Britain’s biggest restaurant

I blame New York. On my last trip there we devoured hot, juicy, delicious flamed Korean chicken wings. When I was told about Cosmo, a massive buffet restaurant with a dozen cooking stations from around the world, I was at first sceptical. Then I looked at their website and one of the 300 dishes was Korean chicken wings and decided to give it a visit.

There’s nothing to beat the misery of a wet Saturday afternoon in a Croydon shopping centre where roads are congested with customers from nearby Ikea. Walking into Cosmo starts off promisingly enough – there’s a queue of people who make up the 25,000 weekly diners here and you’re taken in by smiley folk on walkie-talkies and the room is huge, well laid out and easy to navigate.

I went to the bar to grab some drinks and did what you do in buffets and stand behind the person in front of you. Only he was standing in the wrong place. “You come here, I don’t go there!” the bartender barked.

It reminded me of Wong Kei.

Except the food (and the price) at Wong Kei forgives all. Here the food is cold, dull and lifeless and is served by people who are cold, dull and lifeless to customers who are cold, dull and lifeless. The obese chavs in shell suits at our neighbouring table (mum, dad and son all Wayne Rooney look-a-likes) didn’t seem to mind and must have not just had seconds, but also thirds, fourths, fifths and sixths by the time we left, when the queue to get in was even bigger.

The eat-all-you-can-for-one-price principle is a dubious one, especially when so much of the food on offer is deep-fried and fatty. Imagine a bar offering to drink all you can for £16.99. It would be slapped down for being irresponsible. Watching the super-sized diners waddle from stand to stand pursuing the desire to eat until you’re sick filled me with dread, a horrible flash-forward. Obesity levels in Britain have tripled since 1980 and 11 million more people are expected to join that number over the next 20 years.

On so many levels, our biggest restaurant is also our worst.

Eat and beat the recession

I’m regularly asked by many people – friends, family, colleagues, the taxman – how I justify spending so much time and money on such a regular basis in restaurants, especially as I spend time and money supporting charities and public work tackling poverty and worklessness.

In my head I don’t see the two as contradictory.

First and foremost, it’s important to the business that I am out and about seeing what other restaurants are doing, watching new trends and nicking any decent ideas – and sometimes people too. Secondly, I really enjoy what I do and shouldn’t need to make excuses for that.

Mrs Thatcher used to criticise Keynseian economists for thinking you could spend your way out of a recession. Maybe there’s a third reason which we could all follow on from; whether it’s at your local pub or in a fancy restaurant, we can eat and drink our way out of a recession. Buying two-for-one deals and half price beer from supermarkets may seem like a more frugal thing to do in seemingly uncertain times but the Asdas and the Tescos of the world are still raking in huge profits, whilst your local caff or curry house faces closure because you’re not going there as often.

After all, as the prime minister said, we’re all in this together.

Chillimania

My good friend Nigel Kershaw was telling me yesterday that he survives all the charity and public dinners he attends with the inevitable rubber chicken by taking chillies with him. Once, when attending one such dinner in Birmingham, he forgot to bring some so he nipped out to a local curry pub and explained his predicament and offered to buy some. They thought it so funny they gave him a bagful for free.

A famous and glamorous New York chef once proudly told me she always keeps a bottle of Tabasco in her handbag.

All around us, we’re turning up the heat. My best Christmas present this year was a collection of chillies from around the world. We’re all becoming familiar with Scoville Scale and I keep reading articles about the health benefits of hot food.

And to bring it home, where do you think the world’s hottest chilli is grown? Mexico? India? Nope it’s south Devon. So it seems we’re progressing to becoming a nation of chilliholics.

It’s a myth (perpetuated by many immigrant communities as well as stalwarts of French cuisine) to say that developing a taste for hot food numbs the palate for more subtle western dishes but if you do find yourself in constant need of a spice kick, don’t let that put you off coming to Roast. Our new head chef Marcus has placed that most British of dishes on the menu – a curry.

Diane Abbott and David Starkey

I’ve known Diane Abbott for about 25 years. She came from a working class under-privileged upbringing to becoming a Cambridge graduate and TV producer before becoming Britain’s first black woman MP.

I don’t share many of her political views (and quite what the politics of this Labour Party are seem hard to define, let alone challenge) but as a human being she is a decent person. Undeniably her famous Tweet was daft and unacceptable and Ed Miliband showed us for the first time his leadership skills by bringing her into line over it.

If he allows her to stay in the shadow cabinet, it will be his second act of good leadership.

Also yesterday, further down the headlines, was the news that Professor David “whites are the new blacks” Starkey (who taught me at university very well and is also a very nice person) has been asked to curate an exhibition in the neighbourhood where Stephen Lawrence was murdered. Just as there were calls for Diane’s resignation, there have been viral campaigns to boycott David’s show.

Rather than banning, sacking, boycotting shouldn’t we – the moderate mainstream majority- just recognise the right to be wrong?

Halal Christmas

The halal food industry is booming – witness the gradual transition of operators like Nandos and KFC to ever expand their markets (and our waistlines). I hear this has been yet another great year for halal turkeys at Christmas, with demands at butchers in places like the east end of London massively outstripping supply.

This is heartening news. Contrary to common stereotype, Muslims are celebrating the birth of Jesus in traditional form. As Abrahamic faiths, this shouldn’t come as a surprise though of course Judaism falls under the category and moderate Jewish and Muslim leaders here in Britain are coming to together to tackle growing conflicts and tensions on university campuses, which isn’t where we should be.

We should use our food traditions as greater cultural levellers than we do. So let’s all eat latkes on Hannukah, Biryani at Eid, Gulab Jamun on Diwali. Celebrating each other’s cuisines helps us celebrate and respect each other’s cultures.

Let’s eat our way to a more tolerant 2012.

When will Mayfair be full?

I was treated to a preview lunch at Novikov last month, the Mayfair dining extravaganza with a reported £14 million makeover. I gave my three allotted guests (all very busy people) less than 24 hours notice to see if they could join me and they all abandoned their previous plans to take up this very hot ticket. There are about 300 seats across the two beautifully designed restaurants within the space and they are open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Even by conservative estimates they may expect to serve 1000 people a day.

Less than a minute’s walk away The Wolseley serves more people than that and around the corner from there fashionistas climb over each other to get a table at Cecconi. Up the road from there the new Hakkasan is taking nearly twice the earnings of the first one less than half a mile away. Round the corner from that the newly re-jigged Dover Street Arts Club has apparently 2000 on its waiting list and is close to meltdown.

Tomorrow I’m going to 34, Richard Caring’s new place off Grosvenor Square doing steaks just like Maze Grill on the square itself and just like the new Wolfgang Puck Cut restaurant round the corner on Park Lane. With the exception of The Wolseley (I haven’t been as a paying customer yet to Novikov) they are all crazily priced and yet we all go and pay those crazy prices. I hear there are more restaurants due to open in the neighbourhood soon in the new year too.

If they’re not cannibalising each other – and they don’t appear to be – we must conclude that in these precarious times more of us are dining out more often. This is not just good news for us restaurateur folk but also for diners being given more choices and in particular for London’s economy. More restaurants means more jobs, more taxes being paid, less people on benefit. So go out, dine and help London buck the national trend.

Curry myths

In the mid 1990s I launched a trade magazine called Tandoori for the Indian restaurant sector. Amazingly, it’s still going. When we set it up with all the sizzle of a mixed platter I made up a series of completely unverifiable claims about the curry world knowing from my journalist days that hacks wouldn’t check facts they wanted to get into their papers.

So you have probably heard that Chicken Tikka Masala (CTM as it’s known in the trade) was created in a restaurant up north in the 70s when a customer ordered tikka and found it had no sauce so the chef took it back into the kitchen, whirled it about in a pan with some Campbells tomato soup and cream and hey presto, our national dish was created. I made it up and I love the fact that people to this day quote this story back to me as if they’ve unearthed some great revelation. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.

Recently I have been roped in to advise government on the establishment of an academy for Asian cuisine to build local skills to establish more interest in the curry restaurant sector rather than rely on talent being recruited from abroad. It’s being dubbed the curry college and everyone’s jumping on board because, of course, we all love a curry.

But do we love making unsubstantiated claims?

Over the weekend The Independent’s online version ran a video clip about the project in which our very own Mayor Boris appeared and cited the “fact” that there are more Indian restaurants in London than in Delhi and Bombay combined. It put a smile on my face but won’t on his when I tell him (which I will take pleasure in doing) that I made that one up too. I am the chair of his Mayor’s Fund Business Club – or at least I am until he finds this out.