Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

at least you can reuse the jar

Arguably the finest accompaniment for pancakes

if you are a revolting barbarian, or 3

Seriously

£6

http://i8.goodness-direct.co.uk/d/672408b.jpg

what do you guys use? i like jam myself..

never madly into maple syrup

for pancakes? lemon, sugar.

Perhaps you've never had real maple syrup? The stuff pictured isn't actually pure. I still like the diluted stuff though.

I like butter + plain yogurt + maple syrup

or butter and jam

love maple syrup on us pancake, would never put on crepe.

Chocolate spread, honest answer.

Chocolate spread and slices of banana like they give you in PARIS.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2011/mar/03/rupert-murdoch-bskyb-win-damage-coalition

Obviously I'm a Murdoch hata but the first para of this is o_0.

LOL

xps - and what is wrong is lemon and sugar I ask you? GET US OUT OF EUROPE NOW.

yeesh xp

Wanted to buy some maple syrup when home for Xmas but it was superduper expensive - just have to wait for a Canadian friend to bring me some.

lemon or lime and sugar or fo tbh

will settle for Suzette stylings if I'm somewhere froufrou

yeah the pure stuff is always really really pricey (but a little goes a very long way)

xpost

actually I had cherries and rum once that was pretty fucking A

banana fried in rum, and chocolate ice cream

I've got some amazing fig preserves that when 'syruped' with melted butter do OK for pancakes.

You can get first-rate Canadian maple syrup for about £4.75 out of any big Sainsbury’s (and quite a few of the “Local” ones as well). Not cheap but it lasts and pays for itself a dozen times over.

Didn’t know about that “Canada Store” in Covent Garden – I ought to go and investigate but the problem with me is that even after 26 years in the capital I can’t go into Covent Garden without getting lost.

Lay a trail of string behind you (and hi Marcello! btw)

i've been to this place many times due to my uncle's proximity to it -

http://www.sugarshackvt.com

and actually in the scheme of things $35 for a half gallon of 100% pure maple syrup is a pretty good deal! (though you'd have to pay for shipping, erk)

haha and before anyone says i'm off topic i think you'll agree this is possibly the most "guardian" conversation ever

yeah i just buy my maple syrup from the supermarket, it's not that expensive imo

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/mar/05/north-road-london-ec1-review

On my five-degree scale – in descending order, Awesome, Cool, OK, Meh, Pants – several dishes were between OK and Meh

is this seriously the best they can do for a food writer?

I semi-lolled.

John Lanchester is a fantastic writer (I loved his novels Mr Phillips and The Debt to Pleasure, and liked his 'Whoops' book about the financial crisis), but this article is gratuitously slick - with that 'know it all' style of positing a number of propositions as facts, that don't bear up to examination, e.g

-In cooking as in crime writing, the global trend is Scandinavian.

- Broadly speaking, we look south for posh food, east for ethnic food, west for junk food and north for deep-fried Mars bars.

John has great gifts as a writer - his turn of phrase, his use of metaphor. Hope he doesn't squander them in becoming a Craig Brown.

it's not just slick, it's bone lazy.

plus somebody dissects it in the comments in forensic detail and his actual points/logic are all over the place.

I missed the comments - oh dear.

The review actually reminded me a bit of Momus - that kind of inventing a 'new global/cultural trend' or new 'insights' on the differences between Japan and the West out of a few anecdotal and zeitgeist comments.

At least he's not Jay Raynor.

Or Giles Coren.

Giles Coren wrote one of the worst novels ever written and will have to live with it for the rest of his life.

Jay Rayner's okay (we have a v. good mutual friend) but is one of the most competitive people I've ever met in my life. If friend and I hadn't gone to high school with 100 guys just like him we would probably find him really irritating, but I did zing him by saying my mom's matzoh ball soup would give any he's had a run for its money (true BTW, craving it now).

at least coren and rayner would never use a sentence like the above one...

Yeah, can't see Jay generalizing wildly about "ethnic" food.

i really like jay rayner's stuff

When Facebook gets involved, relationships can quickly fall apart – as Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi have discovered. But dictatorships are not the only ties being dissolved by social networking sites: now Facebook is increasingly being blamed for undermining American marriages.

i just saw this but -

-In cooking as in crime writing, the global trend is Scandinavian.

this seems true?

apart from that yeah the review is pretty awful but he's waaaaaaay better than matthew norman who used to do the guardian saturday review.

jay rayners good!

-In cooking as in crime writing, the global trend is Scandinavian.

this seems true?

I think that 'global' is probably a bad choice of words.

i'm guessing he just means that all over the world there have been many many articles written abt noma + how scandinavian food is doing new things, which seems like a trend? like how spanish food was a trend when el bulli was 'the best restaurant in the world'

xp
Arghh, Norman! He's now in the Telegraph, ruined the Weekend section for me.

I just get tired of them all after a while. Mostly read food blogs these days.

Yeah, can't see Jay generalizing wildly about "ethnic" food.

No, but he does generalise wildly about vegetarians, vegans, anywahere outside London.

A recent tweet - "Dinner. Birmingham. Feel my pain." just about sums him up for me.

"Dinner. Birmingham. Feel my pain." pretty reprehensible for a writer on a nat'l paper. If he can't find somewhere decent to eat in any UK city then he's a moron.

xxps

yeah, I think it's 'there is a international world of food ppl; in that world, everyone is banging on about Scandinavia', which seems true.

I really can't see why the Lanchester is so bad; it oversteps on its generalisations, makes a couple of lazy jokes (Mars Bars, Meh), feels gappy and rushed at the end, but really it's a restaurant review - it's not too bad compared to many (restaurant reviewing is a shady political game + a magnet for arseholes). The commenters seem to be wilfully misreading it to create contradictions. (& fwiw it seems fair about North Road, which is an odd restaurant)

Scando food is a massive trend - friend who is half posh, half Norwegian, 100 per cent chef (River Café, Rose Bakery, editor of food site) has just signed a very respectable deal with Bloomsbury to write about the flora, fauna and cuisine inspired by her family's fjord island in Norway.

plus somebody dissects it in the comments in forensic detail

You say this like it's a good thing and not just what every nutter on the internet does.

xp

oh, i think she was work experience round one of my offices a couple of years ago, heard about the book last time I was in. tilly c-s, right?

xps
What everybody forgets is deep-fried mars bars are fucking delicious.

Yeah but you wouldn't go to a restaurant for one.