Table talk
l A year to make a rasher statement
WHEN researchers at British Airways were asked to find an answer to one of the biggest problems facing the aviation industry they recognised the importance of their task and set aside a year to devise a solution. The puzzle they had to solve was how the airline could serve 200 hearty hot breakfasts at 35,000ft in 15 minutes. After 365 days of dedicated study, their collective brainpower hit on an idea.
The daily ingredients of the "miracle" meal, as BA is calling it, include hundreds of baguettes and slices of bacon. Still wondering what this revolutionary breakfast could possibly be? It's a bacon butty.
l Temper when it comes to the crunch
CHEFS are notorious for throwing tantrums, but a new book entitled The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World suggests their moodiness may have an upside after all. When a customer complained that his fried potatoes were too thick, George Crum, a chef in New York's Half Moon hotel, vented his spleen on the potatoes, which he chopped into wafer-thin slices, then deep-fried and salted. The diner was delighted and the potato crisp was born. However, it was another 45 years before they were first produced commercially, in Cleveland, Ohio, during 1895.
l Pig parts for the papal palate?
CHEFS could certainly learn a recipe or two from a 15th-century cookery book entitled De Honesta Voluptate. The book, which was sold at an auction in Swindon last week to an anonymous bidder for £10,000, was written by Bartholomaeus Platina, a librarian at the Vatican who died in 1481. Considered to be the world's first printed cookery book, it gives details of 300 recipes, written entirely in Latin, from left-over hog and cannabis bread to bear's head which, according to Platina, was "incredibly good to eat". Now there's a grizzly thought.
l Start as you mean to go
THE London Metropole hotel's obvious delight at signing up its first customer for new conference facilities being built suggests that not everyone is falling under the sway (or should that be shui?) of New-Age thinking. Others may have detected an inauspicious aspect to its inaugural client being the International Association of Insolvency Professionals, but not the Hilton hotel's general manager George Westwell. He describes it as "a very positive sign", without a hint of crossed fingers or touched wood.
l Or is it just a time-saving idea?
Restaurateur Paul Singh gave new meaning to the term convenience food when he decided to open a restaurant. According to a report in the Food Marketing and Manufacturing Journal he bought his local public toilets and spent £25,000 converting them into a 50-seat curry house. Asked what had attracted him to the toilets in the first place, he replied: "Location is everything when you're opening a restaurant."
l Has God heard about the minimum wage?
THE Hibernian in Dublin had an unusual experience recently when two elderly Catholic nuns staying at the hotel were discovered trying to recruit female staff members to join their religious order. Don't they know that hotels have enough trouble trying to hang on to their staff without this sort of thing? Let's hope it doesn't become a habit.
