Eating Albion

At Channel 4 I work nine-day fortnights, which gives me every other Friday off. Last Friday was just such an occasion, and I had a busy, enjoyable day planned. Sadly, it didn’t quite end as expected. After a lovely lunch (cheese and pickle sandwich on their own bread, and a gorgonzola and mushroom quiche – see, I do veggie sometimes!) from the Blackbird bakery here in the lofty eyrie that is Crystal Palace, I set off into town.

Firstly, I wanted a new kitchen knife. The knives I own are all still good, bar some battle scars and chips, but what with my new project and the January sales, I thought it was time to treat myself. I also wanted to visit the Selfridges’ food hall and meet a pal to take delivery of a new lens and flashgun for my camera, and finish with a few drinks. What could be more fun than a Friday afternoon spent foodie shopping and bar-hopping around London town?

At Selfridges, a quick nose around the cookware section reveals some rather nice Henkel knives in the sale, but I leave them and head to the food hall. At the butcher’s counter, I get two lamb shanks on a whim, because they looked nice, then get talking to the butcher about chickens and all the stuff we’ve been doing at Channel 4 this week. Selfridges, rather unsurprisingly, boasts a large selection of quality chicken from England and France. There are two Poulet de Bresse, and when he weighs one up for me, it comes in at £24, head on, giblets in! This is the champagne of chickens, with protected regional status. But, unlike champagne, it just hasn’t achieved that aura of exclusivity in the minds of the British public - no one ever launched a ship by slamming a Poulet de Bresse against it, and Formula 1 drivers don’t throw them at each other on the winner’s podium. I chicken out of buying one, proving that, although on a different economic scale, I too suffer from ‘chicken can be expensive’ conditioning. Besides, it looks a little… well, scrawny?

Instead, I enquire about one of the Duc de Mayenne birds next to them, which the butcher tells me are his favourite. It’s a bigger bird at 1.6kg, and and I buy one at £10.30p. From what I can read of the label (my French being utter merde), this little fella has had 89 days outdoors and was fed on a natural diet of vegetables and minerals. I think that’s pretty good value, especially for Selfridges Food Hall. (More on French Chicken here.) There’s talk on the BBC Food message boards of the supermarkets charging £10 for free-range and organic chicken this week, and still running out. In telly production land that’s called ‘doing a Delia’, in honour of the time the nation had a run on eggs after she showed us how to boil one in the late 90s – oh, how far we’ve come! Now if the supermarkets were really as omnipotent and evil as we all say they are, they would have quietly raised the price of organic and free-range chicken before the Big Food Fight season. Unlike bread, milk, and tea, free-range chicken isn’t a KVI - a known value item - meaning that most people don’t really know how much it costs. Add to this the influx of new converts to free-range chicken - who are expecting to pay more and who want to pay more - and the supermarkets could really have pulled a fast one if they wanted to. It’s all supply and demand. I just hope whoever is supplying the multiples with free-range or organic birds has doubled their prices, too!

I digress. Chicken bagged, I meet Andy in the Spice of Life, and after a quick one we hit catering trade shops Pages, Leon’s and Denny’s – where this chopping board made me laugh. Denny’s also has a broader range of knives, including Wushtof, but, like the Poulet de Bresse, they’re a little out of my budget for today. They also have some Henkel knives on sale, but not as cheap as the ones in Selfridges! So it’s back there we go (via Berwick street market for some veg for the chicken) to pick up these two beauties.

All ‘jobs’ being done and a thirst coming on, we march double time to The Grenadier. This pub is hidden somewhere between Victoria and Hyde Park Corner, down a mews that was once for the stable boys and horses but is now for city boys and Lexuses. It’s tiny, but busy, and we squeeze in at the bar with all our stuff and I set about making a dent in the Timothy Taylor. Although it probably offers the usual crisps and nuts, it also offers - at a pound each - wonderful hot, thick pork sausages with a dollop of mustard and ketchup, from an electric casserole on the back of the bar. A few months ago I bemoaned the lack of decent ‘bar food’, and this is what I was talking about: hot, tasty, and cheap. It’s the fantastic combo of a great English beer and English sausage in a proper English pub. Heaven.

We then head to the Nag’s Head in Knightsbridge (I know, it sounds like an oxymoron!) which is another great little pub, although being where it is, the Hugo-and-Saffy count is rather high. We end the night here, and having had a lovely relaxing day bodding about town I head home content… Which is when things start to go wrong.

I get to the front door at 11:45pm, to find I’ve lost my keys. I’m locked out. Bear in mind I’m carrying a Nikon 200mm AF Lens and SB-600 flashgun (boxed), my Nikon D70 camera, a book, two kitchen knives, three potatoes, a bunch of carrots, some tarragon, two onions and a large French chicken. Worse, my phone is flat and it’s starting to rain. All the warmth and colour of the evening drain out of me.

I walk round to a friend’s house, but there’s no one home. On the way back, I pass a closed Lorenzo’s – Crystal Palace’s much-loved traditional trattoria, which has seen the likes of Kelly Brook and Billy Zane grace its tables, and where nothing is too much for the customers. Finishing up for the night, Fabio, the owner, gives me a wave. My frantic gesturing brings him to the door. I’m convinced I’ve left the locking latch of one of my windows and that if I just had a ladder I could get in. There’s a viewing from the estate agent at 11am the next day, and I need to give the place a spit and a polish before then.

‘Sure, I’ve got a ladder,’ he says, and very kindly lends me his 30ft extendable ladder. (How many other restaurant managers would lend you a ladder?) I then spend 45 minutes trying to break in to my own flat. By now it’s starting to look like the start of a Casualty episode - the bit just before the ‘injury’ is sustained. When I realise I’m 14ft up a wet slippery ladder trying to jemmy open a window with a screwdriver, I have a ‘What the hell are you doing?’ moment. At 1am I give up. Cold and wet, I walk back to Lorenzo’s with the ladder, where he gives me a beer – what a guy – and the use of the phone. But my mobile is flat, and nowadays no one knows anyone’s number, do they, apart from your parents’ landline. Then I remember my iPod, which has my contacts synced to it. I’m saved! I ring the friends whose door I buzzed, but although they’re away, I’m friends with their parents, too, who happen to run a B&B in Crystal Palace. Being parents, they’re the sort of people who answer landlines when they ring at 1:30am in the morning, so I turn up at Sue and Tim’s looking like a drowned, muddy rat (with chicken et al). They very kindly grant me the use of their sofa.

In the morning, I collect a set of keys from the estate agent, get a new set cut, then run around manically tidying up for the 11am viewing. At 10:40, they cancel the viewing – bastards! Furthermore, all the window locks were fully locked and I wouldn’t have been able to get in anyway. Thus ended ‘one of those days’ that the Gods see fit to send us once in a while for their sport, and remind you that, in the end, at least you didn’t die. I’ll tell you what I did with the chicken in the next post.