Le Quartier Francais

Best meal we had in South Africa – hands down. Le Petite Ferme had a better view, Terrior was more charming and Le Colombe was snazzier but the cooking was better here. Inventive use of ingredients, pushing the envelope at times – most dishes had about as many flavours as they could take without overcrowding the plate or overwhelming the palate, just about. I had to taste everything more than once – first time around on its own and then in varying combinations. Everything was excellent, a few things outstanding – the cooking was bold and ambitious without being stupid or overly fussy. More importantly, it all worked.

We had the five course menu and different things for each course so we could sample ten dishes rather than having the same eight course tasting menu. In terms of courses, two which stood out for me were the Pig’s Trotters and Sweetbreads Salad and the Braised Lamb Neck but if I had to pick single thing I enjoyed the most, it had to be the aubergine souffle which came with the Roasted Wildebeest.

Cooking aside, the dining room was a touch too noisy (sound bounces off a hard floor) and lighting could be better – as in brighter, I always like to be able to see my food. The service was a little hesitant and while the wine list was absolutely enlightened by Franschoek standards, I suspect the sommelier would have struggled to find two wines to go with every course. That said, this was possibly the best meal we had this year.

Cape Excess

We’re back from South Africa – a week of wine, sunshine and food. Oh, the food. So many restaurants, so little time. On the other hand, there is only so much fine dining you can do in the space of seven days – we had chicken mee sua for dinner last night and that was comforting. Pictures are up on my Facebook page – restaurant reports and wine tasting notes to follow.

Honey Trap

Miele has just published its list of top Asian restaurants for 2009/2010. Porco disagrees with some of the rankings but more of that later – hot off the press, Bloomberg’s food critic made an interesting comment on the paucity of Asian restuarants in that list.

For the most part, I agree with what Richard Vines has to say but you’d also have to admit Asian restaurants are great for food and flavour but not so hot on presentation and ambience. The best Chinese meal I’ve had in the last few months was at Made in China in Beijing but by the end of the meal, the table looked like a war zone complete with body parts strewn on the lazy susan. The other problem with Asian restaurants is the quality of the serving staff – too often you get moonlighting students or illegal immigrants who have no idea what you are eating or even if you are getting the correct order. Which is why, for Porco, the most impressive thing about Iggy’s is the service - unobtrusive, understated and unbelieveably professional.

Turning to the list, a couple of things don’t make sense. The two Robuchon L’Ateliers which top and tail the best 20 are, for me, very much the same if not identical. The differences could only be down to one of them having a bad day when the judges visited. For my money, I would put Robuchon a Galera in Macau in first place – classic plates, full-sized and incredible value. Plus a wine list that would put most telephone directories to shame. I would also argue if you walked into Yung Kee, you would be hard pressed to justify its lofty status on the list. You’d get a better meal at T’ang Court at the Langham.

I am a huge fan of Zanotti in Bangkok and think it deserves a place at least six rungs higher. Then there are the omissions. I think Nicolas Joanny and his eponymous establishment deserves a mention as does the black pepper crab at Eng Seng. Time to make more than tweaks at Miele where the worthies have fallen in that age old trap of thinking tradition, astronomical prices as well as white table cloths equals quality, innovation and good eating. In case you’re wondering … miele means honey in Italian.

Two wheels

If you had asked a year ago if I could imagine spending hours pedalling on a quiet road in the early hours of the morning, I would have simply laughed and poured you another drink. The stuff on two wheels started as part of the fitness thing but it has taken on a life of its own. Sure the fitness helps and you can only enjoy the rest of it if you’re not killing yourself trying to pedal at a constant 25km/h.  So, if you spare the pun, its a cycle – you ride to get fit and the fitter you are, the better the ride. In the same way, the tight cycling clothes really only look good if you are good and vice versa.

That said, there’s the other stuff – the philosophical bits. Did you really think it was just about two wheels on a frame, a bit of chain and some aluminium things?

First, if you are pedalling along and minding your own business, there is no guarantee a taxi won’t come from behind and knock you over. Shit happens – that’s life. Next, a bicycle is an inherently unstable thing – deal with the instability. Cycling is about balancing. It helps if you pedal faster but you can’t do that forever, sometimes you have to get off the bike. Finally, know that you will fall over sometime. If your cleats are still attached to your pedals, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Just hope a taxi doesn’t come by when that happens.

Weekend War Wounds

What a weekend! Getting used to the cleats and pedals took a bit of time on Saturday – the first 30 minutes were really bad but it got better. The only casualty was the left pedal which was quite scratched from my feeble attempts to flip, kick and jam my left foot in – but we got there and no accidents.

Sunday was a totally different matter. There was a time trial on the coastal road so I decided to go through the park not realising there were two different runs taking place along different stretches of the park. Moving onto the road was initally much better until I got to a stretch of one way traffic and a speeding van weaving its way past parked cars and bikes on both sides.  It was looking too close for comfort so I tried to get on the grass verge – managed to get my left foot off before the bike went from under me. Amazingly, the right foot freed itself and I managed to stay on my feet as well as leaping over a small drain in the process. Total damage done was a slightly twisted handlebar and a ripped velcro strip on one shoe.

Things could have been better but then they could also have been much worse.

Shock Horror

Porco has started exercising – the words “lean porc” have taken a whole new meaning. Two whole kilos have been vapourised in two and a bit weeks. It will become harder. We started with 2.4 km, 3.2 km, 4.5 km and 4 km runs plus 12 km and 19 km bike rides. Forgotten parts of the body are complaining, muscles I have not previously made the acquaintance of are rebelling – I am thirsty and sleepy all the time.

Food for thought

Porco is a creature of habit – 25 years after he left secondary school, he still eats the same stuff for lunch almost every day. Fried chicken, sambal sotong and bean sprouts from a Malay rice stall. Same stuff, different stall. As Mr Ping (Kungfu Panda’s father – and yes, he is a bird so go figure) says “we are noodle folk, broth runs through our veins”. We are what we eat.

That said, I am not sure if I want my daily lunch to be my last supper. Porco has been reading a book about 50 chefs and what they want for their last meal. Foie gras figures a lot but then so does context. Where you eat, who you eat with and even the background music. Perhaps in this case, it’s a question of what you want being a function of who you are – so chefs have to eat what they have to cook so they end up liking what they have to cook. So much for work-life balance. I once met a chef who was appalled that I’d never had caviar and Krug – he felt I hadn’t lived and he had to remedy that immediately – never mind that I was 20 years old at the time. Context? You want context? You can’t handle context!

At some level, food is about being fed and probably the best meals you’ve ever had are the ones when you’ve needed or wanted food most. So for his last meal, Porco wants what he had after every swimming lesson when he was young (and cold, tired and very hungry) – pork porridge with a raw egg, some spring onions and coriander, a bit of pepper and soy sauce.

Love in a time of cholera

Well, not quite but the most visible symptoms of the swine flu non-pandemic have been paranoia and stupidity – on Wednesday (about a week after the threat level had been raised to orange) the landlord of the building where Porco works announced the commencement of screening for all tenants and visitors to the building on Friday. Yesterday, the threat level was reduced to yellow. No screening today – what a surprise. Last weekend at the public library, they took everyone’s address details but not their temperature – so they can find us if someone gets sick, but they don’t worry about preventing sick people from walking into the place, talk about pearls of wisdom before swine.

And another thing – the stuff looks treatable and apart from cases in Mexico, not many people are dying. I know there were a couple of deaths in the US but those looked like they were not getting treatment until it was too late. Is it something about the state of healthcare in Mexico? Or is it a question of – death, where is thy sting?

Porco’s brother – who has an advanced degree in epidemiology – thinks it is more about life and less about death. He thinks it’s about the way the animals we farm for food lives – pack them in and pump them full of antibiotics. Most of the time everything goes as planned and nothing happens. Once in a while, the drugs don’t work and the sickness gets to people. Like a bad case of agricultural terrorism, people need to be vigilant all the time but the pigs (or more specifically, the viruses) need only be lucky once in a while.

As the words of the Maori haka go – Ka Mate! Ka Ora!

Math and Physics

Porco has been thinking about the present financial crisis – some have blamed it on greed, others on ignorance. Porco thinks of it in terms of physics and metaphysics, plus a bit of relativity and even a little religion.

Let’s start with speed. Speed is the distance travelled over a given amount of time. The Basel Capital Accord is more than twenty years old – and a lot has happened in that twenty years in the financial markets. The central banks simply got left behind. It was a clever idea to divide assets into three – the good, the bad and the uglyPorco remembers addressing a meeting in 2001 with representatives from the G7 central banks and discussing CDO default models with them. Nothing has happened since then. 

The problem with speed is that it is also another name for velocity and that multiplied by mass gives momentum. Given enough momentum, anything – derivatives, financial instruments or space shuttles – can defy the laws of gravity or free itself from anything holding it back, even the rules of financial regulation, and launch into an orbit of indeterminate shape or duration. We are venturing into territory where no financial regulator has ever been, boldly or otherwise. Sometimes, that which has launched itself into space could come crashing back to earth, burning up upon re-entry.

Now Porco is no longer religious as he was in his youth but he is reminded about the bit in Revelation where the seven angels are given trumpets and then another angel joins them – so there were eight. The angels blow their trumpets and by the time the fifth angel sounds its trumpet, a star falls to earth and to him is given the key to the bottomless pit. Then the locusts arrive.

Singapore Biennale 2008

So its theme is “wonder” – Webster’s dictionary (I know, I know … American) defines the word:

¹won·der

Pronunciation: \ˈwən-dər\

Function: noun

Etymology:

Middle English, from Old English wundor; akin to Old High German wuntar wonder

Date:

before 12th century

a cause of astonishment or admiration, the quality of exciting amazed admiration, rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience, or a feeling of doubt or uncertainty.

Hmmm, I wonder …