brian Turner are travelling the length of Britain in praise of local produce and in search of a good eat or three. On Sunday lunchtime, they were in York and North Yorkshire. Home turf for me, and home turf for the pair of them - Janet lives in Nidderdale, and Brian is Yorkshire born and bred (and rather a Yorkshire stereotype). I can't imagine this pair of strong personalities getting on, but they seem amiable enough on camera.

They begin in York on a beautiful spring day. There is no better light in which to see our city. The banks of the walls aflame with daffodils, the blossom bursting in the Museum Gardens, and the river teeming with life. It's when we wake up from our long winter sleep and remember just how good it is to be here.

Spring in the Museum Gardens

City walls

Looking towards the site of Star Inn The City

Their only restaurant stop in York is Star Inn The City, which opened in the old pumping station by Lendal Bridge a couple of years ago. It's a sister restaurant to Andrew Pern's Star Inn at Harome, which has been known to possess a star of the Michelin variety from time to time. Though the only time we went there, many years ago now, we weren't quite sure why - it was the sort of place where the waiting staff forgot to bring you a wine list, the Yorkshire portions were enormous and sickly, and the overuse of edible flowers and black pudding did nothing but give me a migraine.

Nonetheless, we have been to Star Inn The City twice - once for my husband's 40th birthday breakfast, and once for dinner, when he changed jobs and was given a Star gift voucher as a leaving present. I don't think there's much you can say about Star Inn The City that Jay Rayner hasn't already but suffice to say, it's a very mixed bag. And it makes you cross. Because the prices are as high as the sky, but the food quality is - well, at best inconsistent, at worst inedible. When you have a young child, you don't get to go out much, so when you do get a baby-sitter and are going somewhere charging "special treat only" prices, you want the dogs bollocks and the cats pyjamas of an experience. And this you do not get. Instead you arrive and are told your table is not ready, but look, there's a nice bar over there charging extortionate rates for drinks you do not want to get you in the (bad) mood which will sour the rest of the evening. And then - when you are finally allowed into the main restaurant - there's the bread in the Yorkshire flat cap thing. And the stupid Yorkshire puns ("Ee-by-gum Madam!", "salad o't day"), and the exaggerated statements of food provenance ("Beverley reared duck breast"). Unlike Jay Rayner, I would have forgiven all that if they had just served me an amazing plate of grub for my money. But they didn't. The beetroot and goats' cheese starter was so-so, the Scarborough woof made me gag, and the gooseberry and elderflower rice pudding should have been avoided if only because the waitress had recommended it, which is usually a sure-fire sign that the chefs are trying to shift a job lot out the kitchen.

To be fair, the seafood dish that Andrew Pern cooks with Brian Turner does look delicious, and a far cry from anything we were served that overpriced night. Pern acknowledges that he does "cheffy" thing like piping puree so that he can put the prices up. Turner admires Pern's quirky sides. I guess humour is a very personal thing.

The Star Inn The City has a gorgeous riverside setting, and the dining room is undeniably lovely. York certainly needed something where it sits - it replaced the park toilets. But it's a waste of a fantastic opportunity. However, our daughter - developing expensive tastes at far too young an age - asked to go there for breakfast on her birthday last year, "just like Daddy did". We of course said no and served her her usual bowl of Cheerios. There are much better places to go in York (Melton's, Walmgate Ale House, Oxo's, The Whippet) that do what The Star is doing, with or without the quirks, that won't break the bank in the form of armed robbery, though will inevitably make a bit of a dent in your account.

Daughter with expensive tastes at Star Inn The City, December 2013

Mummy (taken by daughter) at Star Inn The City, December 2013

Then Janet and Brian move up towards Thirsk. They stand atop Sutton Bank, scene of many a caravan breakdown and my husband's first (and only) gliding lesson, when he spiralled above the famous White Horse that you can see for miles across the Vale of York. Janet then goes off to look at Mouseman furniture, which is loved the world over. My grandmother owns a Mouseman stool and a fruit bowl, and I suspect this will lead to inheritance fights in future years if she hasn't secured their future in her will. Brian heads off to a farm to look at pigs so cute that they would turn anyone vegetarian. Though a particularly friendly and gorgeous one plonks himself on Brian's foot and it seems to me that Brian is fighting a slight instinct to kick it right back off again.

Husband in glider taking off from the top of Sutton Bank, summer 2010

Janet and Brian convene at Ampleforth Abbey to consume cider and al fresco barbecued pork, which is - thankfully - pork rolled with apples and sage, and not barbecue sauce. If you haven't tried Ampleforth Abbey cider, do. It blows itself out of the bottle in a very excited fashion and then proceeds to blow your mind, slipping down like sweet fresh-pressed juice, but with disastrous consequences for your functioning. I do have to agree with Brian's question on the matter of monks brewing alcohol, "What's all that about, then?" As usual, the answer boils down to money.

I am worried the monks don't get enough to eat, as their chief cleans his plate at alarming speed. Andrew Pern says as he pokes his food, "Mm, you can really taste those herbs coming through" in a way which implies that Brian has choked his plate with sage. But I bet Brian hasn't charged Andrew what Andrew would charge us good folk of York to eat something similar.

Nigel Slater's Icing On The Cake

Yesterday's lemon & pistachio cake. Just because.

I have long been a fan of Nigel Slater's food writing. He can make the mundane utterly sublime. He can be eating sardines on toast yet give such an evocative description of every crumb that I instantly have to leap up and raid my larder to make some for myself. Well, I don't really have a larder per se. That's a bit posh. But I do have a few tins in a cupboard. When I've been organised about my online shopping.

Nigel Slater always strikes me as painfully shy on television. He sounds so exuberant on paper, but seems slightly awkward on screen. But his excitement over the food he has cooked for his plate is still infectious, and it always looks amazing, but makeable. And I also love his "food history" programmes, like this one about cake. I should call them "food nostalgia", because he has retained his childlike enthusiasm for the (probably actually not terribly inspiring) food of his youth despite the pretty miserable time his autobiography recounts him having. In this programme, the wicked gleam in his eye when he laughs as he bites into a fondant fancy is a telling image of the wonderful effect of food and how powerfully the senses of taste and smell recreate memories.

He starts in Konditor & Cook just behind Waterloo station, home of the most incredible lemon cake I have ever eaten. Nigel says he would just as happily buy a cake from a shop as eat a home-made one by Auntie Marjorie.(When did he meet my grandmother?) He stresses cake's universal appeal. It is the ultimate in comfort food in times of need. It doesn't have to meet Mary Berry's perfection. It just needs to be naughty but nice. But what makes a cake truly a cake?

There's a history bit. It all started with compacted porridge. There's a science bit. Why eggs bring the magic, originally whisked in by twigs. There's the religious affrontery and the banning of buns. There's why we have an innate liking for sweetness. There's a Home Economics lesson that teaches us that dropping cakes fresh out of the oven is actually good for them. There's what rationing did to cakes. Then there are just lots of glorious regional cakes with silly names - lardy, parkin, Rutland plum shuttles, Selkirk bannock, Norfolk vinegar, and Cumberland courting. (Never got one of those out of my husband.) There's the exceedingly crap ones we buy from Mr Kipling and Lyons - the aforementioned fondant fancies, Jamaica Ginger cake and a slice of Battenberg. Cake is what we do in this country to be sociable and make us smile. Or it was until we discovered binge-drinking.

Then Jenny Eclair comes on and tells Nigel why, despite being named after one, she hates cake. It's a throwback to her anorexic days at drama school. She claims cupcakes are the most evil of all - so disappointing and dishonest, so bad for you, as unnecessary and harmful as high-heeled shoes. Much as I personally love cake, I have to admit she does have a point. Cupcakes, piled high with swirls of buttercream and sweetie toppings, usually look so much better than they taste. The insurmountable icing invariably swamps a tiny morsel of dry sponge, and tips off onto the floor at the first bite.

Evil cupcakery

Finally, there's roadkill cake. (Yes, you did read that correctly.) There's cigarette butts on a cake. There's a fondant brains cake to teach people anatomy and fairy cakes decorated with chlamydia icing to educate teenagers about sexual health. And then a giant recreation of Nigel Slater's head. Not sure what he made of that.

But what makes a cake a cake? For Nigel Slater, it's the spirit behind it. The love that creates it. And the fact that we always share it.

It's impossible to deny that wherever I go, I eat cake. Grasmere Gingerbread in the Lake District,  Fat Rascals and macaroons from Betty's all over Yorkshire, Bara Brith in Pembrokeshire, Bakewell pudding in Derbyshire, brownies in Baltimore, Sachertorte in Vienna, tartes aux fraises in Paris, and pink-frosted cupcakes from a bakery on Bleecker Street in New York just like the ones Sarah Jessica Parker ate on Sex And The City (wearing stupid high-heeled shoes).

The winners will always be the Germans, however. Bakeries were the only shops open on a Sunday when I went to university in Heidelberg. Cake was the only thing that made me truly happy in a rather difficult year. There is much to be said for the healing powers of a bite of Apfelstrudel or a slice of Mohnkuchen or Streuselkuchen. Stollen at Christmas, washed down with Gluehwein from the Christkindlmarkt. But my favourite always - the simple baked Quark Kaesekuchen from the students cafe in Heidelberg's Marstallhof. It just about made up for the fact that everything else that the Mensa served was inedible - greasy gravy stodge with a side of cold fruit soup dolloped on to a metal tray. You weren't even allowed a plate. It was all stupidly cheap but utterly revolting. I still feel nauseous thinking about it. But the cheesecake was in another league.

Heidelberg,. The Marstallhof Mensa and Cafe is the building on the right

Downton Abbey (Part 2)

Bettys, that well-known Yorkshire tea-room institution, put in a bit of a cameo on Sunday's episode of Downton Abbey. Apparently. I didn't see it. Because I don't watch Downton Abbey any more. Not since they killed off Matthew. And it got silly. (Or too silly. It was always silly.)

Keeping with the theme of factual inaccuracy on Downton, Bettys' Facebook page (which I "like" in the eternal hope of free cake) was quick to point out two errors. One was to do with an apostrophe (the shop still had one in 1924), and the other was a basket of Fat Rascals in the window, which weren't made or sold or even heard of at the time. Though as Bettys actually supplied the said Fat Rascals, you can't blame Julian Fellowes for this one.

Here is a snapshot of a delicious Bettys pink champagne afternoon tea, consumed to celebrate my 40th birthday. Bettys may be expensive, but always worth the compulsory queue. The pastry on their Yorkshire curd tarts is sublime. The raspberry macaroons on the menu this summer were to die for. And the cafes are so much more child friendly than the posh pinnies could ever lead you to imagine. (There is evidence: my daughter is devouring her own slice of cake in the background.)

Undercover Boss - Carluccio's

I always enjoy Undercover Boss. Its premise is that the managing director of a company goes in disguise on to the shop floor to see the public side of their business which they normally, high up in their ivory tower, never get to see. They are invariably shocked and disappointed and realise just quite how out of the loop they are. I think most of us have some experience of a boss who has no idea what is happening at ground-floor level, which is why the programme is so appealing.

York (always behind on the chain restaurant scene) recently acquired its first Carluccio's as part of the rapid expansion of the business that formed the background to this episode. We haven't actually been, but we have been twice to one of the branches featured on the programme, in the Trinity Centre in Leeds. Our first visit, a midweek lunch during the school holidays, was fairly positive, but the second last weekend was very much less so. The place was too busy to cope, and you could see that the kitchen staff were getting slammed. They had a full row of paper chits hanging above the pass. We had to wait ages for our food, and when it came, my ravioli were raw in the middle. I sent my dish back, only to be served a second that was equally bad, by which point I was so hungry I just ate it. It probably only needed an extra minute in the pan, but it shouldn't have to be my place to point this out. We should have gone to the other Carluccio's on Greek Street, which according to the programme, is absolutely dead on a weekend. Not very good for their business, but maybe better for my tummy.

Properly cooked spinach and ricotta filled pasta, made by me

I have eaten at a few of the original London branches of Carluccio's. Generally, they were excellent, but we are talking about the days when the great Antonio Carluccio still had some sort of hand in the business. He sold up a few years ago. Things have definitely gone downhill since then, despite the illusions about the food that its new managing director Simon Kossoff is under. During our long wait in Leeds, I looked around at what the other customers were eating, barely recognising dishes that I knew I had eaten in the past. A plate of penne with courgette, chilli and deep-fried spinach balls, a truly lovely thing served to me in Kingston-upon-Thames more years ago than I care to remember, looked virtually inedible. The chicken milanese, a staple on their set menu, was burned to a crisp.

And this highlights the trouble with the Undercover Boss programme - do the changes that the boss says he is going to implement really come about? I am not sure when the series was filmed, but by now the promised improvements should be in evidence. Simon Kossoff seems like a decent guy, though I have to say I preferred his goth alter-ego kitchen hand Dan, with his fake tattoo sleeve, who was always tasked with taking the bins out via the most complicated route imaginable. Kossoff is genuinely touched by the dedicated staff that he meets, and at the end offers these few people some nice gifts (books, holidays, cooking lessons with Antonio) for their efforts, but what about the rest of his several hundred restaurant employees, all working long hours on minimum wage for no reward or recognition? Although one of the waitresses in Leeds offered some much longed-for chef training after years of servitude, instantly buggers off to work for someone else. Which a cynic may argue is a good reason for keeping people in their place.

But how can restaurants maintain their high standards across a chain that is so thinly spread? How can there be proper quality control by the powers that be? It's not just Carluccio's - you see this happen time and time again with expanded brands. Gourmet Burger Kitchen, for example, was a great little eatery on Northcote Road in Clapham, but now it has opened branches right across the country. And the last time I ate at the one in York, the fries (cooked in stale oil) were not far short of revolting. Giraffe, where I used to go in Muswell Hill from time to time and which has finally now also come to York, seems to have lost its world-food ethos to American style dining. It's a shame.

I would always much rather support a small local eatery than a global conglomerate, but when you have kids, you do end up relying on chains. This is because you know there will be spaghetti bolognese on the menu, and that they will bring crayons. Thank goodness therefore, for Bishy Road's fabulous family-run Sicilian cafe Trinacria, which may not provide crayons, but is otherwise as child friendly as they come, with its vast array of gelato flavours and biscotti and welcoming staff (and I am not just saying that because one is our next-door neighbour and he has been known to "forget" to charge me for my daughter's ice cream). It has columns of IKEA Antilops and easy-wipe tables. And the food is great. And much cheaper than Carluccio's.

Trinacria also lets me take silly photos