They've been springing up all over the UK: burger boutiques; 100% ground beef Benetton's selling bespoke, fusion fare in unhurried, carbon neutral surroundings and charging at least three pounds seventy five for twelve chunky chips in a chrome bowl. All served up by amiable, overqualified New Zealand ex-pats with degrees in Ecology and Conservation from the University of Otago.

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Visit a burger boutique for lunch. Scan the menu and choose between the satay special; the bacon, avocado and venison version; the mint lamb with onion jam or the jarlsberg and jalapeno Aberdeen Angus in a ciabatta bun. By the time you've weighed up all the options and plumped for the blue cheese Cajun-style quarter-pounder with lemongrass shake and Thai chilli chicken and feta cheese side salad - its dinner time and you'll have just enough change for the last bus home.

With their citizen-of-the-world menus and neutral decor (mahogany-veneered bench seating; tasteful black and white photography of fjords in brushed metal frames) the rise of the upscale burger restaurant represents a sea change for the hamburger joint in the UK.

While previous incarnations of the High Street burger bar were either franchise imports with scratched plastic seating and or home-grown equivalents that aimed for Elvis-wearing-Levis-style themed Americana but ended up as pale Anglo imitations, like Shakin' Stevens in supermarket jeans; a wall-mounted Tennessee license plate here, a plastic jukebox there...

Maybe the rise of the geographically-neutral burger boutique reflects the souring of the transatlantic special relationship or the dissatisfaction with food franchises.

Then again, it could just be an excuse to charge eight pounds fifty for an overloaded burger - one that's impossible to eat without using a knife, fork and forceps.

Breakfast should ideally be a leisurely activity - a meal best taken in separate servings of bread, meat, eggs and fruit and eaten in silence; silence only interrupted by the peeling of Church Bells, the crunch of brown granary under knife or the rustle of newspaper as one tries to avoid getting buttery crumbs or blobs of marmalade on the Society section.

Unfortunately, modern life is all up and at 'em and food on-the-go. Hence the advent of the all-inclusive takeaway breakfast: the fast food joint's spongy muffin - mercifully only available before 11am - containing an anaemic egg with blackened yolk and synthetically spicy sausage patty; the cereal bar with the malted milk taste and 200 grams of refined sugar or the yogurt smoothie with crushed berries, infused oats, probiotic bacteria bits and a curdled consistency.

The greatest crime against the 'most important meal of the day', however, is the all-day breakfast anything, from the all-day breakfast with tomato mayonnaise, ground black pepper and an sodium chloride aftertaste comparable to swallowing a mouthful of Dead Sea silt - to the culinary nadir of the All-Day Breakfast in a Can with it's constituent ingredients of beans in vinegary tomato sauce, 3 oily button mushrooms, 2 small strips of streaky bacon and 4 and a half supposed pork sausages with the texture and touch of marshmallow.

Basically, where breakfast is concerned, the Barbarians are at the gate. They know not love, they know not pity; they know not marmalade. They're on-the-go and armed with all-day Cumberland sausage and egg mayo wraps and kedgeree, tomato and curried bean paninis.

For decades, British pubs and restaurants operated under the assumption that, for children, eating out was such a rare treat they wouldn't notice that the food offered on kiddie's menus was generally appalling.

They'd be distracted by the space ships or circus patterns on their paper plates or too busy conducting junior science experiments: dissolving chicken nuggets in glasses of cherry cola.

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And there was always the rebellious thrill of tucking-into a shrivelled birthday burger in a spongy bun with that child-who's-mother-their-mother-didn't-like or the sheer sensory novelty of the occasion; the sour smell of the pub or the clang of cutlery in the leisure centre cafeteria.

Besides, if children's options were unimaginative - that was ok; they were only eating scaled-down servings of the food the grown-ups were eating: chips; beans; slightly larger portions of reformed chicken or fish.

A consumer group recent conducted a survey of modern children's eating options: nipping in family restaurants and stealing menus (along with balloons on sticks and glacier mints from the complimentary bowl by the cash register).

Amazingly, junior menus don't seem to have changed one jot. While today's parents are tucking into suckling pig and seared scallops, the minor members of the family aren't offered scaled-down versions of the same, but burgers, chips, pasta shapes in watery sauces and, in one case, something called 'Captain Billy's Golden Fishies'.

You'd think that kids today aged 6 - 12 - savvy consumers that they are - would no longer be placated by the chicken goujon, the dipper, the finger or the baked apple covered in treacle.

Then again, there's always the circus train placemat and disappearing nugget diversion.

A year ago I'd never tasted pomegranate. I'd barely even heard of it and had only seen one once - next to a toucan on a Philately Fair grab-bag postage stamp from Papua New Guinea.

In the frosted glass fruit bowl of my mind, pomegranate was at the bottom; underneath even the pawpaw and prickly pear; 2 atypical tropical fruits present in my consciousness due only to their mention in the Bear Necessities song on my Disney Jungle Book sing-along cassette.

Then it happened: the pomegranate explosion; the scarlet seed sprang up everywhere: in juices and smoothies; floating in Persian soups; sitting in summer salads and hidden in cous cous dishes like the prize in a lucky dip. As I write, a cabal of founding fruits are voting - by secret ballot - on pomegranate's proposed membership to the Munch Bunch.

Pomegranate's popularity is due mainly to its 'superfood' status; its antioxidating properties and nutrient density.

Well, after a year of daily consumption - in juices, soups and salads - I'm cutting it from my diet. I've noticed no visible reversal of the ageing process, the pips get stuck between my teeth and, like wheatgrass juice, the goji berry and green tea leaf before it, it tastes unremarkable at best and unpalatably bitter at worst; like licking a lemon or a postage stamp - from Papua New Guinea.

A fine result for the promotion-chasing Pilgrims (in football reporting parlance) in front of the Home Park faithful (more football reporting parlance there)

One of the best thing about Plymouth Argyle home games is the Ivor Dewdney pasty van and the premier league 'oggies' it serves (more soccer speak)

If you're down in Devon (the home of the pasty despite what the Cornish will tell you) for the football, go for the Ivor Dewdney giant traditional pasty - thin buttery crust, meat, diced veg and peppery spices - streets ahead of the bland, tasteless, crust-heavy supermarket pasty *coughs* *Ginsters*.

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Better known as Pancake Day. But they're more like crepes.

Pancake Day is the great non-secular celebration. The mixing of the batter, the fun, the flipping, the fetching of the Lyle's Golden Syrup from the back of the cupboard...

The Jif dispenser that doubles as a water-pistol once it's finished; the Nutella topping.

The bitter/sweet mix of lemon juice and sprinkled cane sugar. More bitter/sweet stuff: 4 pancakes for everyone, but one small final dollop of batter for Mum.

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It's January. It's that horrible gap between Christmas and pancake day : (

It's January. It's time to cut back, balance the budget and shed some pounds. It's time to spend the dark, cold evenings flicking through Cosmos Summer Sun brochures.

The only package holiday we ever went on was to Yugoslavia in 1984. We took an escursion to Venice and I spent most of my money on a Viennese glass Pink Panther.

Let's shop and Lidl and save the spare housekeeping for a similar trip.

Treat yourself to a fruity yogurt. A 4-pack value box decorated with a disturbing elephant and a fit-inducing fruit collage.

Gift-giving at Christmas has a long history; from the Three Kings from the east - Caspar, Melchior and Ringo - bestowing Our Lord and Savior with Gold, Frankincense and a 3 bottle box set of World Ales with 4 stainless steel metal disentanglement puzzles.

Without sounding ungrateful, surely the worst Christmas gratuity is the food gift: the white chocolate tool kit for him; the hollow milk chocolate lipsticks for her. The jar of layered olives and chilies in an extra-extra virgin oil; peach halves in Napoleon brandy or a selection of berries in a 'first reserve' port syrup - wrapped with a silk ribbon and destined to remain uneaten until the Epiphany after the apocalypse; starfruit and chili vinegar in a Viennese glass bottle; the crystalised stem ginger cubes in a muslin cloth sachet with nougat cherry dainties and seasonal cinnamon-scented bath salts.

Christmas is the only time when it's deemed acceptable to eat fish terrine or salmon mousse; gills and tails whipped into air, moulded into triangular blocks and wrapped in substandard smoked salmon that tastes like cigarettes, and served with toast, blinis, crisp breads or crackers for cheese.

And speaking of cheese, Christmas is the only time of the year when Britons - usually slaves to the mild cheddar slice or the squishy cheese triangle - experiment with cheese - buying crumbly Cheshire varieties inexplicably flecked with dried cranberries, stilton stuffed with dried apricots, individual roulade wheels with pineapple rind and stale nuts and wedges of smoked Bavarian cheese that make the roof of your mouth hurt.

At Christmas avoid modern versions of seasonal classics:

An updated It's a Wonderful Life starring Billy Crystal and Queen Latifah and set in San Diego; Nat King Cole's Christmas Song mangled for charity by the opportunistic Reality TV show star... or the updated Christmas food classic: the mulled wine mix made from antioxidating goji berries; stuffing with apricots or pomegranate pips; the too-sweet Christmas pudding ice cream or the filo pastry mince pie parcel.

...Especially the filo pastry mince pie parcel. Not a patch on the hard crust original, they keep the mince meat filling lava hot and are impossible to apply clotted cream to, resulting in an oily, buttery slick on your double sized RadioTimes or textured plastic tablecloth with the reproduction Norman Rockwell Santa print.

It's Great Britain in mid-December.

There's a recycled article in the paper about Christmas being renamed 'Winter Fest' by a local council in the West Midlands and Sir Cliff Richard has recorded a pop-classical peace hymn sung to the tune of Ave Maria.

Lethal Weapon IV and something starring David Jason in sideburns are the highlights of ITV1's 'glittering' yuletime schedule and Britain's High Streets are lit up in garish golds and neon greens; overpowering displays sponsored by Iceland Freezer Centres and switched on by Lou Carpenter from Neighbours, Danny from Hear'Say, the balding one from Boyzone or a local weathergirl dressed as a fairy.

It's also the time of the year when the population of Britain throw culinary good taste out of the window, along with the idea of responsible consumption of Tia Maria, several million tons of shiny wrapping paper and the cardboard casings from sadly secular advent calendars that contained 24 cheap chocolates with low cocoa contents and unappetising white speckles on the surface.

Yes, a modern British Christmas is a rum culinary affair; a 10 day festival of gluttony, wrapped in marzipan, filled with liquer fondant, slicked with brandy butter, infused with chemical essence of orange peel, cooked with cloves, containing a cherry kirsch centre and decorated with a plastic robin and a decal which reads 'Joyeux Noel' in a faux Edwardian font and runs red food dye from the lettered rice paper onto Cointreau-flavoured icing.

So, pour yourself a glass of mulled Dubonnay and help yourself to a cheese triangle as, over the next week or so, we count down the worst Christmas food fads...

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Thank You so much for all your competition entries

The winner of the hamper was Andrea Jones of Bromsgrove for her gastro pub scallop risotto which was a boil-in-the-bag affair - and they'd included a piece of the bag with the meal. Lovely.

Andrea sent a photo, but I won't publish it as it's too graphic; reminiscent of something of that Channel 4 Body Shock show.

Daniel Meddings from Exeter, Sally Vermes from Aberdeen and Lynzi Ann Grice from Derry each win a fake sundae.

Check out the competition page for a new competition. Same prizes, different task...

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... or 'a bastard child of Mike Leigh and Delia Smith'

I had a rather good review in the Times today. Have a peek

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A handy guide to those posh burger chains that are every-bleedin-where now.

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I'll be talking about Sausage in a Basket and bad British food on the Jo Good breakfast show on BBC Radio London tomorrow (Oct 20th) tune in.

Please.

I beg you.

Had a nice review in the Daily Mail today.

I finally went to the Robin Hood and Zorro English/Mexican eating house in Hammersmith on Friday (see the Aug 7th entry). It did not disappoint.

The legend on the menu stated 'Enjoy the Mood of Lasting Moment': cryptic.

The walls were covered in oil painted murals of the 2 heroes...

I scoffed a Scampi starter. I wolfed down Tacos and Chips for my main and washed it down with Pina Colada.

The food was unpretentious and filling and there's a Sherwood forest fresca that's just JAW DROPPING

8/10

Menu subversion. Like, stick it on a menu

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Lidl: home of strange, parallel universe-style brands. Mondos fruity condoms, Mr. Yummy's Cream Spread, Crunchy Croc Cornflakes. You get the idea.

This week's special offer is Choco Softies, a box of twelve for less then the price of a Sunday paper.

They looked like they might be ok: cheap chocolate for sure, but possibly mallow, biscuit and a kirsch-style spirit smell.

I didn't buy them - I was intimidated by their unknown origins.

Nobody on the road / Nobody on the beach...

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I went to a Greek restaurant last night. Yes, really. There was a disturbing liquid candle on the table and a noisy wedding reception in the function room downstairs. While I was eyeing up our menus, the Maitre D called me into the kitchen to smell the barbecued lamb. I think he was playing mind games. No fooling.

I ordered a prawn cocktail starter. Six specimen shrimp in a scuffed steel ice cream bowl, sitting on a bed of old-style iceberg and a wedge of brown lemon.

I'm re-painting an en-suite and wanted to match swatches with the Marie Rose sauce on top; the orange sludge that was the same colour as the liquid in the disturbing candle.

The closest in the colour chart I got was with Spanish Sunset, Sirocco Sands, Rust Edam, and Raw Umber.

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Stick it on something - a ready meal risotto or a bistro menu. I dare you.

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There was something on the news the other day about cartoon characters peddling junk food to kids. Something to do with Homer Simpson eating doughnuts. I'm not sure, I wasn't paying attention. Well, Mr Nanny State, I grew watching Tom chase Jerry with a large ham and I've never used a meal in such a manner.

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I love doughnuts - cheap doughnuts from high-street bakers, deformed doughnuts; coloured coffee brown and with chewey burnt bits on the bottom which taste like toffee; sugar-sprinkled doughnuts filled with a thimble-full of cheap, seed-free preserve.

I DO NOT love glazed doughnuts from America filled with vanilla cream and flecked with candy chunks.

I love supermarket doughnuts sold by the half dozen in a greasy paper bags.

Ich bin ein traditionalist.

Someone gave me 7 felt doughnuts today.

I would have preferred money, but there you go...

I would have chosen cold cash over tongue-in-cheek arts and crafts, but you can't have it all.

So I'm giving them away. Simply mail me and tell me what your dream doughnut filling will be.

Use your imagination. Be lucky. Closing date: Oct 31st.

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Part 1: His (+ Click on image to enlarge)

The cream tea conjures up many memories for me: day trips to castles of the Cornish coast; souvenir ships; pocket money purchases of giant novelty pencils (with a tiny packet of coloured pencils hanging rom the rubber end); windy roads on the road trip home, me made nauseous from the smell of my sister's souvenir lavender water in a Cornish Piskie-topped bottle (the Piskie is Cornwall's leprechaun).

I was at Fortnum and Mason on Friday evening for a posh cream tea. I devoured the round of delicate no-crust sandwiches, polished off 2 miniscule choux pastries and started work on my jam, cream and scones.

The lovely Holly who, like me, is from Devon, pointed out that I'd applied my scone toppings in the Cornish manner - with the jam spread on before the cream, while the correct way to prepare a scone is the Devonian way: with the cream spread on before the jam, acting as a butter.

Maybe - like the war between Lilliput and Blefuscu over the correct way to eat a boiled egg in Swift's Gulliver's Travels - this is the reason why Devonians don't trust the Cornish.

Or maybe it's because they're a county of fudge-peddling, Piskie-loving, EU-subsidised, flakey pastie scoffing, ruddy-faced, luddite separatists.

Here's a Cornish Piskie easting a scone the wrong way.

I got a nice namecheck in the Daily Mail the other day.

If you missed it it was printed on the page predecing a PC World one page promo and right after a 5 paragraph polemic entitled 'Why All Supermodels Are Evil, Skinny Bitches'. Here's a link to the online version of the article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=472534&in_page_id=1770

I had a rummage in Britain's cocktail cabinets. Click on the image below to see what I found.

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I stayed in last Friday night. I served fish, chips and Krug champagne and watched a film with the opening credit 'Starring Cuba Cooding Jr.' Yes, really.

Anyway, I also put together a guide to Britain's many fish and chip shops.

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1. Map of proprietor's home country: with no reference to the Turkish Republic in the North.
   
   
2. Mermaid Mural: Disney's The Little Mermaid is a favourite film amongst attractive 18-24 year-old female receptionists. Familiarise yourself with it to, ahem, curry favour.
   
   
3. Fish menu: What exactly is cod roe? Why is it so cheap?
   
   
4. More menu choices: I once ate the bone bit of a chip shop spare rib. It was chewey. It's still lodged somewhere in my stomach. Someday it will stop a bullet in a shoot-out.
   
   
5. Pies: I've shortened the name of my favourite pie to 'chick and mush' in order to appear hip. I click my fingers and lean against the wall as it heats up.
   
   
6. Frying tonight: "Haddock will be 5 minutes."
   
   
7. Saveloys: SO many jokes
   
   
8. Luncheon vouchers: Scheme for heroin addicts. Trade them for 'smack', which actually has greater nutritional value than the fish cakes.
   
   
9. Sat and vinegar: Vinegar always reminds me of Donald Sutherland. I don't know why. You put it on first, then the salt sticks to it. It's not so hard to understand - it's simple science.
   
   
10. Pickles and sauces: You're expecting me to say something scathing, but I actually like pickled produce and Daddie's sauce.
    
    
11. Pop: Sun-faded 7-Up sign.
    
    
12. Billy Bass Singing Fish: From the nineties. Novelty item - not a toy.

No. 2 in a series of 52 (or however many of them I can be bothered to do)

For the past 10 years I've been obsessed with the Robin Hood and Zorro Restaurant in Hammersmith

Back in the days of Douglas (Fairbanks Sr.) It was called the 'Robin Hood Restaurant' - offering traditional British fayre (and an exotic chicken kiev option) - until last year when it closed for several months and reopened (with no discernable decor change) as the 'Robin Hood and Zorro: English/Mexican Eating House', offering an unlikely marriage of transcontinental dishes - with a piped-in music choice of lute madrigals or Aztec pan pipes moods.

I've never eaten there - everyone else I know is poor, lives in South London and refuses to travel West - but if you're in the Hammersmith/Chiswick area and fancy the nacho chilli shepherd's pie wrap with beer-battered onion rings - I'm in like (Errol) Flynn.

NB. This entry only exists as an excuse for me to draw the respective moustachioed folk heros of England and Mexico - in particular Robin Hood...

In my illustration I've gone against the grain of recent film and TV versions and depicted the 'Prince of Thieves' not as angst-ridden outlaw (one who in his last BBC outing, wore the kind of dour expression and grungy attire that suggested Maid Marion had stolen his best bow and Alice In Chains LPs and run off with Alan A-Dale) but as a lincoln green-clad trickster; very much a merry man with a baritone singing voice, cheeky post-swordplay quips to the Sherrif's men and - quite possibly - the voice of Leslie Phillips.

Between the ages of 7 and 11 I yearned for knowledge.


I craved it. I thirsted for it - similar to a sip of Capri Sun on a summers day.

I searched for answers to big questions:

1) Which was the largest dinosaur?
2) Why did the dinosaurs die out?
3) What's the difference between a Luger and a Mauser?

and

Why can you only buy whistling lollipops in chemists?

Farmer's market
Farmer's market
There's a hog-roast on the high road

It's next to Nat West

Collect 'em all. Cut 'em out. Stick 'em on your satchell if you must. When you get bored of them, try shifting the sticky smear with nail varnish remover and a cotton swab.

Below is the first in a series of stickers I'll be secretly affixing to the Nation's menus (both laminated and cut from thick card stock) and pasting on ready meal packets in Britain's supermarkets. Keep your eyes peeled for these situationist stunts.

No. 1 in a series of 52

Disturbing on so many levels. Likely to induce fits.

I happen to believe that Lidl is the finest food shop in Europe.

Then again, I also believe that scientists have already invented a teleportation machine, but have destroyed the blueprints lest the device fall into the wrong hands and be used for evil...

Anyway, Lidl stores are well worth visiting; for the budget prices, the handy industrial estate locations... and for the bizarre brands sold within.

This week's bizarre brand: Snacky Cracky Mini Bake Crisps (Sesame)

Hurrah!

I'm not much of a collector. I live a life that's zen and free of clutter. I sprinkle seeds on my morning oats and keep a black onyx pyramid paperweight on the Connemara marble coffee table in my sparse loft apartment; Alpha male issue.

I do, however, collect limited edition feature film and fad-themed chocolate lollipops from Marks & Spencer.

I have Batman Begins, Shrek 2, Pirates of the Caribean 3 and Superman IV: the Quest for Peace.

Last night I raided my collection and ate the foil-wrapped Spider-Man 3 souvenir lolly (pictured. right, top).

I would never eat the rarest of my collection (pictured. right, bottom)

...the much sought-after milk chocolate confection manufactured by Marks to coincide with the 2001 Ken Loach film Bread and Roses.

I got back late tonight. I'd been to the gym. My fridge was nearly empty and cupboard stocked only with sugary cereal and out-of-date milkshake mix.

I consumed a can of pea and ham soup and a slice of amber-coloured processed cheese. It's the six-steps-to-scurvy diet.

Pea and ham soup. Soup is the only dish where the meat is subservient to the vegetable... Second fiddle to stock and cut into cubes.

Feel free to > mail me food recommendations and recipes; eateries to avoid or release dates for the next limited edition Kit-Kat.

And can someone tell me what a "bistro" is?

Feel free to lavish me with unnecessary praise as precursor to a question or comment so - in the style of radio talk show hosts with low self-esteem - I can preface every reader remark with variations on the following:

"Clive from Uttoxeter writes 'I love the show. Keep up the good work. My wife and I listen every week... Is it true that JFK was murdered by a shadowy cabal of rogue C.I.A agents, disgruntled Cuban exiles, white supremacists and cross-dressers from New Orleans...? and what exactly is a Bistro?'"

Let's get one thing straight - this is NOT a blog.

I don't like any form of computer communication. I don't use any instant messengers anymore. That chiming sound that plays whenever someone sends you a message online... it reminds me of the pre-chorus percussion on Marguerita Time by the Status Quo.

Back to blogs: they're for individuals called Ian and 'digital designers' who think that because they know where to put a 'log-in box' on a web page they're bleedin' Banksy. The kind of people who fabricate opinions on insurgents in Iraq in order to appear interesting.

I've known many such individuals; design managers who'd carry copies of 'No Logo' around the office; said tome clasped in their sweaty palms along with a handheld electronic organiser, compact disc from a band from Iceland and invitation to a seminar in Stockholm. You could smell their sickly Calvin Klein CK One from three floors down.

No, it's not a blog. It's a daily journal, a scribbled dossier to detail the best and (mainly) worst of British cuisine - from the foolish dried fruit fad to the big pesto push of 2001.

Anyway.... here's an unsung hero of mediocre food; from the iceberg-cetric salad to the slippery ham sandwich.