Overrated Food & Drink

Sushi - tried a free sample in the supermarket. Horrible.

Olives - A nice sweet and tasty grape's bitter cousin.

Lobster - disappointing and lacking in taste.

Consomme Soup - rank. Nasty.

 

Nando's.

Anything from a restaurant that describes its cuisine as "fusion".

Disagree with you on the ones above though, like all of them!

 

Oh yeah and black pudding (congealed blood in a sausage skin) and kippers (haven't eaten but have smelt the stink if them being cooked).

And Brie cheese - tasteless goo. Sullies the good name of cheese in general.

 

Lobster and champagne.

 

Cornish Brie and bacon sandwich mmmmmmm

 

Has anyone tried the independent food stalls at the top of the high street, directly under the low flyover bridge/Market entrance. Wraps/Jerk Chicken/Falafals etc

Wanting to support the local traders, I have succumbed quite a few times at these various outlets over the years but unfortunately have to say the food always seems to smell a lot better than it actually tastes.

Has anyone else found that, or can anyone recommend one of the stalls that is constantly decent?

 

Oysters.

 

Anything that is a veggie/vegan version of meat, eg. vegan sausages. Absolutely rank and why I'd never become a veggie/vegan.

 

Things I hate: fussy eaters.

 

There's your mistake.

There's no such thing as good supermarket sushi. It's all terrible.

Good stuff tastes nothing like it.

 

Most food is overrated.

It gives us the sustenance we need, and in the right settings can provide social opportunities to enjoy, but for heavens sake, if people are worried about the planet and/or their financial situation, then they should stop over-indulging in expensive and pretentious food.

Same with wine, particularly champagne.

It all goes in the same way, and out the other.

 

Champagne is horribly over-rated. Give me a bottle of £6 proseco any day. Can't stand knobs in a restaurant who just order champagne to impress. It achieves the opposite.

Oysters, any shellfish, it's like swallowing a really productive snot-catch from a handkerchief.

 

Avacado and halloumi.

I don't know what it is with these two but for some reason they have become really popular in the last year or two. I also find that anytime someone eats either, they feel like they need to tell the world about it, as if its cool.

Really weird and doesn't taste that great.

 

Ooooooooh how wrong you are. A bottle of stout (Shepherd Neame in Kent), oysters, squirt of lemon/lime (those heathens in Malden prefer onion vinegar) and a single drop of Tabasco (red or brown)....heaven.

[ANECDOTE] When I first met my best mate (from Wigan) we had both just arrived in Canterbury. The celebrate this meeting we went on the mother of all piss-ups (looking for a decent, non-touristy, pub in Canterbury city centre) which culminated in a ganja session that a touring reggae band would have been proud of. Woke up on the Sunday morning a little bit 'fragile'. So fragile the smell of water was making us both ill. The 'Wiganner' (a toxicologist) decided that the best thing for us was some sea air so he would drive us both to Whitstable. Cue the drive from hell, stopping every 150m for one (or both of us) to spew (outside the car).

We finally arrived for the bracing see air and it wasn't making us any better. We both knew that one of the causes of a hangover was the in vivo production of aldehydes/ketones which could be stopped by the small intake of ethanol (there is a scientific basis to 'the hair of the dog') so we ordered a couple of halves in the Whitstable Oyster Co. The barmaid looked at us and said "What you really need are some of these..." plonking a 1/2 dozen of Whitstable's finest in front us. Thinking that we couldn't possibly couldn't get any sicker and that they would also have a purgative effect we gingerly tried one and....... felt much, much better.

So much so that a Sunday oyster breakfast (a few times fried in a 'fry-up' but usually raw) became a very regular event.[/ANECDOTE]

 

Avocado.

 

Duck - What little meat there is on it is greasy, comes off in scraps and doesn't taste of very much.

No wonder they have to tip a gallon of strongly flavoured orange sauce over it to make it edible.


Okra - Sometimes called 'ladies fingers'. It would be an appropriate name if lady's digits were bright green, very wrinkled and dripping with a drool like goo. And I've not come across that, not even in Hemel Hempstead.

 

Only agree with you whole heartedly on this point Clive. Lobster is extremely overrated in my opinion. Give me some crab meat any day over Lobster. Consomme Soup I'm more meh about.

Olives and Sushi though, you're wrong.

 

Yes. A fruit that tastes apalling and is really bad for you due to the cholesterol. What was evolution thinking ??

 

Avacado I get but halloumi is great!

 

I think there's a lot of people out there who pretend to enjoy certain types of food to fit a fake image they are trying to portray.

 

Vegetarian meat substitute. Awful and tastes like cardboard.
Humous! Looks like cat vomit
Peanuts, evil things
Nando's. It's fine but I don't get the fanfare about the place. It's chicken and chips
Slimfast or other other similar brands. You can lose a stone in two weeks the advert says. No sh1t sherlock, it's basically because you are not eating anything
Love Halloumi especially the chilli on done on a BBQ

 

Absolute ******** about duck. Magret de canard - rivals good steak. Confit duck legs with sarladaise potatoes sautéed in duck fat and garlic - yum yum. Cassoulet with duck - heaven. You can eat the heart (skewers of them are speciality in the Dordogne), the gizzards (Salade de Gesiers) and of course the liver.

And the Kingsfield Arms in Harrow Indian does a great starter of crispy fried spicy okra.

But, as ever, I suppose nothing can compare to the wonders of Cuban cuisine or the Soviet speciality of beige vegetable in brown liquid.

 

Agree with champagne (well if price weren't taken into account it would be the same as any sparkling wine) but prosecco is a fad - the Italians don't drink it except to stick in cocktails like Aperol.

I've given up tried to like oysters (raw) but cooked they are great, as are scallops, mussels, clam - so can't agree with your blanket shellfish dis.

 

Do you live in Darlington? I’ve must have had avocado every week for 10 years and never felt the need to tell anybody about it ever? Except just now I suppose

 

Actually, they eat a fair amount of okra in Cuba. Their name for it is about the only thing good about the stuff. It's very satisfying to say. It's pronounced Keem-bom-boh!

As for eating livers and hearts and gizzards.....

 

^^ this is what I mean

 

TBF "Soviet" (Litho/Russki) food wasn't that bad - I would describe it as "hearty". In valgykliai (canteens) it was basic very meat (usually pork) and two veg with a preserved fish/salad starter (mackerel or herring) with side orders of pickled/preserved vegetables (cucumbers, mushrooms, sauerkraut etc). In the home were lots of preserved produce (or fresh in season) from the soda (allotment most had chalets on them) such as fruit (especially berries), salad and vegetables. Wild mushrooms were routine foraged (or for sale usually by enterprising winos). Dumplings (meat, fruit, cheese, mushroom) were very frequently made/served. No complaints about the hams or (salami) sausages (de*ra).

Georgian food was very, very good (very Turkic) - much the same as we go out for a 'curry' Soviets used to go for a Georgian feast.

 

And also, Cuban food isn't that good in the main. Bland and greasy and a lot of rice 'n' beans. They're better at drinks - mojito, daiquiri etc. etc.

We've just sent over one of our periodic food parcels to La Habana via an internet service called Supermercado 23. It's expensive, but you can get almost anything sent these days, including such delights as "second quality beef hash", "1 kilogram of shopped vacune meat" (?),

"Pig spine bones for broths"


The cheap, plentiful, but deeply suspicious "Viki" ham-style meat product,


Four different types of Elegua voodou cake


A Yamaki electric motorbike ($2317.00)


or even a complete "Creole dinner with roasted piglet for 45 diners". Note the little straw hat for the "sacrifice" at absolutely no extra cost!

This Creole Dinner is composed of:
- One roasted piglet, about 80 Lb live weight
- Moro Rice
- Boiled yucca
- Season salad
The piglet is roasted in the coal in the pure style of the Cuban countryside, with a typical decoration, crisp all the skin and cooked to the bone. They are accompanied by two bottles of Mojo Criollo, one for the meat and the other for the salad. The yucca is already seasoned. The dressings give a more rural touch to the dinner as a whole. The sacrifice takes place on the same day of cooking, which helps the fresh taste and juiciness of the meat. Dinner is delivered in yagua trays, in the residence of the recipient at times between 2:00 and 7:00 in the afternoon. It is possible a prior communication with the recipient of the order to coordinate the delivery schedule and ensure its presence.
It is only delivered in: La Habana

 

So the WFC Forums Xmas Party is at Clive's this year ?
What's in the 2 bottles - looks lovely ? White spirit and raw sewage respectively ?

 

Chinese BBQ (siu mei) has been a revelation. Every Xmas I say that we're going to get a suckling pig from Wing Tai (in Win Yip, Colindale) but I always bottle out...FWIW their various ducks are out of this world. There's a BBQ place in Bang Bang - but I don't think they do suckling pig.

We were talking about Xmas day lunch last night - I've can do a reasonable facsimile of siu mei at home this year I think I'll give siu ngo a, errr, go - I've never seen it for sale anywhere and no one's that keen on 'traditional' Xmas day lunch...

 

That is homemade creole sauce. What the ingredients are remain a mystery.

I once had a sandwich from a window in Havana that was so awful that when they offered some of the brown liquid with floaty bits, I accepted thinking naively that it couldn't make it worse.

It did. Much worse.

 

It's Turkey at Xmas you weirdo.

 

We have chicken every xmas rather than turkey. Turkey is horribly dry no matter how it's cooked.

 

Have you tried gravy?