Food, Greenwich, Beckett

I've done a lot since I last updated. Last Friday we went to Westminster Abbey on Friday and while we were in the Poets' Corner (Samuel Johnson! Lord Tennyson!) the choir started rehearsing and it was pretty epic. The next day we went to Greenwich and revisited a lot of the places I first visited when I was thirteen, as well as the house of Queen Anne of Denmark which had a gorgeous spiral staircase. Then on Monday we went to see a bunch of Samuel Beckett shorts at the Young Vic, some of which were absolutely amazing. And then yesterday Maddie and I went to the Courtauld Gallery, which has my favorite Manet and so much else good in it.

But this post is going to be about food. Some basic points on British eating followed by an adventure:

1. Tikka. I read a few months ago about how the UK Foreign Minister proclaimed that Chicken Tikka Masala is Britain's national dish, but lordy, it's everywhere. Yesterday I saw a bagel with tikka flavoring, and the day before I saw tikka flavored potato chips, and every day I go to Tesco I see tikka sandwiches. I've yet to try any of these.

2. British chocolate. It's better, and that seems to be as empirical a fact as there is. Some of the varieties are just more well constructed (the Mars Bar is a perfect candy bar, no contest), but some of the British candy bars are better than their American counterparts solely due to the quality of the chocolate (British confectionary manufacturers don't have to worry so much about their candy melting since it's colder and smaller here, so they use fewer stabilizers and other candy tainters). Thus, Kit Kats taste fabulous here even if their American cousins taste like chalk. There's a NYT article from last year which explains the issue quite well.

3. Feathery eggs. Regular food items (even the cheap stuff) seem more natural here. Our eggs are sometimes entirely covered in feathers (this is frightening) and our bread molds much, much faster than I'm used to (this is frustrating). It's just a shame that quality produce is so expensive and hard to come by, although I suppose if we started eating more of peas and carrots we'd be all set. Note of interest: the idea of a veggie pasty/wrap/etc. here is much more carrot-and-pea-oriented than I'm used to or care to be used to.

4. St. John Bread and Wine. The big culinary fun was today, when Maddie and I went to St. John Bread and Wine in Spitalfields, a spinoff of St. John, which I guess is ranked in Restaurant Magazine as the sixteenth best restaurant in the world or something, as well as one of the bricklayers of the current ongoing British culinary renaissance. In addition to having just really good bread and wine (wowowowowow), St. John Bread and Wine is a British restaurant in the most traditional sense, so that not only are the items on the menu contingent on what's growing in Britain, but the meat served is the sort of meat that Britons have been eating for centuries, even if it seems sort of repellent now. So Maddie and I had deviled rabbit kidneys along with a whole artichoke, local green beans, corn on the cob, and two delicious desserts that each somehow had currants in them (and the bread, oh the bread). It was all really wonderful, and rabbit kidneys have the consistency of sausage and are actually really flavorful. Pictures later, hopefully.

The pound is falling! The pound is falling! 1.785! 1.785!