Photo: Paul Yockney (1981) Taken after my time at the new Gondolier after it had moved from Helston to Longdowns.
After I'd worked there for a while, and on a day of severe staff shortages (oddly enough, whenever the sun was out - this was Cornwall after all), he allowed me to have a go at plating up desserts. I obviously displayed some kind of aptitude for it as I was soon making desserts and starters every day and the skivers suddenly found themselves on pots and pans.
Within six months I was helping to cook the mains and, in no time at all, I had learned most of the basics of being a chef. Salvatore also taught me knife skills and time-planning - an absolute must for any chef that has to get several different covers completed and delivered to table simultaneously. It was a stressful and manic baptism of fire, especially during the tourist season, but it meant that, by the time I was eighteen I could cook a very wide range of meals to restaurant standard. I loved working in that kitchen and I very nearly took a place I was offered at a catering college in Bristol.
But life took me in a different direction.
I moved to London to become a cop instead (as the result of a £50 bet with my Dad - but that's another story).
In the early 1980s, I co-rented a house with two guys; a helicopter engineer called Steve and an accountant called John who worked for Heinz foods. That's us in the photo above demonstrating what happens when you mix snow with excessive alcohol. Without going into all the sordid details, it was rather like living in an extended episode of Men Behaving Badly with riotous house parties and a great deal of silliness. We even had a mini-pub - complete with barrels of lager and bitter, taps, cooling unit etc. - set up permanently in the kitchen (we made room for it by putting the washing machine in the garage and hanging out at the launderette near the Hillingdon Hospital nurses' accommodation). I cooked most of the food in the house - shift work permitting - but that was no bad thing. John brought home endless freebies and cheapies from his work but Man cannot live on beans alone - as we would have done otherwise.
And, to this day, good food and cooking are still two of my great passions. I love discovering new restaurants and am always keen to try new cuisines. I also have no food phobias and I've eaten everything from calf brains to honey ants, squirrel to 'swinging beef' (bison testicles) and all sorts in between. Upon arriving in London in 1980, I went into foodie overload as Cornwall didn't, at that time, have such things as Indian or Thai or Greek food outlets. I saved up and ate in many of the best restaurants just for the experience (and to impress a few lady friends) and I soon developed a fairly encyclopaedic knowledge of London's eateries. And I'd regualrly slip across the channel on a 'booze cruise' with colleagues - while they hit the supermarkets I hit the Fruits de Mer and Moules Farcie.
All of which brings me to the point of this blogpost.
Being a cop in the West End in the mid 1980s, I was often asked by tourists for good restaurants to eat in and I could usually answer their questions. All except one:
'Where can I get a good traditional British meal?'
One of the treats when abroad is seeking out genuine local food - as eaten by the inhabitants - whether you're in China, Italy, Greece or even America.
But where can you go in Britain for authentic British food?
It was a tough one to answer. In central London (at the time) there were Beefeater Steakhouses and Wimpeys. There were pubs that served roast dinners or that specialised in terrific pies. There were greasy spooneries where you could get a Full English. If you had money to spend you could take high tea at the Ritz or visit Tiddy Dol's Eating House in Mayfair (now, sadly, long gone). But that was pretty much it. Plus, there was the tricky question of what 'British Cuisine' actually is.
The British are cultural magpies. Our language is a mongrel of Latin, French, Anglo-Saxon, Norse and many other influences (as, indeed, are we as a race). Incredibly, there is very little 'English' in the mix. As many as 350 other languages are represented and their contributions actually make up about 80% of the language. Even native British languages like Welsh, Scots and Cornish have barely impacted on modern English - we use more Hawaiian words than Welsh, for example (Source: Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English by Dr Philip Durkin).
And it's the same with many dishes that we consider to be quintessentially British. Fish and chips has borrowed fried potatoes from Belgian cuisine and fried fish in batter from Jewish tradition. Even the classic Sunday Roast is problematic. Potatoes came here from South America. Chickens and cauliflowers came from Asia. Swede came from Bohemia and carrots originated in Iran or Afghanistan. There's almost nothing on the plate - except for parsnips and bread sauce - that's authentically British.
But putting all that to one side, we do actually have a fantastic range of British foods and we should be bloody proud of them. From bloaters and whisky, haggis and square sausage in Scotland right down to pasties and clotted cream, star gazey pie, saffron buns and hog's pudding in Cornwall, we have a staggering number of wonderful foods and tasty dishes to boast about. Many counties have their own delicacies and so do many towns and cities. Think Bakewell tarts, Welsh laver bread and cockles, Bury black pudding and the huge range of sausages and cheeses we produce.
This book, ironically produced to celebrate our unique and valued culinary contribution to Europe, is jam-packed with beautiful foodstuffs.
So shouldn't there be a chain of restaurants that offers the very best of British fare? If not for us, for the tourists at least. Just think about what we could offer - the chutneys and pickles, the jams and soups, the cakes and breads, the glorious casseroles and stews. And the pies and puddings! Oh my, the puddings. No country I've ever visited can produce homely, heart-warming delights to match a good steak and kidney pud, or a spotted dick or rhubarb crumble with properly thick custard (Creme Anglais? Pah!), or warm treacle tart with Cornish ice cream, or a wonderfully stodgy bread and butter pud.
Damn me, if I had the money, I'd open a chain of them. The tourists would love it. And I'm pretty sure a great many British families would eat there too. Surely that's a better way to celebrate our cultural heritage than flag-waving or singing the national anthem?
To hell with the fact that many of the ingredients and techniques weren't originally from these islands - we've made bangers and mash, cullen skink, shepherds' pies, Eton mess, Lancashire hotpots, and roly-poly puddings our own and they're now as British as red phone boxes.
So, here's a question for you ... what would you put on the menu of our restaurants?
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