The Old Suffolk Punch, Hammersmith

The OSP on Fulham Palace Road has had a chequered past. In its glory days it was a boxer-owned pub “The Golden Gloves” but I first knew it as The Old Suffolk Punch and there was a great, if scuffed, geezer feel to the place — my favourite work boozer. Then it went through a refurb and a phase as the (initials only) OSP just when this review in 2003 [fancyapint.com] was written. The OSP at that time was an awful, soul-destroying place. There were light-box murals of grinning early 20-somethings having a GREAT TIME, looking like low-rent Tony Stone stock photos. It was enough to make the gods of the public house weep into their ports and lemons. A wretched attempt to create a terrible West End bar in the terrible West of Hammersmith.

Thankfully that passed — if a little too slowly — and it became The Old Suffolk Punch once again. A reliable if unremarkable Greene King pub. Well I do have one remark, though I imagine it’s about Greene King food menus chain-wide: The Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding wrap with gravy (and chips). Behold:

Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pud ... in a wrap

From the menu my colleagues and I were imagining a bread wrap around slices of beef and some tiny Yorkshire puds, but it was probably the IPA getting in the way of the obvious interpretation. A flat Yorkshire pud-style batter pancake was the wrap. Brilliant. You pick it up by the batter wrap with the beef and horseradish sauce trapped inside and dip it in the bowl of gravy. NOM, NOM, and three times NOM.

Well it was new to me. This update on a classic, I can get behind. And in to my tum.

Alan in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments

Tomme de Fleurette, Nifelchas (cheesy lovers #66 & #67), with a small digression on bacteria

Tomme de Fleurette

A soft unpasturised cow’s cheese, made in Switzerland and bought from KäseSwiss.

A round of soft white cheese, smattered with a bright white bloom, and striped with little ridges from where it’s been sitting on racks to mature. Inside it’s soft and pliable, the colour of cream.

This cheese is fantastically milky, and melts away to in my mouth. The thin delicate rind has a slightly crumbly texture, and tastes of heather, flowers and astringent herbs. This complements the utter drippiness of the inside of this cheese, which is smooth, creamy, gently sweet and nutty, and has just a hint of cocoa to it. more »

marna in FT / Pumpkin Publog • No Comments

Cashel Blue, Tunworth (cheesy lovers #64 & #65)

Cashel Blue

A blue pasturised cow’s cheese from Co. Tipperary, Ireland, bought from Neals Yard Dairy

This cheese has a thin, soft, slightly mouldy rind, and is pale yellow inside, with a hefty smattering of greeny-grey veining.

It’s soft and moist, and feels pliable. It melts in my mouth and is at once both wonderfully sweet and creamy, and fresh and sour. more »

marna in FT / Pumpkin Publog • 2 Comments

BIS Week: What Is Bis’s Favourite BIScuit

Often in scholarly discussions of the revolutionary impact of Bis on the cultural scene in the late nineties, little notice is taken of the trivial. Nevertheless to understand exactly how the Teen-C revolution came about, sometimes the trivial becomes a solid motivational factor. And a key question stands there in plain sight, staring us down with its obviousness. But as pointed out by no less that Garibaldi, many revolutions are predicated on trivial tipping points, and perhaps the blue touch paper of the Teen-C revolution stares at us from their name.

Ie, what did they like to eat with a cup of tea?

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Pete Baran in Pumpkin Publog • 3 Comments

The FT Top 25 Pubs of the 00s No 10: The Pakenham Arms, Mount Pleasant

There are two words that according to modern usage I pronounce wrong. I will hold my hand up to “Colander” – which I pronounce “cullander” to rhyme with Wallander* as a throwback to believing it etymology being tied to the cauliflower I often saw being drained in one. The other word I annoy everyone with pronounce differently (correctly) is the name of this pub. I give it the long A – to me it is the PAY KEN HAM. Everyone else says PACK EN HAM. But PACK EN HAM sounds a bit too harsh to me, a bit too much like Pack It IN! Which is part of the point of the Pakenham, it doesn’t ask you to pack it in at all. Indeed it is quite happy to let you drink well past midnight.

The Pakenham is a posties pub, backing on to the wasteland at the back of Mount Pleasant Sorting Office, and fifty percent of the drinkers there are usually postal workers. As such you would not be surprised to find big projected sports screens, a dartboard and plenty of rushed pint vertical drinking space. But its horseshoe bar also keeps its beers very well (I think of it as the spiritual home of Doom Bar in London), and the excellent bar staff know how to work their crowd. more »

Pete Baran in Pumpkin Publog • 6 Comments

Widmer Four Year Aged Cheddar – Cheesy Lover INTERCONTINENTAL #2

An annatto-coloured cheddar from Wisconsin

My second US cheese is a four year old cheddar. FOUR? That’s very old for a cheddar, I think. I’m expecting something dense and dry and crumbly, and thick with crunchy lactic crystals. But this cheese is moist and soft. It’s also been coloured with annatto, and is a vivid orange colour. I grew up in Ireland, where cheese (and lemonade) come in red and white varieties, so this doesn’t bother me a jot. My cheese-eating chum, brought up on wholesome, un-frivolously-coloured English cheddar, is somewhat perturbed by the bright block we’re about to sample.

It’s not as intense as I expect it to be. It’s very sharp, tart and bitter – it reminds me of lemon pith – but there’s not much more to the taste than that. I’m spoiled, these days, and used to intense farmhouse cheddars, with pockets of different flavours – a new cheese in every bite! – and enough character that you can tell what the cow ate for breakfast that day. And, yes, a good whomph of manure. This cheese is uniform, and bland beneath the lemony sharpness. I think it’s spent its four years in some cold sealed sterile place.

marna in FT / Pumpkin Publog • 1 Comment

Cheap Food We Love: Frozen Peas

Somehow we ended up discussing this in the pub last night and so I have been spurred into an uncharacteristically coherent posting.

Frozen peas are one of the most important foods of the modern age. No, listen, right; they’re technically a pulse so they contain protein and also they are green so they contain vitamins, maybe even some fibre. They’re good to eat AND good to put on your ankle after hilarious sports-related injuries at school. They are, in many ways, the ultimate super food and most importantly, they’re about 74p a bag.

more »

piratemoggy in FT / Pumpkin Publog • 8 Comments

The FT Top 25 Pubs of the 00s No 11: Trinity Arms, Brixton

The Trinity is the only pub outside Zone 1* on this list. That’s not to say that we are a bunch of central London fanatics, but it is where we pretty much all work and, therefore, where we’ve spent most evenings in the pub. I’d left the Exmouth by the time this stage in proceedings had been reached so I’m a little short on the main thrust of the arguments that got the Trinity this far up the list, but I can tell you about what I like about it:

It’s the nicest pub in Brixton

And when you’re faced with a three hour gap between the end of work and halfway through the second support at the Academy that’s all you can ask for really. Because it is the location of the Trinity, only a ten minute walk from the Brixton Academy that led it to being visited, never mind nominated. The only time I’ve been here and not gone on to a gig was when The Specials cancelled at half 5. But this is damning with faint praise, they do a cracking pint of Ordinary, the service is good, they serve big portions of decent food and have a nice beer garden out the back if you are some sort of beast of the field. Much like the Pineapple in Kentish Town it does seem to have become the haunt of A Certain Type Of Gig Goer, but then that’s maybe because I’m only going to Certain Types Of Gigs (and I freely admit to fitting the profile of the Certain Type)…

There was one night, just after the smoking ban came in (I’m thinking the night of the Carter gig?), when I arrived quite early (what? I was EXCITED!) to find that they’d replaced the carpet right through the pub and all you could smell was NEW CARPET, it was the weirdest thing, like drinking in Allied…

FancyAPint
Beer In The Evening
Randomness Guide to London

*sorry non-Londoners, but this includes you too. Although apart from the Three Goats Heads and the Turf in Oxford, the Windmill in Stansted Airport and the Brothers Bar at Glastonbury I can’t think of many non-London bouzers where a gang of FT contributors have been there at the same time. Oh, I suppose DBA in New York and the Small Bar in Chicago should get honourable mentions…

CarsmileSteve in FT / Pumpkin Publog • 5 Comments

Camembert de Normandie (cheesy lover #63)

My cheese was not as melty as this one

My colleague Lars joins me for a cheesy lunch, and fancies something brie-ish oozing out of bread. We acquire a little wooden box of camembert from Mons – it’s the drippiest white-rind cheese they’ve got for sale today. It’s covered in a slightly patchy and uneven fuzzy white mould, and a rich, sticky orange rind peeks out from underneath this. The pale creamy yellow paste’s exposed when I cut a wedge, and while it’s not quite as oozy I’d count perfect, it’s still pretty moist.

marna in FT / Pumpkin Publog • No Comments

Snow White Goat Cheddar (Cheesy Lover INTERCONTINENTAL #1)

I don’t know a huge amount about US cheeses. They’re not widely available in the UK – it’s a long way for a cheese to travel. So when a friend was spending Christmas in the states, I begged for some cheese to be smuggled back with her.

Snow White Goat Cheddar

This is a hard cheddar cheese, made in Wisconsin from pasturised goats milk

Cheddar made from goat’s cheese seems incorrect, but of course I can’t wait to taste it. The block I have doesn’t gleam like the snow outside, but it’s a very pale off-white. It’s opaque in the centre, and turns slightly translucent towards the crumbly brown rind. There’s also some greeny blue mould growing on the underside, but I believe this to be an unintended addition. more »

marna in FT / Pumpkin Publog • 4 Comments