PANINIS

There’s no easy way to write this, so I’ll write it the hard way: paninis are shit.

They are the bread equivalent of eating a fucking panini. That’s right; paninis are so bad they transcend their food genre and become a benchmark of badness.

It’s basically eating a slimline, slightly-rounded brick with anaemia and a tan as an afterthought. Eating a panini is a chore akin to cleaning the sand out of a well-used pair of astroturf football boots.

Paninis detract from any filling you could possibly put in a panini. Wraps, baps, buns, baguettes, scones, crackers – these and all other bread-based products are superior to this pointless, not hard, not soft, not flexible, not inflexible grillable nonsense.

If that’s the only fillable option you can think of in a given moment when standing gormless at the counter of your local cafe/deli/whatever, just order the filling, in your hands.

It’s almost as if paninis thought they’d be given a free ride forever, just for having a Mediterranean-tinged name. This cheap con trick is over.

And let’s make this clear; paninis have no direct connection whatsoever to sticker manufacturer Panini. The latter’s stickers, though grossly overpriced, provide hours of entertainment for children and adults alike. Much distance should be placed between these two paninis, outside of this blog.

I strongly recommend to governments everywhere: deal with your housing crisis by forcefully commandeering all existing paninis and building homes with them.

All this considered, I will still give them a single point simply for adding meaning to the day-middles of office workers.

PANINIS: 1/10

DIRTY FRIED CHICKEN (AFTER PERFORMANCE)

I get in front of mics and speak to modest audiences on a fairly regular basis. There is not one gig I’ve ever completed after which an intense craving for fried chicken has not taken over me. Almost any dream will do: Chicken Cottage, Morley’s, Dixy, Perfect Fried Chicken, and any insertion of a southern American state or place that isn’t Kentucky before Fried Chicken.

I’ve got a theory that something lurks deep within the amino acids of less-than-premium quality poultry, that having chemically-reacted with breadcrumbs, seasoning and fat, provides the only known medicine to the phenomenon known as ‘performance come-down.’ This bit has just been heavyweight biology and mathematics, no need to worry at all if it went over your head, reader.

KFC itself, for whatever reason, never has even half the appeal of the down-and-dirty establishment staffed by a sole, extremely tired and a bit frightened-looking, employee. Perhaps in the unique circumstances of the night time mic-crawler’s wild-eyed feast it’s the fear we share that’s the not-colonel’s magic ingredient.

Whatever the reason; dirty fried chicken soothes nerves, and provides a meaty pat on the back satisfying enough to overcome any prior audience reaction. Less fried chicken, more friend chicken. This dead bird likes my material at least, you might mumble to yourself, inspiring a little more fear in the sole employee.

You munch on; gnaw the bones and walk towards transport, wondering how much oil on your face is socially acceptable, but knowing you can face cruel public opinion once again some other night.

Read these words and know truth.

Dirty fried chicken (everyday scenario): 6/10

Dirty fried chicken (post-performance): 10/10

NEW COVENT GARDEN SOUP

“Marketing”

The quickest way to summarise the flavour output of New Covent Garden Soups is this: Highly reminiscent of vomit, but a bit nicer. The ideal gustatory outcome of a bout of acute gastroenteritis, if you will.

This being written, I am often lulled back to New Covent Garden when at my lowest ebb in the monumental idea-culler that is the modern supermarket, whilst feeling like my diet could do with broadening beyond French stick and bananas.

This brings me seamlessly to the puke-soup’s juggernaut’s latest flavour: Oriental Vegetables with Chilli and Ginger. Predictably, it tastes like bile. It wouldn’t look more like sick if it was in a joke shop. ‘The Orient’, whoever they are these days, must be fuming about this. They should sue. So should Leyton Orient Football Club.

The heave- soup company is expert at one thing, however: Creating appealing, pseudo-rustic packaging. This means that any one of us are at clear and present danger of basketing one of its products when in that bewildering early supermarket aisle that contains raw meat, pizzas, soups in cartons, and often the Reduced Shelf. Just breathe deeply and move swiftly on.

New Covent Garden Soup will not get zero points from me, though. This is simply down to the fact that there is a hell of a lot of awful supermarket soup about, implying it must just be really hard to make any decent packaged liquid savoury. They also made once a slide out of a soup carton for some reason. Here, a couple for the effort.

2/10

PIZZA EXPRESS

I only found myself here by a series of eating misfortunes that left Walthamstow’s incarnation of the dough and cheese-based consumable chain as the final stop following two aborted attempts to eat food in other establishments. Things had sunk pretty low.

When eating was done, however, I severely scolded myself for overlooking up to this point a review of this, the most mightily mediocre of all eateries. Pizza Express is the Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans, lo! The fucking Ben Hur of mediocrity.

There is absolutely no distinct taste to a Pizza Express pizza, and no way to differentiate between each of its heinously overpriced models. It’s incredibly oily, and they offer you chilli and garlic oil to put on top the oil. I accepted. There was no discernable flavour in either, just oil. This is tasty food for only people whose regular diet is discarded cardboard packaging from a skip behind Argos.

At least if someone used your gaping, open mouth as a toilet, it would be an experience of sorts. This is nothing in that vein. No, Sir/Madam.

I might as well take on the ambience of the establishment while I’m here, for what it’s worth. The lighting is too light, the seating is too wipe-down and they’ve got faux-localised ‘art’ prints pinned to the wall of cultural landmarks that have since been bulldozered and sequestered to the usual brand of bland property criminals that have London in the back pocket of their fucking shit suit. They look heavily Photoshopped.

Again, it’s not a scene affecting enough to be truly shit – it’s simply an aching chasm of nothingness hungrily gobbling up human existence to a degree that would make the Great Cthulhu proud.

Honestly, you might as well eat Kraft cheese slices on stale bits of Kingsmill while sitting in the reception of a mid-level accountancy firm and calling yourself a pop-up pizzeria before even considering voluntarily bringing this into your life. We will all be dead soon. There is not the time for this.

3/10

TETLEY TEA: A CRITIQUE

Someone had to put down the words that are to follow. I am just sad that it had to be a Yorkshireman.

Tetley, established 1837, has lost its way in the year AD 2015. It’s the ‘range’, see.

Let’s spell it out: Green, ‘Super Green’ whatever the fuck that is (in four different fruity aromas), the ‘Blend Collection’ (including a treacherous ‘Blend of Both’ using both Original and Green teas), Redbush, Earl Grey, Peppermint, Camomile. Is that better, Tetley? I do not think so.

Tetley is not supposed to have a ‘range’. Black tea, to drink with lashings of milk to taste, that’s it. That’s your ‘range’. It has been a struggle to even accept that Tetley is offering several tea options – but now I accept that acceptance is the only way to get this seminal future warning from history into being.

This is not to say that I haven’t betrayed my Yorkshire roots to develop a heavy interest in tea alternatives, some of which may easily be termed “poncy”. I have. There have been times when I have strayed far from my home county’s vicious, righteous tea philosophies – perhaps towards a ‘winter-themed’ Chai in a cafe near Watford, for example. But I am a weak, bendable human, subject to environmental influences. You, Tetley are more than that: A bastion of hot beverage conservatism that must be preserved at all cost.

The availability of poncy teas of all kinds does not bother me at all. I just wouldn’t buy such teas from Tetley. OK, I did one time try its mint tea when it was on offer and I was unobservant of anything beyond the reduced label. For the record, it’s no fucking good; insipid at best. My weakness does not make your weakness any better, Tetley.

What would your founding fathers Joseph and Edward think of you now, Tetley? You and your ‘range’? Would they be wowed by your diversification in the face of commercial challengers? No. Would they fuck. They’d rather see Tetley die on its pure, pure sword and go back to selling salt from a pack horse than besmirch itself in this game.

Let’s compromise, Tetley: I can turn a blind eye to a ‘range’ of three, but only the following three: original, decaf, extra strong. Do not forsake the children.

I will now walk away from my keyboard, tutting.

‘HAND-CUT’ CHIPS

“Oh man, don’t you just pine for the days when pub chips were cut by hand?”

The answer to this question is “no.” Despite the paucity of points of interest in my life, I still have better things to think about than this*.

In the days of pubs having ideas above their station with greater and greater frequency, the idea has evolved that any chips served must be badged ‘hand-cut’ – which to the uninitiated can imply a sexy M&S ad-style experience is on the way alongside with your ‘hand-reared’ chicken burger or ‘hand-spooned’ mayonnaise.

Listen up, uninitiated; hand-cut chips are the red herring’s red herring, albeit without ever tasting of herring. They do, though, often have strange and completely unsolicited sweet potato overtones.

WHY HAVE YOU CHANGED THE STANDARD CHIPPING POTATO? ALL I ASKED IS FOR YOU TO CUT THE ORIGINAL POTATO WITH THE HANDS YOU WERE BORN WITH FOR £1 PREMIUM, YOU MEDDLING, PRETENTIOUS PUB KITCHEN SCUMBAG. THE TEXTURE IS GENERALLY FLACCID AND GREASY TOO. ARGH! I REALLY WISH THAT “HAND-CUT MY COCK” WORKED AS A SUCCESSFUL COMEBACK TO THIS MADNESS, BUT IT CLEARLY DOES NOT.

I sense that Barack Obama would be appalled by all this futile change in the pub chip market; change that absolutely no-one can surely believe in.

Pubs: Just reverse all this chip-related elaboration and I will become less angry, and possibly more readable. Until then, I want all my chips cut by the laser guns of gigantic cyborgs fuelled by hands amputated in the aftermath of industrial accidents. I sense this is the only way for the rational person to make his/her point.

PUB CHIPS AVERAGE SCORE (2010): 8/10

PUB CHIPS AVERAGE SCORE (2014): 4/10

*Pointedly, I do not have better things to do than add the 253 words which follow.

GINSTERS MEAT FEAST SLICE

Meat Feasts of any kind are a dangerous food zone. At the moment of selection, one always feels like one wants a Meat Feast. When faced with the thing in front of your face, it can be quite a different matter. Logic suggests a varied feast is a better all-round experience.

On this occasion, though, it’s a reasonably pleasant surprise – indeed, the incursion of Ginsters into a crowded market can be considered a qualified success.

The viscous liquid element of the pasty is complex and a tad oaky. It combines the aggression of Vladimir Putin with the ambiguity of Vladimir Putin. It’s certainly superior to any supermarket minestrone in a plastic tub, and arguably closer to my mother’s home-made effort, albeit still some way short. There were even several suggestions of vegetable involvement.

You may notice that meat does not get the primary mention in this summing up of a supposed Meat Feast, and indeed, the perversity of this snack is that the meat element of the pasty is a notably subdued competitor for your saliva’s affections. There was something to chew, a little to taste, but far less chewing and tasting than a reasonable level of carnivorous feasting should entail.

This is undoubtedly a decent effort in the convenience baked goods market. Within its genre, it offers an element of intrigue and dare where once there was paucity. All this said, there seems something strangely wrong here – a sense that Ginsters have overstretched the very essence of what it means to be Ginsters, Better experiences of products from this company can be found when meat fixation or feasting are not primary drivers.

All analysis aside, this is still an undeniably a solidly average food – nothing more or less. Complexity does not necessarily transcend innately average nature. For the average food fanatic, this is very reassuring.

6/10

CARTE NOIRE EXPRESSO

Culturally-ingrained spelling and pronunciation mistakes are one thing, but incorporating them into the name of a product is quite another.

‘Carte Noire Expresso’ is exactly as it’s printed on the label. Nonetheless, I expected it to be half-decent. I have low standards, and am usually reasonably content to drink a coffee where the entire supply chain from grower to drinker leave the narrative underwhelmed. Also, I’m as much a sucker for French-sounding things as the next man.

Carte Noire Expresso, however, is a sneering parody of a coffee. You can taste more coffee in brown-wrappered Quality Street. If this product could be summarised in a short one-entity play, centred on the page for no reason, it’d be as follows:

CARTE NOIRE EXPRESSO:

So you thought you were having a coffee, did you? Interesting…

(aside)

Dickhead.

3/10.

NUTTY BISCUITS

Though it certainly has an air of it, I’m not sure this is a Christmas-related AFB. The Middle Eastern-owned UK newsagent has opened our minds to nutty biscuits all year round; though as if to deliberately confuse matters I’m current well into a pack of pistachio and almond biscuits bought from a Middle Eastern-owned UK newsagent during Advent.

All this said, the miscellaneous nutty biscuit is synonymous with the festive season – at least where I grew up. My mum makes an astute almond crescent around this time of year. But even the most astute biscuit-maker would struggle to make the case of even the best nutty biscuit being a snack to inspire anything more than vague interest.

They’re fine. That’s it. A bit sweet and nutty, but you’d expect these as minimum qualities. There is absolutely no build beyond this. Vanilla and/or coconut essence can be added to the mix, but these are essences, not superheroes. I spent over an hour screaming “TRANSCEND!” at an almond crescent once – to absolutely no avail. My mum was in tears.

The fundamental, unverified fact lying behind this blog is that no-one on earth would name a nut as their favourite food. This registers the nutty biscuit’s hopes for self-improvement fatally flawed. Almond, pistachio, AN ut – there will be no rise to glory.

If a nutty biscuit were an undergraduate student, it’d get a low 2:1 from a friendly examiner. If it were a Premier League football team, it’d be Aston Villa.

6/10 – and never a point more.

THE CO-OPERATIVE MINI CHICKEN KIEV BITES

Not actual Kievs. Soup/ dip not provided.

34% chicken. If you want key words, you got ‘em, right there.

The Co-operative mini chicken Kiev bites are far more Kiev than they are chicken. Whatever that means.

Sure, such low-meat meat products are very much symbolic with everything that is evil and wrong with the modern world. At the same time, though, sometimes you have to concede that something evil is also pretty damn competent – Real Madrid football club, for example.

I theorise that supermarkets are preparing us for the conveniently-ignored solid theory that the only sustainable way to eat to prolong humanity’s general future is to avoid meat altogether, by slowly reducing the amount of meat in their breaded and microwavable products over time. Give it a decade and these mini chicken Kiev bites will be 5% chicken. And we’ll accept it.

Aside from the issue of meat content, mini bites like these are the nursery slopes for those curious about full-size chicken Kievs but afraid to take the plunge. And this mini Kiev bite experience would surely ensure a later upgrade. It may be scary at first, but I’d advise anyone to give it a go, to say that you’ve done it if nothing else.

Average Food Blogs are often afflicted by massive levels of digression, and this is no different. Let’s get on to a qualitative assessment off this food, shall we? Yes.

I would not go as far to say that each mini Kiev is full of flavour, but they do have some discernable flavour.  It would be remiss, after all, to stuff the things full of garlic when they are likely to be consumed in a lunchtime scenario (for some reason the thought of mini chicken Kiev bites as evening meal is incomparably depressing), but garlic lurks to a relevant extent for context. There are also some generic savoury flavours that are probably not of natural origin, but fairly moreish.

This is also a snack that does not initiate an immediate psychological deterioration upon eating, unlike a supermarket mini pork pie, for example. Overall, these are far from unpleasant small-scale foods that you should let into your small-scale lives.

7/10