Saturday 23 April 2011

Vomi de Chat - spécialité de la maison


Sorry for this second post in one day, but I really had to share this with you, and couldn't wait until tomorrow. It is an example of all that is good and all that is bad about the fair city of Bath.

I had only just mentioned in Cro's comment box that I had not realised that the famous Python, John Cleese, is a Bath resident, when a local magazine flopped through the letterbox which contained this picture and recipe for us to try. As well as Mr Cleese, the Royal Crescent is also home to a famous hotel and restaurant, from where this dish originated.

The Royal Crescent Hotel has just announced that it is looking for a new owner, because the previous one has fallen on hard times and has been forced to sell. It is the most expensive place to stay in Bath, and considering that a light breakfast there can set you back about £300, I'm sure that it must be other properties in the company's portfolio which have not been performing at their best. I believe the hotel and restaurant are always busy.

Then again, if their idea of a slap-up meal is to get the hotel's cat to throw up on a piece of toast which they then place in front of the diner, expecting them to actually eat it, then no wonder they are in trouble.

19 comments:

  1. perfect photo...perfect post! YUK!!!!!

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  2. I have seen this in restaurants lately...the menu says something like. Grilled Salmon with a buttered dill froth....bleh! I'm with you Tom. My dog could do this after eating grass.

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  3. Who the hell invented this whole idea of trendy FOAM? No doubt the same person who managed to inject water into meat!

    Why sell food if you can sell AIR!

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  4. I thought for an awful moment before I read on that I was supposed to think YUM. Phew.

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  5. I wonder what the green stuff underneath is?

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  6. The competition between chefs to out-do each other when it comes to food presentation has now become so extreme that it is genuinely funny to me. All these little things come and go with increasing frequency, and the current trend for dressing the plates of puddings with a light dusting of icing sugar, or running a thin line of chocolate sauce artistically around the edge (anywhere but the pudding) is being replaced with great lattice-work structures made from cooled molten sugar which has been dribbled onto a cold surface to harden. They are now competing to see who can make the biggest sugar fence to stick on top of the pudding, and eating out is like starring in a Jaques Tati film.

    Plain, round bowls or plates are now utterly out of fashion, and we are forced to try and eat from bowls which rise up to 5 inches on one side, and down to 1 inch on the other. It's almost impossible to eat soup from them, and trying to rest a spoon or fork on the side is actually impossible. The amount of cutlery I have dropped on the floor because of this nonsense is not so funny when one is suffering from a blood-sugar low.

    In the restaurant at Cornwall last week, our main courses were garnished with sprigs of white blue-bell flowers, plucked from the hedge outside the kitchen. Luckily, they didn't put these on the children's food because I think they are quite poisonous.

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  7. Oh, and the 'green stuff' underneath in the photo is supposed to be 'pesto risotto' - that's green rice, stupid. (Management speaking here, not me!)

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  8. Good Gawd Tom - I can't decide what is more hideous; the frog pond foam or the green slimy rice underneath. I do adore John Cleese however.

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  9. Hello:
    Having happily chanced upon your blog we were, we must confess, very nearly put off by the image of food, if that is waht it can be called, from The Royal Crescent Hotel. However, your delicious writing quickly compensated and we have travelled with you this afternoon from Bath to Cornwall and back.

    In St. Ives, about which you write, we were, some years ago, now enthralled with Tate St. Ives and also by the Barbara Hepworth studio. However, we understand that these days the town has to be closed off because of the numbers of day trippers. Most alarming.

    We have signed ourselves as Followers.

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  10. whats all this about f&cking froth and foam?
    sod all this poncy food and arse licking waiters.........

    give me a big pie anytime with horns and a hoof still attached!

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  11. Welcome Jane and Lance - you sound like porn-stars - are you? If so, then doubly welcome. You can still drive into St. Ives, but you do so at you own (and everyone else's) risk. We take a 4 mile detour to get up to our friend's house, by driving through Hasletown. We went to the Tate the first time, but thought that the Alfred Wallis was the only stuff worth looking at, so have not been back. Knowing what B. Hepworth's sculpture looks like, we have not visited her old studio either - each to his own, I suppose.

    Quite right John, but you have left out the tail and feathers in your pie.

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  12. Tom, the above welcome of yours is the best ever!!! olive

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  13. Nothing else to add except to say, Happy Easter, Tom and agree with Olive.

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  14. Looks like soap suds to me. But what a price$$$$!

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  15. I was wondering what that green stuff was too,so I'm glad you asked, Sue. As for the froth - yes, cat vomit. The dish just needs a few hairballs on the side.

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  16. Haha! (snorts tea over keyboard)

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