Gerard’s Bistro

I think we need to have a talk about plate art.  Fads, whims, trends; call them what you like, but like it or not, they define an era and stamp the culinary passport with a particular date in time. -Think about eighties fine dining and images of soup duos in floral patterned plates come to mind as does asparagus and carrots tied up into bundles with blanched shallots and mosaic-like arrangements on hexagonal black glass plates.

The nineties ushered in sky scraper dining where blobs of mash acted as the cement and the entire contents of the dish was piled on top – this was possibly the worst era for waiters.

These days its all about dots and blotches, deconstructed dust, miniscule micro leaves, smears and skid marks.  Lines of off-centre ingredients are the go, plating is delicate and pretty and that is very much the case at Gerard’s, James Street’s latest hotspot.  And while this particular phase can be fussy and lead to miniscule portions and over-complicated flavour profiles, it takes a deft hand to balance the look of the plate with the each element of the dish.

Chef Ben Williamson spent five years in the Middle East before returning to Brisbane where he clocked up stints at 1889 Enoteca, Cha Cha Char and The Euro.  He uses classic food pairings and techniques with a dash of the avant-garde and firm nod to current plate art trends.

The room at Gerard’s is airy and colourful with a contemporary salute to the Middle East but really it’s a fresh, open space with a large concrete bar and an open kitchen framed with decorative slabs of reclaimed wood.  There’s a pile of woolly rugs for chilly laps if you choose a table in the walkway out the front of the restaurant.

Soft fried quail eggs are rolled in a spice blend and sit on an onion puree and it’s a dish of powerful flavours but it’s the special of veal bone, cross sectioned and roasted then topped with goat meat done two ways – slow braised and crisp fried pangratatto-style that dazzles.  Inspired by a dish of chef Ryan Squires (Esquire) presentation is dramatic, garnish free and served with a little spoon so you can scoop out the near-melting marrow.  This is really very good cooking.

Lambs brains with a spice crust miss the mark slightly – they are not crisp enough on the outside and this messes with the overall texture of the dish.

No such disparity exists in the flathead and freshwater red claw lobsters, pan roasted and served with  smokey potato puree and buttery chanterelles.  This is one of those cracker dishes, packed to the brim with powerful flavours that sit on the classic duo of fish and potatoes.  Shaves of Tasmanian truffle look good but there’s no need for them here as the smokey potato and sweetness of the flathead and shellfish are as much as anyone would want, and then some.

Pieces of spatchcock are grilled over coal and served with a punchy salad of coriander, mint, fenugreek and toasted walnuts.  Pomegranate seeds pop in your mouth and the baby chicken is sweet and juicy with salty-spice skin while a lemony dressing rounds things out nicely.

All four side dishes appeal especially the fried potato and green chilli and ‘Shirin Polow’ goji with organic cherries, pistachio and almond rice but our choice of heirloom baby tomatoes, sprinkled with sumac and shanklish is dotted with dehydrated shaves of onion.  It’s another modern take that adds spice and texture to a classic flavour combo and it works really well.

Xerotigano, a Greek fried pastry is usually served as round spirals but this version is made like a crispelli.  Cumquats are candied and these are arranged over a swipe of sheep’s milk yoghurt garnished with micro mint.  This is another hero dish and a great way to finish and interesting, colourful and delicious meal.  Rum baba with whiskey ice cream, pistachio financier and Valrhona aero with strawberry leather and rose marshmallow will tempt those with a sweet tooth as the Xerotigano has a much more savoury edge.

Gerard’s food is polished and accomplished and it’s obvious there is a talented young bunch behind the burners.  Service is a tad shaky on this visit but relaxed and prompt on a previous one and it’s not hard to see that as the weeks pass all elements will fall snugly into place.

TH

Lizzie Loel

E SCORE          16/20

Gerard’s Bistro

James St, Fortitude Valley

Ph 38523822

The 13 year old has a friend for a sleepover and I’ve just made their dinner in the microwave. Well… sort of. I often make a tomato sauce in the microwave when I just have a very small amount to make- like tonight, when I needed just a smear for the pizza I was making them. Then for dessert, I made them an ‘instant’ caramel sauce in the microwave, to put over their ice-cream.

I didn’t own a microwave until my early 30s. Like many other food lovers, I thought they were something that old people used; old people who didn’t really like food and didn’t mind if it was overcooked and mushy. Whose teeth and digestive systems probably welcome it. Or bogans who lived on TV dinners. And of course, microwaves also zapped dangerous radioactive waves into our food.

While there are some things I’d never cook in a microwave, these days, I’m much more relaxed about using a microwave. And, I’m pleased to see that one of my foodie heroes, Harold McGee is balanced about their use. About microwaves, he says : “Microwaves are not a form of food irradiation or radioactivity.” (phew!) “They do not cook food from the inside out. Microwaves ovens heat more quickly and efficiently than other appliance because the radio wave energy penetrates and is absorbed directly by the food, not by the air or the container.”

McGee says that ‘Reasonably good candies can be made in the microwave oven which gives the cook less hands -on control but cooks syrups more rapidly and evenly without the worry of scorching the pan bottom. ” Something I discovered after burning umpteen loads of sugar. My other discovery was nuts. Put raw nuts  on a plate, sprinkle with salt (0r sugar or whatever) and zap in the microwave for a minute, take them out and they’ll be ..soft and soggy. But leave for another minute or so and they miraculously become crunchy and roasted in flavour.

McGee even recommends microwaving vegetables as ‘an efficient and rapid way to cook a small amount of vegetables’, preserving their vitamins ‘better than boiling or steaming.”

He also suggest the microwave as a way to pasteurize egg yolk when making mayonnaise (in case you’re pregnant) . “1 egg yolk in small bowl with 1 tbsp each of lemon & water, microwave on high til close to boil. Remove, whisk, repeat, remove and stir again with clean fork until luke warm, then start whisking in oil.”

My tomato sauce goes  like this; very finely dice onion (and garlic if you like), put in a bowl (I prefer to use a ceramic or glass one) with a glug of olive oil and zap for 2 minutes. Take out, stir and zap again for another minute or so (depends on your microwave). Add tomato passata, a pinch of sugar, a pinch of salt and a tbsp of tomato paste. Zap again for a minute or two.Take out and rest for a minute, e voila.

I have another recipe for microwave salted caramels on this site, and tonight, made a caramel sauce. I realised when beginning to make it that i had no butter, so I simply zapped brown sugar (take out stir, rezap) then added cream and microwaved for another minute and whisked. It was an experiment and I was sort of surprised that it worked without the butter, making a good (but very sweet) caramel sauce the boys loved on their ice-cream.

I also heat soup in the microwave as well as other leftovers. It’s purely for efficiency sake and not having to wash up another bowl. By the way, you CAN use foil in the microwave, McGee says. Just need to make sure you leave enough room between it and the walls of the microwave.

And you mightn’t realise it, but you might have also tasted microwave sponge cake in some of the finer restaurants recently. (It has larger holes than a traditional sponge and actually looks and has a texture more sponge like than light sponge cake).

I suspect in the future chefs will start to experiment even more with the unique cooking properties of the microwave.

For me, right now, it has a place in the kitchen.What it may morph into in the future and how it might be used remains to be seen but I think it’s just small-minded to dismiss it entirely.

I’m not being rude; I’m genuinely interested.

I don’t rate myself above a reasonably competent home cook, yet if I counted what I’d actually learned from all the ‘celebrity chef’ demonstrations I’ve seen over the years, it’s not much for a hell of a lot of watching.

So, because I would never have a) time to emulate their creations b) the will c) the wallet d)the staff to clean up afterwards, and e) because of the above probably won’t buy their cook book and thus don’t want to line up to have it signed, I don’t see much point.

I’m obviously not the typical ticket buyer then, but who is? Do you go to celeb chef cooking demos? Do you learn anything and if so, what do you do with the knowledge? Who’s the best high profile chef you’ve seen do this kind of show? Responses much appreciated.

I wanted to just tweet this thought, but it got a bit out of hand, length wise.

So, how to find a good restaurant when travelling? A useful discovery I’ve made over my years of travelling: particularly when in a foreign country is, never ask a local for a restaurant recommendation. Instead, ask them much more specifically; ‘What is your favourite restaurant?’ and importantly ‘When did you last eat there?’

There are two reasons for this; one often people will want to point you to a restaurant that they think (or anecdotally know) ‘foreigners’ like, rather than one locals frequent. And two, you can’t assume that all locals always eat out a lot. Sometimes for economic or cultural  reasons they might not eat out often at all and a restaurant they went to and enjoyed 2 years ago could very well have gone off the boil.

It’s happened to me again and again. I remember going to a recommended restaurant in Marrakech (by our tour guide). It was full of foreigners just like us and correspondingly high prices. My friend got food poisoning (the positive side of which was being able to sell a travel story on taking her to a ‘herbalist’ in the souk for treatment!). Once she’d recovered we explored on our own, discovering some great (and dirt cheap) local places, much to the horror of our hotel receptionist, who confessed that yes, he *did* eat in one or two of them himself on occasion, but they weren’t ‘good enough’ for foreigners.

I’m sorry to say, but tourist boards aren’t much help. Most often they’re going to promote those places who pay them-whether through ads or membership fees, rather than those that are the best, or even the best fit for what the traveller is after.

Then there’s sites like tripadvisor, of which admittedly, I’m an avid reader, usually *after* having travelled to the place. People go to such sites, look up what is number 1 hotel or restaurant or whatever and put it on the top of their `must do’ list. They have an ok time, come home, post about it and it continues.

And finally, sadly often I find  travel writers (who often have a famil organised by a tourist board or other interested party), parrot the same old same old when it comes to restaurants or food recommendations too. The myth of a restaurant’s supposed greatness is perpetuated by laziness or lack of time as they become part of the foodie memory of people who organise such trips.

So, by all means, ask a local. Just make sure to ask a foodie local rather than assuming all locals are food lovers or frequent diners. (Local food bloggers are a great source!) Best of all is to use gut instinct and discover places for yourself. Sure there’ll be some hit and misses, but a quick recce (look at the menu, how many diners there are -a full restaurant is usually a decent one and get a feel for the atmosphere-happy looking diners, smiling staff, good smells etc?) and go it alone.

That’s the word on the street. According to my (multiple) sources, Moran is in negotiation to take over the old Boardwalk lease on Eagle St Pier, which went under in the floods 18 months ago. It would be good to have more venues in the city that are pitched higher than a sandwich bar but less corporate than what’s on offer now, if indeed that’s what he’s going to do. When I contacted Moran he said that nothing was confirmed ‘at this stage.’ and he ‘really can’t make a comment.” Fair enough. Hopefully, once the ink’s dry I can give you confirmation. I hope the rumour’s true because more restaurants in Brisbane can only be a good thing, upping the ante and forcing everyone else to pull up their socks. Plus one restaurant going into a space  = one fast food chain NOT going into it.

In this fickle, cost-driven and angsty time in the restaurant industry, it’s hard to know what trend will sustain let alone lead us into the next era.  In ‘bear’ markets we favour comfort food but we are still mining rich and deals must still be done at the big boys’ end of town. 

Modern gastronomy (for want of a better term) has ruled recently with mixed results. The problem is that these techniques and additives are like oil and canvas – put in unqualified hands they become clumsy try-hard versions of what only a handful of European restaurants have managed to pull off. 

Mugaritz is one of them achieving a number 4 in the worlds ranking and, while El-Bulli trained chef Andoni Aduriz still reigned, a baby faced young chef was fortunate (and clearly talented enough) to gain employment – paid employment that is, as opposed to a Stage.  It was at that time when they were striving for the ranking so the stakes were high to say the least.

Argentine-born Alejandro Cancino is the new chef of Urbane and man can this young man cook.  I’ve always struggled with the whole molecular movement particularly in Brisbane where diners go in less for that sort of thing but I still believe in boundary-pushing and experimentation, provided you follow some basic rules.  The dish must taste of its ingredients – so if you put lamb on a plate it shouldn’t taste, or look, like fish.  Temperatures need to harmonise as much as flavours and full-wheel reinvention for the sake of ‘difference’ is a definite no-no. 

What impressed me overall about my four and a bit course degustation lunch recently at Urbane is the innate authenticity and commitment to the core ingredient.  Take course three – pumpkin gnocchi with parmesan and rosemary, for example.  Sweet silken thumbnails of pure pumpkin sit in a cream sauce that is both refined and punchy with smooth hints of rosemary darting over the palate and a satisfying hit of salty, earthy parmesan as you near the centre of the bowl. 

A special of lamb and peas – the lamb juicy and outlined with a finely caramelised crust sat surrounded by tiny sugar snap peas liberated from their pod; also finely julienned and incorporated into the dish and adding crunch and the freshness and texture of an old fashioned lamb dinner, albeit with a thoroughly modern makeover.

Before that there is coral trout served raw with lemon puree and a sweet-savoury cream of leeks and herbs that you scoop with a squid-ink infused chard of lavash that looks like a layer of charred leek.  It works, especially in the chunky black earthenware bowls. 

Organic chicken wings with Jerusalem artichoke feature on the larger menu as does rainbow trout with paprika, yoghurt and quince.  Bread is served warm over a bowl of hot rocks – perfectly heated it remains so  for the duration of the course. 

There’s an impressive new crew about to descend to join Cancino – all of whom are alumni of some pretty serious locations both here and abroad.  Cancino did two years under Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons after leaving Mugaritz and it was there that he met Chris Kenny (Young Chef of the Year 2011) who joins the team at the end of the month.  William Wallace, ex-Bentley and The Royal Mail in Dunkfeld also met Cancino during his six-month stage at Noma and he will be behind the burners next week.  It’s a serious line up of young guns – brimming with enough global experience but still bounding with youthful energy – that will propel Urbane, on the eve of its eleventh birthday, to the culinary levels it hasn’t enjoyed for the past few years. 

Knowing how to handle a whipping cream gun, play around with maltodextrine and sodium alginate or microwave sponges in paper cups does not make you a master of modern of molecular gastronomy and it’s fair to say I haven’t been a fan of the stuff in Brisbane (or some other parts of Australia for that matter) with two notable exceptions – Pablo Tordesillas (Ortiga) and Ryan Squires (Esquire).  Both understand what they are doing, have extensive overseas training and exposure, and both have great respect for the produce they work with.  And like the young and very calm Cancino, they both also value the team of professionals that they choose to surround themselves with. 

Service at Urbane has always been impeccable and the management are clearly pro’s.  Now all elements are singing from the same prayer book.  Imagine how it will be when all three chefs are ensconced and The Euro menu is revitalised.  It’s not always the case but here change is definitely a very good thing indeed.

Lizzie Loel

Score: 17.5/20

Urbane, 181 Mary Street, Brisbane, ph  3229 2271

Sushi.  You’re way past your best. Like a middle aged man in a Ramone’s t-shirt, you try to disguise your lack of youth with fancy dressing but the kewpie mayo can’t hide the home brand tuna and borderline `best before’ lettuce. In your natural state you shine, glistening with fresh fish sliced by experts and rice cooked to OCD perfection, but here, like a fish out of water, you’re starting to stink.

Dude Food. The same guy in marketing who coined ‘yummy mummy’ and ‘chick flick’  came up with this. If I ever find him, I may be tempted to beat him to death with a Terms of Endearment DVD. 

Fish tacos. Enough already. It’s fish. In a taco. Actually faux Mexican anything should be banned. It’s dumbing down (sushi-ising?) a noble and highly regional cuisine. 

Pulled pork. Ditto. Everyone’s doing it. Yawn. 

Food Franchises. We’re showing our red necks, getting all hot and bothered about southern chains opening branches here. Why wouldn’t they? We’ll stand patiently in line and parrot whatever cool marketing brainwash we’ve been fed. Brisbane doesn’t get these second branches cos it’s COOL ENOUGH but DUMB ENOUGH. We’re the colonial outpost, rushing to exchange our conch shells for a burger or fajita.

There’s more. So much more. I just can’t think of any right now, so please dear readers, tell me what you’re fed up to the wisdom teeth with.

It’s 3pm and the BF (ahem; fiance I mean) is sleeping, struck down by jetlag. We returned yesterday from a 3 1/2 week European sojourn. I don’t know if posting about it is the modern version of a slide night, but what the hell- a blog is self-indulgent by its very existence. BTW, I will post pics next week- right now I’m operating on a weeny 1/2 gb stick while my new internet provider gets me set up. Sigh.

Our trip started off in Rome. We arrived as the fruit and flower sellers were packing up their stalls at Campo dei Fiori. Hungry and very tired we sat at a restaurant on the square and had an unmemorable late lunch. It’s amazing how in Rome all you need to do is get a street or two away from a major tourist attraction to come across a decent place to eat, but we just didn’t have the strength that day.

Things improved substantially on day two. Our apartment just off the Campo was practically next door to Il Forno, a typical and well-known Roman bakery, where we’d get a breakfast of ‘bianco’ (pizza with just salt and oil) or ‘rosso’ (with a smear of tomato sauce). We also discovered one of what I think could be the best gelato in Rome, at Ponte, on the small street that leads to the Ponte Sisto. In addition to all the regular flavours, they did single origin chocolate from different countries; dark and rich, each slightly different. Costanza, just off the Campo was a good example of getting  just a little away from the tourist traps to find something special. Lovely staff, an amazing setting and great inexpensive food.

Proving my theory wrong, Palatium was something altogether different. Right in the middle of tourist central, ie the Spanish steps, it is very modern and serves only food from the Lazio region and has a terrific and very comprehensive all-Lazio wine list too. Italian wine can be a bit hit and miss in my experience so it was great to have someone to hand to guide us through the pages and pages of choices. Another good meal was had at Antica Osteria di Pietro not far from the Pantheon, with memorable dishes of rigatoni coda (with oxtail) and the other famous Roman dish ‘cacio e pepper’, pasta with cheese and pepper; more delicious than it sounds.

From Rome, we caught a train to Lecce in Puglia, where our morning ‘bianco’ o ‘rosso’ was replaced with a basket of still warm ‘cornetti’ filled with custard or chocolate and our huge vaulted ceiling room overlooked a Moorish garden filled with orange trees.

Our first meal out was at the delightful Nonna Tetti.  A simple decor, it looked like someone’s living room. Indeed there were steps leading up which may or may not have been living quarters. The waitress had to translate some of the dishes from the local dialect into Italian for me- ’Sagne ncanulate’ for example, derives from ‘lasagne’ while ‘ciciri e tria’ is pasta with chickpeas in which bits of the fettucini have been fried to a gold crispness while others are soft. Orechiette with cime di rape (sort of like broccoli tops) and orchchiette with a tomato sauce and ‘ricotta forte’ (an aged, spicy ricotta-divine) were other winners. Lunch for the three of us was 30 euro including wine. Actually, everything we ate in Lecce was spot on. Osteria della Divina Provvidenza was indeed divine. Built over Roman ruins, the men’s toilet has a glass floor for your (well if you’re male or cheeky like me) viewing pleasure. Arte di Sapori, it’s outside tables set under the trees in a quiet little square beside the church was also lovely, with a sweet waitress who begged us to practise English with her.  Fiance’s birthday was spent in Antica Borgo where the owner tried to tempt us with live lobster and we over-ordered horribly. We also loved Rifugio della buona Stelle; simple, authentic and very cheap.

From Lecce, it was on to Seville, where it seemed it was impossible to eat badly anywhere.

We snacked on jamon in Seville’s oldest bar and tried tapas at midnight at the unromantically named but utterly deliciously and very modern Cuna 2.

We watched Spain defeat Portugal at soccer in bar Bacalao, grazing on croquettas and cod cheek with mid match entertainment provided by a massive and very colourful gay mardi gras coming down the street. We sat under misters (it was still blazing hot at night) in bars overlooking the cathedral from where the sound of singing and handclapping emanated. We dunked hot churros into thick chocolate in a bar in Seville’s shopping district.

From Seville to Athens and the search for lamb, resulting in much disappointment with thebony, fatty offering we were served. I know there are good restaurants in Athens, but 1) they are hard to find and 2) they are expensive. The poshest we went to was Orizontes, on Athens highest hill, Lycabettus. Incredibly romantic, the outdoor eating area, planted with young olive trees has an incredible view over the acropolis, lit at night. Food just didn’t hit the high notes however, with slightly odd pairings, like grouper cheeks covered in sunflower seeds. But the view was worth it. Definitely though, Athens didn’t set our culinary juices watering.

From Athens, to Skyros, an island in the Sporades. It was here we were thankful we’d bought our own coffee. Food was basic but good and fresh and very cheap. We left tips that seemed ridiculously small to us but were almost half the price of the meal and without fail had owners running after us trying to give us our ‘change’. We had our own kitchen in the beach house we’d rented but food was so cheap, we ate out for every meal.

The island is not very touristed, with not many people speaking much English and the menus generally written in Greek (or very funny idiosyncratic English), so much of the time it was guesswork as to what we’d get. Always though, it was a lot. Excellent, olive oil based bread and dips, small tender fish fried whole, served simply with lemon. The ubiquitous Greek salad, with generous amounts of feta, sweet tomatoes and dried oregano; calamari, slightly floured and fried, pasta, chockers with local seafood in a tomato sauce. Ridiculously cheap local wine (faintly pink) was served in copper coloured aluminium jugs. (Wouldn’t it be nice to have the option here of ordering by the 1/4, 1/2 or litre?) Thick yoghurt with local thyme honey was a particular favourite as were the apricots-the juiciest I have ever eaten, nothing like the furry fleshed versions we get here.

From Greece, it was on to London. We were staying with friends in the Essex countryside, where our friends took us to a local Turkish restaurant, (bizarrely located in a very old pub) where we finally got the lamb we’d been craving. It was good, but noisy, full of over made up Essex girls with their fake tans and ironed hair and there was very loud music playing (pop, not Turkish). It was sad to see that not much had changed in the British supermarkets with fruit and veg still looking rather sad and everything wrapped in plastic; even a sol0 capsicum. The price of bottled water was a shock too-the last bottle we’d bought in Greece was 17 centimes, here it was 3 pounds fifty. Australian wine is still dire with labels I’ve never heard of being flogged off in the supermarket for next to nothing. We ate at a couple of local pubs, one in my friend’s village; (great ambience, possibly the worst steak I’ve ever had) an another old mariners pub near Tower Bridge (a pretty reasonable sausage, mash and peas with onion gravy). We weren’t in the UK for a food journey, but we had booked to go to Dinner by Heston.

It’s a great space, overlooking Hyde Park and I was surprised at how friendly the staff were. We consulted with the waiter about by the glass wine choices, (27 pounds  a glass was his choice!) and settled in. The 13year old had the meat fruit, a ‘mandarin’ complete with stalk and leaves, but filled with chicken liver parfait; while I had the nettle porridge with a gelatinous cod cheek and the fiance had “rice and flesh’ a saffron risotto with calf tail and red wine. I loved mine; it was fresh and original and spring like. The meat fruit was velvety and perfect, the richness cut through by the mandarin jelly. The fiance thought his risotto had too much saffron. All of the dishes on the menu have a date and a reference to the cook book from which they originate. For main, I chose the black foot pork chop with Hispi cabbage, lardo, ham hock & Robert sauce.

Nettle Porridge

Our waiter, who was Spanish agreed it was a good choice and told us that in fact his family were breeders of these black footed, acorn eating pigs that are also turned into the most delicious jamon in Spain. It was nice- the pork tender and flavoursome, the accompaniments good; but it felt very modern and like something I could get in most European restaurants.  The fiance chose the Aberdeen Angus, mainly because he has been cooking steak (and the triple cooked chips) from Heston’s programme since he saw it and wanted to compare. Unfortunately the chips were off. Out of season. Really. The potatoes that Heston uses were out of season, and last  year’s, our waiter said had too much starch. So it was plain old French fries for the fiance. He thought the steak was among the best he’d eaten. The 13 year old’s `Powdered Duck Breast with smoked confit fennel & umbles (offal) was perfectly fine sous vide duck (although one of the two portions was chewy) that had been brined (‘powdered’ in old English) but again, it felt very modern and not too different from duck dishes I’d had elsewhere. However, portions of everything were very generous. Which didn’t stop us ordering dessert. We could see the pineapple roasting on a spit in front of the fire, but there was a 20 minute wait for the ‘Tipsy Cake’ and we were eager to be out walking in the park while the sun briefly peeked out from the clouds. Taffety Tart was my choice, a pretty and reasonably light concoction of pastry with apple, rose, fennel & vanilla ice cream. Even better was the fiance’s brown bread ice cream with salted butter caramel, pear & malted yeast syrup, while the 13year old’s ‘chocolate bar’ a glossy, soft, ’bar’ of bitter chocolate with passion fruit jam & ginger ice cream was declared ‘delicious’. In all, good value for money, wonderful service (they gave us a kitchen tour afterwards) and a great space, but food not as different as I’d expected.

After London, it was back home and diet time. It’d been 3 years since I was last in Europe and not much has changed. Spain, Greece and Italy certainly offer way better value for money than the UK, which seems to dish up little by badly cooked ‘tourist fare’ at the bottom to middle end of the price range, with fabulous meals for those who can afford it at the other. My trip has certainly made me aware of what we don’t have (enough bakeries, speciality food shops, regional cuisine, good everyday cheap wine) but also appreciate what we do.