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Jun. 4th, 2006 09:31 pmI think I may have picked up a touch of sunstroke on the beach. I started feeling sick when we arrived back at Lowell's flat yesterday and it's either that or I've caught MRSA from the kitchen and am now dying. All the same, I had a pleasant weekend. We hung out on the beach, wandered along the pier with a 99, went home, watched Serenity, and today we went for a bracing walk over the South Downs to Devil's Dyke.
Either way, I took a few photos:
( Here are they... )
We had an ill-advised pub lunch on top of Devil's Dyke (pictured) at one of those odious faux-vintage inns - I think this one was a Brewer's Fayre, but it could just as easily have been a Bernie Inn circa 1985. It's weird - you hear all this stuff about a renaissance in British food and how it's not all soggy, overboiled vegetables and flavourless, limp potatoes and meat tougher than boots dipped in vinegar any longer, but instead it's fresh and seasonal and seared or poached in white wine and personally brought to your table by Jamie Oliver. But I really think this so-called revolution must be confined to a few southern urban centres, because this was the pub Sunday roast of my childhood. The vegetables had clearly been boiled for about thirty-five minutes, the roast potatoes turned to mashed potatoes at the touch of a fork tine, the beef had been badly hung, badly cut and was shot through with veins of inedible fat and sinew. I should have stuck to something that the chef can't fuck up, like a burger, which my dining companion proclaimed excellent.
Just a few miles away from some of the best pub roasts I've ever had - my mouth still waters when I think of The Eddy on Upper Gloucester Road, or the Dover Castle on Queen's Road, or the nut roasts at The George, which are good enough to turn the most ardent carnivore veggie - people were hoovering this stuff up with nary a frown, and the worst of it is that this pub is the only venue up there, so if you're out for a nice walk or a bike ride along the South Downs and you feel like a pub lunch, you have no alternative. Ergo this place does a roaring trade and nobody stands up and says 'Uh, excuse me, this roast dinner is shit.' In true 'esprit d'escalier' spirit, I wish I could have got to my feet and yelled 'For fuck's sake, people, you live in Brighton, you have more good restaurants per head than anywhere else in the country, what possessed you to haul your arses up here to eat soggy roasts?!'
I'm disappointed in myself for thinking my country's cuisine had changed for the better. That'll learn me to read Nigel Slater books.
Traffic on the way back to London was monstrous. It was mostly made up of second-homers in SUVs, and Polish kamikaze truckers. I think I also had Siralan Sugar on my tail for a bit of the ride as well.
Either way, I took a few photos:
( Here are they... )
We had an ill-advised pub lunch on top of Devil's Dyke (pictured) at one of those odious faux-vintage inns - I think this one was a Brewer's Fayre, but it could just as easily have been a Bernie Inn circa 1985. It's weird - you hear all this stuff about a renaissance in British food and how it's not all soggy, overboiled vegetables and flavourless, limp potatoes and meat tougher than boots dipped in vinegar any longer, but instead it's fresh and seasonal and seared or poached in white wine and personally brought to your table by Jamie Oliver. But I really think this so-called revolution must be confined to a few southern urban centres, because this was the pub Sunday roast of my childhood. The vegetables had clearly been boiled for about thirty-five minutes, the roast potatoes turned to mashed potatoes at the touch of a fork tine, the beef had been badly hung, badly cut and was shot through with veins of inedible fat and sinew. I should have stuck to something that the chef can't fuck up, like a burger, which my dining companion proclaimed excellent.
Just a few miles away from some of the best pub roasts I've ever had - my mouth still waters when I think of The Eddy on Upper Gloucester Road, or the Dover Castle on Queen's Road, or the nut roasts at The George, which are good enough to turn the most ardent carnivore veggie - people were hoovering this stuff up with nary a frown, and the worst of it is that this pub is the only venue up there, so if you're out for a nice walk or a bike ride along the South Downs and you feel like a pub lunch, you have no alternative. Ergo this place does a roaring trade and nobody stands up and says 'Uh, excuse me, this roast dinner is shit.' In true 'esprit d'escalier' spirit, I wish I could have got to my feet and yelled 'For fuck's sake, people, you live in Brighton, you have more good restaurants per head than anywhere else in the country, what possessed you to haul your arses up here to eat soggy roasts?!'
I'm disappointed in myself for thinking my country's cuisine had changed for the better. That'll learn me to read Nigel Slater books.
Traffic on the way back to London was monstrous. It was mostly made up of second-homers in SUVs, and Polish kamikaze truckers. I think I also had Siralan Sugar on my tail for a bit of the ride as well.
