Thanks to everyone who provided their suggestions on restaurant names (400 + at last count). The Ken Livingstone Coffee Shop takes some beating but I’m particularly tickled by Jason’s Doner Van. Special mention must go to Bill Bailey’s fantasy butcher – Halal, Is It Meat You’re Looking For.
Restaurants are often given a bad name. Quite literally in the case of Marylebone’s vegetarian Eat and Two Veg. With a name to make even a provincial barber groan, ETV (I refuse to type it again) rather undermines the meat-free diner’s attempts at contemporary style. It would seem good food does not equal good taste.
Of course, it’s not just vegetarians eateries but all specialist or niche restaurants which seem especially prone to the pun. Could you stomach the Mussel Inn, Thai’d Up or Mad Mex? And could a love affair with falafel survive a meal at Syriandipity?
Given Christopher Hitchens’ ability to infuriate, befuddle and offend, you wonder who’s still buying his books. A strident proponent of the Iraq war, in print Hitchens has also scalped Bill Clinton, Mother Teresa and Henry Kissinger. Here he returns with his third book this year, a companion to his anti-religion polemic God Is Not Great.
Catching her eye this year have been Perfect Endings cupcakes from celebrity cakemaker Sam Godfrey (previously responsible for Oprah’s 400lb 50th birthday cake) and gourment orange sorbet. In addition to this are mixing bowls and cake mixer, somewhat undermining those claims of Winfrey’s “healthful” diet.
Best of all is the panini maker which has revolutionised Oprah’s “love sandwich”. To the barbarians who don’t know of it, this is a weekly treat Ms O makes featuring hot pepper cheese, basil and smoked turkey. “It takes the ‘love sandwich’ to a whole new level,” she gushes.
Such is Oprah’s love for food, it seems she’ll do anything to delay leaving the kitchen. Her final favourite thing is a $4000 fridge complete with LCD TV, DVD player, Internet connection and the all important five-day weather forecast. How did the Von Trapps survive without it?
I know we’re not allowed to judge books by their covers, but can we at least judge the covers themselves? The US-based Book Design Review thinks so, and does so annually. It’s just announced its favourites of 2007 and a stylish line-up it is too. Taking inspiration from an eclectic range of sources, like maps, textbooks and slogan t-shirts, the selected jackets are a persuasive reminder that, when it comes to books, the art doesn’t just lie between the covers.
The lemonade is homemade, the canapes piled high and the 50,000-volt stun-gun available in four designer colours. Welcome to the Taser party – “having the girls round”, Arizona-style. Modelled on the innocent Tupperware party, it’s a chance to meet, gossip and try out weaponry illegal in seven US states.
Veronica is a novel of symbiosis – beauty and cruelty, glamour and decay, Veronica and Alison. In this tale told in the present day but focused firmly on the 1980s, Alison thinks back over a life of fleeing those who need her, running even as she clings to them.
There are many famous books that never were. Homer wrote a lost epic, Byron’s memoirs were destroyed after his death and Sylvia Plath never lived to complete her second novel. Now to this illustrious list we can (possibly) add Russell Brand’s Booky Wook. At time of writing, his autobiography hadn’t been completed, leading to Brand pulling out of the presitigious Cheltenham Festival. As Hodder and Stoughton draw their collective breath, here’s some titles looking more definite.
Valerie Plame is a woman with a story to tell, but she’s only being allowed to tell part of it. Her much-anticipated book Fair Game is an intriguing read, and not just for the subject matter. Entire sections of the book are quite literally blacked out, the text beneath it lost. It’s a curious practice (but a growing one) which brings a new meaning to reading between the lines.
As Jamie Oliver learned this week, it’s not easy telling young folk what to eat. And as anxious parents deposited their darlings to universities up and down the country this last fortnight, they undoubtedly enclosed a student cookbook alongside the de rigueur kettle and toaster.
