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December Archive

Fast Broken

Posted on December 4, 2007

I have been eating breakfast again—at least on those mornings when I wake up in Stratford: not because I’m hungry—far from it—but because I’m staying at The Three Houses, an extremely comfortable and beautifully decorated B&B owned by David Lester. His breakfasts are the best I have had in many a year. They begin with a goblet of his very crisp and holy granola mixed with sliced banana and apple, pear and fresh berries (I have no idea where he finds such ripe, juicy raspberries with the wind-driven snow drifting in the corners of his garden). There is coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice, toast or some thick buttered slices of the wickedly heavy, moist zucchini bread that he bakes. Home-made jam or marmalade can be applied (I choose the marmalade because Lester uses Seville oranges and it’s delectably bitter). Then there is the egg moment—maybe scrambled eggs tossed with croutons and some of Ruth Klahsen’s soft white goat cheese, or an omelette folded over mushrooms and fines herbs. Scrumptious. And, because the world is small, it turns out that my host is close friends with half a dozen people I know on Corfu, so there’s plenty to talk about.

A.A. Gill’s new book

Posted on December 10, 2007

Spending the weekend in the shadow of the soaring peaks of Collingwood, checking out the local restaurant scene for a forthcoming story, I have been filling the precious moments between bouts of garlic bread by dipping into A.A. Gill’s latest book, Table Talk. It is a compendium of the famous British journalist’s restaurant reviews—I was going to say ‘in all their acerbic glory’ but they have been castrated, presumably with Gill’s permission. The names of restaurants, chefs and restaurateurs have been omitted so the reader is left with mere invective, undirected and irrelevant—a spinning woozle-bird of malevolent wit floating in space with nothing to give it impetus but its own self-satisfied imagination.

Lives of the Rich and Famous

Posted on December 18, 2007

It was the most amazing wine tasting of Bordeaux I had ever heard of—and I wasn’t invited. Château Haut-Brion 1982, 1989 and 2000; 10 different vintages of Château Lafite-Rothschild from 1899 to 1995; Château Margaux 1966, 1982, 1989, 1990 and 2000; Château Mouton Rothschild 1928, 1970, 1982 (in magnum), 1986 and 1989; Château Latour 1966, 1975 and 1990. It is to drool.

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Categories: Wine, Chefs, General, Events

Great Scott's!

Posted on December 24, 2007

In London, England for Christmas, seeing old friends and relations and staying in my mum’s flat on the Fulham Road, I am overjoyed to catch the last episode of season three of The Mighty Boosh on the television (my son gave me seasons one and two on DVD and they travel with me everywhere). I make my mum watch it and she finds it funny, even though (or perhaps because) its theme is acting and its plot hinges on the thespian rivalry between one of the protagonists (Howard Moon) and an alcoholic crab called Sammy. Meanwhile the other hero, Vince Noir, is trying to fit into a pair of very tight black drainpipe trousers so he can be cool enough to perform with a mod band he idolizes. What an amazing series of coincidences! And I’ll tell you why.

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Categories: General, Out of Town, Seafood, Travel

Rabbit showdown in Corfu

Posted on December 31, 2007

To Corfu for a week of monklike solitude. Thanks to the technological marvel that is Olympic Airways, I reached the island three hours late (sometime around 11 p.m.) and decided to stay in Corfu Town at the Cavalieri hotel, a former townhouse of great comfort that still retains the elegant and world-weary mood of the Venetians who built it 300 years ago. The fabulous rooftop restaurant is closed during the winter, but Greeks eat late and I was confident of finding the Rex or the Aegli open for business. Walking down Kapodistriou Street towards one of these restaurants, I was thinking of a piquant stifatho of rabbit braised with sweet baby onions in a dark sauce spiked with vinegar. Yeah, that’s it—a stifatho! The roads were wet but the clouds had moved on and an inquisitive moon peered down over the citadel, smirking a little, I thought, as I stood outside the dark and padlocked restaurants. These nights between Christmas and the New Year are treacherous with holidays. Some of the bars along the ’Spianada’s stately stone arcades were still open. Too crowded. Instead, I ended up in a café with an exclusively Latin American menu; I made do with a no-name chicken quesadilla and a glass of Chilean plonk. Did the world find Greece while my back was turned or did Greece discover the world?

James Chatto

James Chatto worked as a dishwasher, actor, waiter, bow tie salesman, choreen, bookseller, nanny, tennis coach, lounge singer, KFC truck driver (fired after 1 day), olive farmer and janitor before moving to Canada in 1987 and becoming a journalist. These days, he writes about food and restaurants for Toronto Life, about wine and spirits for Food & Drink and edits the menswear magazine, Harry. Two of his books are still in print: A Matter of Taste (co-written with Lucy Waverman) and The Greek For Love, a memoir of Corfu. James is married and has two delightful children.

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