Category: Food & Drink

From some source or another SOTI:

It’s been a rocky year for the restaurant industry, with rising costs due to inflation and changing consumer habits driving a slew of chains with household names into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to those who follow the industry, there is no definable silver lining ahead for an industry in deep trouble.

Have to agree with this, because it’s a well-known fact that once food prices go up, they never come down again.

Last Sunday New Wife and I took a little trip to Sherman TX (a.k.a. the last exit off the highway before you get to Oklahoma) for a little antique / bargain shopping.  (I know, I know;  to most men, “antiquing” is just another term for “strap the rat cage to my face”, but I don’t mind it because New Wife and I have very similar tastes when it comes to shopping, and she is a fanatical scrimper  when it comes to this kind of thing.)

Anyway:  Sherman is not in the middle of nowhere, but you can certainly see Nowhere from the town square.  One would expect a small town to have small-town prices, and indeed, the wares are the antique mall were very reasonable.  (Not that we bought anything, but still.)

On the other hand, it was when we went out for lunch that the shock hit home.

You see, I’m in charge of the grocery shopping chez  du Toit, so I’m accustomed to the price increases in food — I’ve ranted about it often enough on these pages — and I’ll be honest and say that we haven’t eaten “out” in about four months, other than the occasional takeout order of fries from Sonic and the like.

So we treated ourselves to a small BBQ lunch at the Cackle & Oink [sic], a nice little place just north of town.  Modest premises, hometown feel, lots of locals inside… you know the drill.

And two small meals with iced tea came to over $50.

I nearly passed out.

Look, BBQ has always been kinda spendy, I know.  But in the past, a small order of ribs and brisket (our normal fare) seldom ran over $30, or maybe a tad over with the tip.  But $50???

Somebody told me the other day that two burgers at Five Guys now costs in the region of $40, and I couldn’t believe them.  Now, I do.

It just means that we’ll be eating at home in the future, and if my prognosis about food prices is indeed true, we’ll never be eating out again.  What a lovely prospect (and just when we were beginning to claw ourselves out of our recent abject poverty, too).

And for restaurants, the prospects will be similarly gloomy, you betcha.

I don’t know what could possibly avert this situation.  Maybe a Trump election would help, in that some sanity will be restored and inflation tamed, but somehow I doubt it.

Here’s a story which made me scratch my head:

She proceeds to tear apart the battered fish and dip it into tartare sauce, and then grabs a handful of chips.

So far, so good.  The baffling thing?

Returning to the fish, Bella continues to eat with her fingers.

…which left her Brit readers appalled.

Bella’s unconventional approach of eating fish with her fingers took social media by storm, sparking debate among netizens. One observer posted: “I’ve never seen someone eat fish and chips with their hands.”

I’m sorry?  Eating F&C with a knife and fork is like eating pizza or a hot dog with a knife and fork;  you can do it, but why?  (As my old Zulu buddy Sipho Tshabalala once put it:  “How can you taste the food when you don’t touch it?”  And he’s quite right.)

Americans may be forgiven for not knowing this, by the way, because Over Here one buys fish and chips at a restaurant and eats it sitting at a table, where eating with one’s fingers is generally frowned upon.

But in the true British Empire fashion, fish & chips is street food.  You buy it through a chippy’s window on the street, it comes wrapped in paper (once newspaper, alas no more), and you eat it on the run, so to speak, holding the steaming bag of F&C in one hand while pulling it apart and stuffing it in your face with the other.  (This polystyrene thing, as in the above picture, is yet another clear pointer to the fall of civilization as far as I’m concerned.)

And it tastes fucking wonderful.  (My mouth is watering as I write this.)  Yeah, your hands end up all greasy (as do your lips) from the oil and vinegar — but that’s all part of the experience.

This modern obsession with cleanliness is stupid, by the way, and no more so than when consuming one of the great food dishes of the world.

From the experts comes this advice on how to make a perfect cup of tea.

Yorkshire Tea reveals how to make the perfect cuppa

I don’t know how to do that many things well — but when it comes to making tea, I do it perfectly.

From an early age, I used to make my mom a night-time cuppa, brewed in a small teapot, which I would take up to her bedroom for her to drink in bed before she said her prayers and went to sleep.  I did it every night for years until I went to boarding school, and even then I’d do it for her during school holidays, right up until I moved out of home.

I have, in short, brewed thousands of cups of tea in my lifetime.

New Wife drinks tea, upwards of six cups a day where possible, and she says that indeed, I make the best tea she’s ever had.  (She drinks Yorkshire Gold, by the way.  I turned her onto it before we got married, and now it’s all she drinks.)

Just for the record, I make her tea precisely the way that Yorkshire Tea says it should be made, with one small addition:  I first warm her cup with hot water while the water is boiling before emptying it and putting the teabag in, then pouring the boiling water over the teabag.  (The tea brews more quickly that way.)

And before anyone gets on my case about teabags vs. loose tea:  with YG, there is no difference in taste between the two — yes, I did a blind taste test with New Wife, who couldn’t tell the difference.  (And if she can’t, nobody can.)

Finally:  I’m a Tiffy.  Always have been, because putting the milk in after the tea has brewed is the only way to bring the tea to the desired color / strength.  Some people like it brown, others lighter.  My kids — also devoted tea drinkers — prefer it strongly-brewed but paler (D1 in the chart below), with sugar, while New Wife prefers it to be medium strength and a sort of tan color (C3) with no sugar.  It’s an art.

Like I said, this is important stuff.