Table talk

In rude health

Connoisseurs of unusual foodstuffs may care to check out the Web site www.dazbert.co.uk/rudefood, a site that catalogues those strangely named items it calls "unintentional rude food, the product either of language differences or gross naïvety". Classics include Belchers (sausages), Bonka (Spanish coffee), Cock (Thai fish sauce), Fartons (Spanish doughnuts), Gits (poppadoms), Knob Creek (Bourbon), Makrel Guf (tinned fish cakes), Plopp (Czech chocolate), and Pschitt! (lemonade). This month's favourite is a canned tuna from the Caribbean island of Aruba that retails under the eye-watering name of Grated Fanny.

Is this a sick joke?

Paul Cryer, head of the Government's Better Hospital Food programme, was seen on a Channel 4 documentary recently in deep, earnest conversation with an NHS trust manager. Loyd Grossman's leading chef dishes were too expensive, the manager complained. Cryer listened intently, taking in the man's words. Then, as light dawned across his features, he responded with the breathtakingly ugly phrase, "So, we need to build in affordability". Surely not. Surely truckloads of caviar, foie gras and Champagne are the only way to get the poor things back on their feet.

You may be mad to work here…

Spotted on the Web site of the Angel pub and restaurant in Woolhampton, Berkshire, here's a job advert that'll have them applying in droves: "Chef/owner. Able to work 15 hours a day, seven days a week for no money, to put up with all manner of things, suitable applicant will require very little sleep and food, must be able to survive on nicotine, caffeine and the odd bacon sandwich. Must be competent with Web design, accounting, cooking (with an emphasis on pastry), stock-keeping, ordering, recruitment, budgeting, PR, advertising, maintenance, decorating, plumbing, extensive wine knowledge, sales and marketing, licensing laws, decorating, tiling, gardening, flower arranging, plumbing, car owner/driver. Must be fully fit and healthy (for at least 12 months). Any further skills would be useful but not essential. Holidays are not expected."

The poshest boxrooms in town

Duncan Palmer, general manager of the Connaught hotel in London, last week revealed a little more about the hotel's bedrooms than might be expected. Palmer remarked that when he took over, there were single bedrooms where someone with "arms outstretched could touch both walls" being sold at £300 a night. The sort of guests that use the Connaught are clearly unused to boxrooms. He added: "People were coming in and saying, ‘Well, that's fine for my servant or my driver, but where is my room?'" Thanks to refurbishment, the hotel's single rooms are now of a size beyond reproach, although where the servants now stay is unclear.

Eat your greens (if you know what they look like)

Children today are in no position to know whether they like many common vegetables, because they don't even know what they are. A survey of 228 eight- to 10-year-olds has shown that more than a third thought a cabbage was a lettuce. Nearly 20% could not identify a cauliflower, and some even confused melons with celery. One in five had never tasted broccoli and one in 10 had never eaten cabbage.