October 2006 Archives

We may be used to sport being played in strange locations in hotels in Dubai ...... Tiger Woods teed off the helipad at the Burj al Arab on Jumeirah beach and if I remember correctly Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras played tennis on the same helipad.... but the Madinat Jumeirah have taken the pursuit to another level of absurdity.

To celebrate staging the Legends "Rock" Dubai tennis tournament, the nearby Madinat Jumeirah hotel persuaded five-time Wimbledon champion and true tennis great Bjorn Borg to have a rally across one of the hotel's waterways with tennis's "greatest entertainer" Mansour Bahrami. Not sure whether this is the most dignified game of tennis ever played by Borg.

It's nice to see a sense a humour among chefs. Sometime bad boy chef Tom Aikens' latest London venture Tom's Kitchen opens very soon in Cale Street and in a nice twist of humour, and a reference to the famous spoon incident at his self-named restaurant Tom Aikens a couple of years ago, the invite to the opening comes via a wooden spoon marked with the words "The Property of Tom's Kitchen". Nice touch Tom... see you there.

I see that blogging is fast catching on and that Charles Campion, the lovable and larger-than-life Evening Standard restaurant critic, now has his own blog on the Evening Standard's website. Lets hope that Campion doesn't just repackage the stuff he writes for the Standard and gives users some interesting stories. His first account on his trip to Les Maisons de Bricourt - Olivier Roellinger's three-star Michelin restaurant in Cancale in France - with last year's winner of the Roux Scholarship Pravin Sharma, who cooks at Silk restaurant in London's Kempinski Courthouse hotel, is interesting enough. Caterer's chef editor Joanna Wood went on the same trip, so we look forward to comparing her take on the trip with Campion's. Of course, if you can't remember what Charles Campion looks like then take a look at a previous Kitchen Rat entry.

I see that blogging is fast catching on and that Charles Campion, the lovable and larger-than-life Evening Standard restaurant critic, now has his own blog on the Evening Standard's website. Lets hope that Campion doesn't just repackage the stuff he writes for the Standard and gives users some interesting stories. His first account on his trip to Les Maisons de Bricourt - Olivier Roellinger's three-star Michelin restaurant in Cancale in France - with last year's winner of the Roux Scholarship Pravin Sharma, who cooks at Silk restaurant in London's Kempinski Courthouse hotel, is interesting enough. Caterer's chef editor Joanna Wood went on the same trip, so we look forward to comparing her take on the trip with Campion's. Of course, if you can't remember what Charles Campion looks like then take a look at a previous Kitchen Rat entry.

I see that blogging is fast catching on and that Charles Campion, the lovable and larger-than-life Evening Standard restaurant critic, now has his own blog on the Evening Standard's website. Lets hope that Campion doesn't just repackage the stuff he writes for the Standard and gives users some interesting stories. His first account on his trip to Les Maisons de Bricourt - Olivier Roellinger's three-star Michelin restaurant in Cancale in France - with last year's winner of the Roux Scholarship Pravin Sharma, who cooks at Silk restaurant in London's Kempinski Courthouse hotel, is interesting enough. Caterer's chef editor Joanna Wood went on the same trip, so we look forward to comparing her take on the trip with Campion's. Of course, if you can't remember what Charles Campion looks like then take a look at a previous Kitchen Rat entry.

Foul-mouthed Gordon Ramsay gets the spoof treatment in a rip-off of his latest show the F-word on video sharing website YouTube. It's called the T-word and its worth a look for a laugh.

Have you seen this great website bitterwaitress.com ..... Basically, waiters and waitresses post comments about tight tippers and mean arses. Of course, there's the odd celebrity entry, such as this one about Brad Pitt which makes interesting reading.

By all accounts, the godfather of British chefs Marco Pierre White is to step back into the kitchen.... not any of his own kitchens though, but reality TV show's Hell's Kitchen. MPW officially retired from cooking when he famously returned his three Michelin stars at the Oak Room in the Le Meridien Picadilly hotel in December 1999. Now he says he is "looking forward to getting back into the ring". And why's he doing it... well he said: "I'm doing it for myself."

Look closely at the package below and just below the lettering you should see a pair of eyes and then the little green body of a frog.
What probably happened is the water the lettuce was washed in contained polliwogs (mature tadpoles), which matured into frogs in the package (bizarrely enough there is a chain of restaurants in the US called Polliwogs). This salad must have been produced for the brand Florette in Mexico, where clearly they take extra care in making sure animals remain unharmed.

You just can't keep the good man down! He's either campaigning about the quality of school meals, lecturing parents on pack lunches or doing a cookery show from somewhere around the globe. But just when you think you can escape Jamie Oliver by going online and avoiding his website, he does a clever bit of marketing with web giant AOL and its new phone service AOL Talk and launches another campaign called Home Cooking Day. If you are interested then click on this Jamie Oliver link, but it's basically clever marketing for his new book, which is called Cook with Jamie - my guide to making you a better cook.

The much maligned face of Fairy washing-up liquid and chef Ainsley Harriott would appear at first glance to have a new celebrity endorsement up his billowing white-clad sleeve. Not sure what goes into Ainsley's sausages that the rest of us are not allowed to know about, but we're sure they'll make you "feel good". By the way ... remember "*** with a fork"!

It's been on the news agenda for a few years, but suddenly showing your green credentials is something to be proud of.

Being called a "treehugger" for being an environmental evangelist is no longer an insult, in fact its a compliment (see this website treehuggermums for more information on being a "green" mum).