ROAD TRIP USA 2010: ROLLING THROUGH NASHVILLE

After a brief stop in Asheville to see the Biltmore Estate, we made our way across country to Tennessee to Nashville, the home of country music.

Modern country music leaves me cold, but a lengthy visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum quickly reacquainted me with its varied history from the early days of American Folk music, through the “outlaw” countrymen like Hank Williams through to the “hard country” of Haggard and Paycheck in the 1970’s. An interesting way to spend three hours.

An even more interesting way to spend a few hours was an unplanned visit to watch the Nashville Roller Girls crush their Indiana rivals from Fort Wayne. As Neal and I walked to breakfast on our first morning in town, we passed the local auditorium and saw a sign announcing that night’s event in one of the US’s fastest growing sports. A far cry from the choreographed exploitation of the 1970’s and 80’s, which was more akin to wrestling, Roller Derby now attracts thousands of women across the country who compete in local teams and a fiercely contested national league

I will hold my hand up high and admit that, I at least, came fully prepared to sneer. I expected to spend fifteen minutes sneering as the girlies tottered around on wheels in front of a few bored friends and relatives and then leave to do something more interesting. What I got was four hours of joyous fun watching two teams of very skilful skaters compete hard in a furious and compelling battle. By the end of the first match, between the two teams second stream skaters we were hooked, by the end of the main event, we were whooping and hollering along with the 1500+ other spectators.

Although they compete in deadly earnest, the women don’t take themselves too seriously in Roller Derby it appears. This adds to the appeal even more and I was delighted to find that all the competitors all give themselves silly names like Violet Contusion, Hilda Beast, Maulin’ Monroe and referees have names like Jessticular Fortitude. My own particular highlight came when Neal approached one of the skaters, named The Jersey Jackhammer, after the match had finished and enquired “Er, Ms. Jackhammer, may I have a picture taken with you”

Amazing fun and Neal declared it “very possibly the best $15 I have ever spent”

I almost agree. But, it is just beaten out by our breakfast at Monell’s which cost exactly the same. Given our short stay in the city and our busy schedule, we did not have too much time to go in search of food. However, Monell’s came highly recommended for its communal style eating and down home food. Leaving Chris to rest up, Neal and I walked the short distance across the state park to 6th Avenue and soon found ourselves seated at a large table along with half a dozen other people just about to start breakfast.

This was my kind of eating. As servers hovered with pots of strong fresh coffee, our fellow diners began to pass around dish after dish of delicious smelling food. So much food, in fact, that our soon there was little space to put empty dishes down on the table. There were light, hot Southern biscuits, plates of crisp bacon and sausage, bowls of creamy cheese grits, sweet cinnamon rolls, fried chicken, scrambled eggs, buttery pancakes and, best of all, sweet corn pudding. Half an hour after we had arrived, the family style of eating made sure we had made some new friends and I pushed myself back from the table knowing would not need much else to eat that day.

If only all meals could be like this.

OK. Loyal DH fans, it’s trivia time. I was very excited to come across the handwritten lyrics in picture #2 at The Country Music Hall of Fame. Who can tell me what song they are from and who wrote them?

Next stop Memphis. I am off to see The King.

LITTLE CHEF, POPHAM: HESTON'S FOLLY

I vacillate over Heston Blumenthal (oh, do grow up)

On some days, I can buy into him as the culinary equivalent of haute couture, you might not indulge very often, but some, at least, of the creativity will eventually filter down to be sampled in the mainstream. Triple cooked chips etc etc. And, on his current series “Cooking feasts for Who the hell is that?” he comes over as a beguilingly barking English eccentric, even if you do long for the food to choke most of the diners or at least just Germaine Greer.

On other days, when I remind myself how little his menu at The Fat Duck has actually changed over the years, I think he is a charlatan, a one trick pony who has managed to create a whole career out of flim flammery and who, in his series “Big Chef Takes on Little Chef” to be honest came over as a bit of a cock.

Heston at Little Chef? You can just hear the TV exec’s squeal with delight. It’s the best high concept idea since someone first uttered the words “Danny DeVito and Arnold, twins”

What next? MPW asking if you want ‘extra crispy” at KFC or Tom Aikens flipping burgers at Wimpy (actually, that’s just about all TA is good for, but that’s for another post)

If I had not been heading down to Dorset to do something more important, I might never have visited the Little Chef in Popham, which recently underwent the much-publicised Heston treatment. Not that I have ever had any great problem with Little Chef. Trust me I have had a lot worse breakfasts than their Olympian for a lot more money.

Pulling into the car park tells you all you need to know. This is now a destination restaurant and my ten-year old Ford Focus looked a poor specimen compared to the Audi’s and Merc’s already filling the spaces.

The inside too tells its own story. As HP found out on his recent visit to The Chippy, irony and food are seldom happy bedfellows and the Little Chef in Popham just screams out with knowing wit. Bright red tables archly adorned with little round ketchup bottles, dangly bright lights hanging from the ceiling and waiters with the word “Waiter” in big letters on the back of their bright red shirts, as if anyone would wear something that vile if they didn’t have to for work.

Some people obviously loved the design, because also there was a contingent from the responsible design company, dressed in lurid greens (“against the red, it will look fab. Right?”) for a photo shoot, no doubt to show off their skills to other potential suckers, I mean customers, of course.

It all served to make what should be a simple diner look like an eatery from Pee Wee Herman’s Great Big Adventure and, quite frankly, after sampling the food, I would rather encounter Paul Reubens jacking off in a shabby L.A porno cinema than be faced with this Heston-ised version of short order cooking.

To be fair to Mr B, however, he did his bit. After the usual T.V silliness of creating a challenge, adding a bit of tension with “Mr Blue Sky Thinking” the boss and doing that thing he does with dry ice one assumes is in the contract for every show, he finally settled for just getting really great ingredients and trying his best to teach the Little Chef staff how not to fuck them up on their spangly new equipment.

He succeeded in the former, as the ingredients are all (little plastic pat of butter aside) well sourced. The menu trumpets free-range eggs, Wiltshire cured bacon, and even a bit of Scottish black pudding. But he obviously failed in the former and although my breakfast, the “All New Olympian” looked adequate from an arial view, a quick peek at its dark underbelly told a different and more challenging story.

A failure to clean the hot plate meant that every element of the meal had a nice brown crust underneath, the eggs particularly showing off a nice tan, which explained why there was no request for how you would like them cooked. "Sunny side up, or charred, luv"

The bacon flipped to reveal a nice burnt streak, like wise the sausages and a few misplaced strands of thyme, that great breakfast staple, had been fried to a crisp on the underside of a blackened mushroom. Worst of all, two semi-cooked halves of tomato tasted as if they had been drenched in oil gone rancid from being kept too close to the stove.

A visit to the toilets, where more irony abounds, compounded the feeling that someone was taking the piss. A handful of wall tiles were adorned with cooking tips (obviously the staff never need to go during the day or they might learn something useful) and there was piped music that, God give me strength, taunted one and all with the sounds of Lionel Bart’s “Food Glorious Food” Like showing a parched man in a desert a picture of a glass of water.

Food this atrocious doesn’t come cheap and, with the breakfast at £6.50, a thimble full of decent fresh orange juice, a pot of tea and a tip for the staff, who asked how my meal was more than once and more in hope than expectation, it came to just under a shameful £13.

A further ten miles or so up the road, I stopped for petrol and peered through the windows of another Little Chef, this time, untouched by ironic design or the whims of a 3 * chef. It was like Heston Blumethal had never happened and one can’t help thinking on the showing of the Little Chef at Popham, that this could be a good thing.

BREAKFAST @ BRINDISA BOROUGH MARKET

In a slightly scary “Gilbert & George finish each other sentences” kind of way, when HP called to say he was about to tuck into the enticing looking food at the new branch of Brindisa, I had just finished doing the same at the Borough Market branch.

I needed the sustenance to keep up with the energy levels of my irrepressible chum, Lex who was experiencing her first visit to London’s food tourist Mecca. She had already been given a pork pie by Mr Hartland, a sliver of Jamon at Brindisa as well as finding every other morsel of free grub in the market like a heat seeking missile, but by 11am, she declared she needed something more substantial and announced she was treating her "Uncle" to breakfast as thanks for helping her find gainful employment in our city.

Remarkably, at that time we not only found a table at Brindisa, but also one outside in the last of the Summer sun. The brekkie menu is short, but the quality is good and Lex’s plate of chorizo, eggs and potatoes was soon a memory as were my own rather good scrambled eggs, which came with slices of manchego, mushrooms and tomatoes.

With some freshly squeezed orange juice, the bill came to £20 including tip (thank you, Lex) a good deal less, I suspect than HP was racking up at their new venture.

Wish he had brought some of those croquetas back with him though.

LIKE A BIT OF THE COCK TAVERN IN THE MORNING ?

Blogspot has been down nearly all day and it is only now that I can share with you how splendid my breakfast at The Cock Tavern was this morning in words AND loving pictures.

Mind you, that kind of sums up my life right now. Lousy enough to make me think that any day I don’t jump off a tall building is a bonus (There will be more about tall buildings later, keep up).

I have a day off which has been oh so much fun. A long session at the Osteopath first thing as he attempted to relieve a back problem that is painful enough to mean that I have had no sleep in a week and am barely able to sit. Enter HP with sympathetic noises about “buying a rubber ring”

Then, talking of leaping off tall buildings (see) I went to see Superman Returns not realising it was three hours long. Three hours of sitting on a damaged sacral bone was not my wisest move and I had to get a cab home and am now laid prone on the sofa. You'll believe a grown man can cry.

Still, as my dear granny always said, a good brekkie will set you up for most things. So, this morning, as I cannot train at the moment but am not able to sleep, I decided to head to Smithfield Market and join the cheery porters for their breakfast at The Cock Tavern at a little before 7am this morning.

A pretty full on thing it was too. Sausage, egg, bacon, livers, kidney, black pudding, tomatoes and beans. Along with a large mug of “builder’s” tea, it came to a massive £7.40. Good value and good quality. The kidneys, in particular were a thing of beauty and managed to cheer me up for an all too brief moment.

No sign of any “cheery” porters though. The place was almost empty when I first arrived apart from a group of drunken Scots taking advantage of the unusual licensing laws. By a count of the numbers of empties on their table, I guess they had taken quite a lot of advantage.

After 7am, as the market began to wind down, more porters began to arrive and fill the room with their fun loving Cock-er-ney banter. I left just as the men at the next table began to describe in all too graphic detail what they would like to do to Jordan. That was too much for me on a full stomach.

Still it was a very nice breakfast indeed ,and now the cretins at Blogspot have got things sorted, you don't have to take my words for it.

ROAST

ALONE IN MY CAVE IT'S CORNFLAKES AND CAMELS AND THE LONG RESTLESS SHADOWS OF MY LIFE

A favourite joke from a favourite comedian:

"I went to a restaurant that serves 'Breakfast at any time'.
So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance."

Breakfast, breakfast, breakfast. According W. Somerset Maugham that’s what you need to eat well in England. No longer true, in London, leastways. But it had been a long time since I had had the Full English (Got your big plate Alan?) so a Saturday morning, only slightly trammelled by the fug of a bourbon hangover, seemed the perfect time to revisit this quintessentially English custom.

Roast is the second restaurant of Iqbal Wahhab (the first being the Cinnamon Club). It had pretty mixed reviews when it opened. The bottom line was: nice room, shame about the food (and service). DH go down to BM at least once a week so I thought a visit from one of the gruesome twosome was overdue. The hottest day of the year seemed like just the right time. We suffer so you, gentle reader, don’t have to.

After a tussle with the Misery Line I entered the rather handsome (and thankfully air-conditioned) dining space and was shown to a nice table with a view over the market. A small cafetiere and a plate of decent hot toast soon followed. Too bad the joe, as I usually find with this delivery system was weak and rather thin. Still it did a job. I also got a glass of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice which was nice.

My eyes bypassed the delights of “Inverawe Smoked Loch Etive Trout with Scrambled Eggs” and “Tattie Scone with Ayrshire Bacon, Field Mushrooms and a Fried Egg” (whatever that is) and settled upon the “The Full Borough”. This consisted of…well look at the photo.

The sausages were pretty good - meaty and dense. The eggs were cooked well, but the bacon, oh dear oh dear. The small pieces of streaky tasted ok but had had only a brief introduction to the grill. The result was a flaccid piece of pork (something I am only too well acquainted with).

Unfortunately this was a real deal-breaker for me. A decent English breakfast must have good bacon. As Roast is only seconds away from stalls such as Ginger Pig & Sillifield farm it shouldn’t be beyond their wit to obtain a few pounds of decent stuff and cook it properly. It shouldn’t be, but it was. I was also irritated that the coffee refill that was offered came with an unannounced extra charge (shouldn’t refills be free?). The whole thing reminded me of a Conran operation - looks good on the surface but let down by the execution. On the plus side it is a nice room and the service was efficient and friendly. But as a place to have breakfast - not really.

JK Galbraith once said "It takes some skill to spoil a breakfast - even the English can't do it". Sorry Johnny-boy, I’ve found an exception to the rule.