The Clement Freud Memorial Blogmeet

Date: Fri 17 April 2009
Time: 19:00 >
Venue: The French House (a pub that only serves halves as Billy so rightly pointed out)


Well I did meet the beautiful and radiant Miss Slaminsky at Amy Winehouse's other home The Hawley Arms in Camden first where I manically tweeted "Pixie Geldof's in da house and she is dead posh in her cycling shorts and big boots". Couldn't help myself sorry. Yaaaawnn.


Then we hot-footed it off (still talking ten to the dozen like proper girls do when they get together) to blogmeetarama en Soho. There we hooked up with him, her and him. Oh we had such a lovely time despite the rain and all being kissed by a happy grateful homeless man who came up and rather honestly claimed he needed money for booze. At which point Billy piped up saying "oh at least he didn't say heroin' at which point Mr Footman said to the man "oh I would have had to give you a fiver if you had asked me for that!". The man was very pleased with his cull of money and went out of his way to say thank you by kissing each and every one of us on the cheek. I think he admired our honesty too in a way. It sort of made my chin go a bit itchy though but probably because I am prone to a winning combination of over-imagination and sensitive skin. Amidst waxing lyrical over Derek Griffiths and Tim's (or was it Llewtrah's?) relationship to Brian Cant (brothers wife's sister's husband I think) conversation turned to the late Clement Freud. Tim told this joke - one of Clement's finest. So for those of you that weren't there and in the absence of my inability to whip up a blogmeet manifesto mainly because there is a very good one here I therefore furnish you with 'that' joke:



Bye bye Clement. Bye bye JG Ballard too. Hurray for meetings of blog.

Did You want Marmite With That?

Sorry. This post isn't about how nice or revolting Marmite is - it is about the power of the underground restaurant ladies and gentlemen although there is a marmite connection that will become clear shortly. Being the thoroughly modern techMiss that I am (not very) I have been spending a bit of time over here lately. It's quite amazing what one can achieve in 140 characters or less - and it is quite amazing who you bump into via friends of real life friends and what you can learn about/do. Somehow, I can't quite work out how I became a follower/followee of Ms Marmite Lover but thank god I did. Ms Marmite Lover is an innovative and clever writer, astrologer, blogger and cook who conceived and runs The Underground Restaurant. I can hear a chorus of 'what's that'?


The Underground Restaurant explores the thoroughly modern and fantastic phenomenon of turning your living room into a restaurant every week and serving a wonderful bespoke supper for a very reasonable £20-£25 a head (they also do concessions). The procedure is all very exciting and mysterious as are the teen goth/beautiful rockabilly staff and an after-pudding chat with Ms Marmite herself. Most of the produce is organic and all of it is vegetarian. No don't turn your nose up - see irresistable sample menu below for more detail. What I like about this apart from the obvious food part is that all of this operates on trust. Trust to open your house to complete strangers and cook for them. Brilliant and something that is much needed in this ugly age of mistrust and selfishness. A proper night out with an added 'new media' skew on it if you like.


Here is this week's menu:

Kir Royale

My marinated olives

Thai fish cakes with a sweet and sour coriander and cucumber dipping sauce

Focaccia from the Aga

Stilton and butternut squash risotto aided by Marghe

Mache (lambs leaf) salad with quails eggs and mustard dressing

Chocolate simnel cake

Baby Easter eggs

Coffee

You can check out the main Ms Marmite food blog here for further details, pictorial 'how to' guides and wonderful mouthwatering recipes. Interested? You can book here.

The Underground Restaurant are also now running The Underground Cooking Class in conjunction with other specialist boutique chefs such as Roberto Cortez where you can learn how to make magic frozen caviar with blue curacao amongst other things - see here for wonderful step-by- step guide on Ms Marmite's food blog.

I am off to purchase my ticket without further ado.

PS: Oh and they do the occasional proper tea as well - delicious!

(all photo's kind permission and (c) of Ms Marmite Lover/The Underground Restaurant)