Cheapskate... Where to eat out for under £15
Fox & Anchor, 115 Charterhouse Street, EC1. Tel: 020-7253 4838
While the rest of Smithfield trends up, the Fox & Anchor remains the trenchantly unreformed, unreconstructed breakfast (and the rest of the day) boozer - it serves drinks from 7am. The breakfasts were once described as "towering infernos of protein", which means the basic British meal of eggs, bacon, sausages and so on, plus chips, steak, chops, kidneys or black pudding, if you order in advance. All to be washed down with a pint of Adnams, Fuller's London Pride or Tetley's, depending on the day, or a bottle of wine if you fancy. Lunch is more prosaic: steaks; steak and kidney pie; chicken, ham and leek pie (made on the premises) and lasagna. Can be a bit competitive at opening time.
Quick bites... Where to eat out in 15 minutes
Flneur, 41 Farringdon Road, London EC1. Tel: 020-7404 4422
The Collins dictionary defines "flneur" as "an idler or loafer", but Flneur's purchasing manager is clearly no flneur, having crammed the shelves of this new delicatessen with a dazzling variety of cheeses, breads, meats, oils and intriguing fruit juices. Neither is the chef. Diners perched on outsized Alice-in-Wonderland chairs can choose creamy risotto with green asparagus and parmesan shavings (£11.50), an excellent caesar salad at £6.00 or a succulent grilled tuna steak with braised borlotti beans, chorizo and tapenade (£14.50). Lemon tart with whipped cream is another highlight at £5 a slice. Service is impressively swift, too. So why's it called Flneur?
On the menu
FOP
Fop, as in fancy dresser?
No, FOP as in OP, GFOP, TGFOP, FTGFOP and SFTGFOP.
An acronym?
Not quite. They're grades of tea leaf.
How so?
There's leaf tea and broken leaf tea. We're only dealing with the leaf here and FOP stands for Flowery Orange Pekoe, the end bud and first leaf of each bud.
And those others?
Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe; Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe; Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe; and Special Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe.
Not the tea bag stuff then?
No, those are known as Fannings, Finings or Dust.
On the net
French cuisine
They don't call it Bastille Day in France; they call it "le quatorze juillet". Whatever, tomorrow is reason enough to gorge ourselves on foie gras and salad nicoise in the name of revolution. www.frenchwinesfood.com provides a handy intro to French cuisine, with a glossary of terms and a guide to food and wine pairings. The nitty-gritty of French eating may be found at www.agape-online.com, where you can have your fill of duck and goose foie gras, terrines, rillettes, rillons, pate and wine from France. At www.fresholive.com there are products from all over the Mediterranean, including an impressive selection of olives - Pichotine, Tailladees, Nicoise, stuffed, aromatised and cocktail mixes.
Just out
Parmalat Santal plus peach and mango
Form: Peach yellow liquid.
Flavour: General purpose fruit; slight mango perfume; watery and sweetish.
Verdict: Parmalat is a gigantic Italian dairy company; presumably they are looking for new products to help mop up a huge milk production; hence this ingenious mix of fruit juice - mango and peach - and milk. According to the PR puff, it also has added fibre (why?) and "naturally derived" vitamins A, C and E. So it must be healthy and refreshing, mustn't it? But would you want to drink it? Not me sunshine - it's just a lightweight fruit smoothie in disguise. Kids will like it, though.
Price: £1.19 for a one-litre pack.
The taste test: barbecue chicken legs
It's the season for outdoor snacks and for supermarkets to bring out the optimist in us all. I took no chances - and cooked everything in the oven.
Somerfield
£1.99/575g
What it's like
Leg up, cheerful chuck, perky, sweetish, inoffensively curried.
How it rates
****
Waitrose Chinese Style
£3.29/500g
What it's like
Fine leg, characterful chuck, generous goo, nicely crusted.
How it rates
****
Sainsbury
£2.79/600g
What it's like
Leg less, chain smoked, fruit backing, characterless chuck.
How it rates
***
Tesco Tikka
£3.29/850g
What it's like
Leg go, general purpose Indian goo on cheerless chick.
How it rates
***
M&S Honey and Mustard
£3.99/400g
What it's like
Last leg, weedy marinade, just vaguely sweet, cheery chick, though.
How it rates
**
