Festival season. A chance to revel in the sights, sounds and unholy stench of your fellow man, catch a few bands and overload your system with a variety of mind-altering substances.

But, alas, since entering the crushing ball-ache of middle-aged existence that is my 30s, I’ve started to feel a bit too old and lazy for it all.

I’m less inclined than I used to be to wade through gallons of human effluent for an hour to see my favourite band, only to find my view obscured by the acne-ridden back of an 8ft tall shirtless teenager, or worse, the be-thonged arse spilling out of his girlfriend’s cut-offs as she sits on his shoulders.

So what’s left when you’re an idle old curmudgeon like me and the last album you actually liked came out in 2003? Food and drink festivals of course.

This summer I’ve visited one of the biggest in town, and maybe the smallest. Who will win? David or Goliath? There’s only one way to find out…

…rationally discussing the benefits and drawbacks of each before making a measured decision. We’re not savages.

Supersize me

First the big one. I’ve been a Cardiff International Food and Drink Festival devotee for the best part of half a decade now.

It’s become a bit of a routine; arrive early on Friday to beat the crowds, only to find that the equivalent of the population of Coventry somehow arrived there at dawn, then spend a couple of hours ducking the razor sharp elbows of feral Cowbridge grannies to snaffle a few free samples. Proceed to buy all the same stuff you did last year, and get sunburned beyond recognition in the white-hot shadeless thunderdome of Roald Dahl Plas. Finish your evening hate-drinking expensive Fosters out of precariously flimsy plastic cups, and, if a wealthy uncle recently remembered you in their will, maybe have a small watery Pimms.

And yet, for all this festival’s foibles I still have a lot of love for it. The actual food is great, with some great local and local-ish suppliers. Snowdonia Cheese Company are a fixture, and with good reason – they offer a shedload of variations on old fashioned mature cheddar, with everything from cranberries to scotch, and I’ve yet to try a bad one.

Hereford’s Handmade Scotch Egg Co. offer some thoroughly mental twists on the 1980s buffet favourite; the sour, savoury Old Stager – a pickled egg, encased in crushed salt and vinegar crisps instead of breadcrumbs – is insane genius.

And, if you’ve got a sweet tooth, Sub Zero Ice Cream (sadly not a Mortal Kombat inspired sundae franchise) and The Fudge Box (stop sniggering in the back) offer enough flavours to make your head spin.

It was good to see relative newbies like Crafty Devil, Meat and Greek and Dusty Knuckle making an appearance this year too, but I was left with the lingering feeling that the festival could do with a well-intentioned kick up the arse if it wants to stay on top – biggest doesn’t always equate with best, especially when it’s virtually the same line-up year in, year out.

Hopefully the success of Streetfood Circus and The Depot might shake things up a bit for 2016.

Pipes dream

And so, on to the plucky upstart; Pipes‘ Micro Beer Festival at the Printhaus. A day of BBQ, bunting, and bloody brilliant beer.

As you might expect from an event that’s all about barbecue and craft beer, the audience is a bit more specialist – by 4pm we reached peak hipster, and the number of handlebar moustaches and sockless loafers threatened to coalesce into a sleeve-tattooed singularity. But say what you like about hipsters (I do) –  they know their food.

Some of the best of which was doled out by Shauna and Sam of the mighty Hangfire Smokehouse. Highlights included the massive king ribs with meat so tender it positively hurled itself off the bone, and their brisket laden chilli, rich and thick as an old Etonian. Their offerings were all the better washed down with a sunny pint of Pipes Kölsch or, if you prefer something with a bit more grunt, their American Pale Ale.

The Canton brewers also knocked it out of the park with their new Pineapple Berliner – one of their first attempts at a sour beer. I’m not a massive fan of chucking fruit and veg in my pint and usually actively dislike the sour stuff – I tried one of Wild Beer’s once (Somerset Wild, for the masochists out there) and reacted like a two year old tasting marmite for the first time.

But, on the barman’s recommendation – couldn’t argue with that facial hair – I gave it a bash it with some of their specially-made raspberry syrup, and lo, there was summer in a glass; sweet, but not too sweet, and alarmingly drinkable. Thank god it only weighed in around the 3.2% mark, and was too pink for a grown man to drink more than a couple of pints of with a straight face.

The festival also doubled as a launch for the new Triple Soda soft drink, created by Pipes and Hangfire in an Avengers-style crossover. It’s pretty good on its own – essentially posh lemonade with a bit of ginger zing –  but, in the hands of Cardiff’s finest Canadian import, mixologist Ericka Duffy, it’s liquid gold.

I tasted all four of her cocktail offerings, including the bonkers Smoked Watermelon (I skipped the optional worm), but it was the bourbon laden Triple L that really hit the spot – none of the tooth-dissolving sweetness you get with a bad cocktail (you know, those ones you get pretty much everywhere down the Bay), and enough of a bourbon kick to taste like it’s well worth the investment. Duffy’s past as, I kid you not, a professional taster of tea, coffee and wine, plus a stint as a perfumer, has given her mad booze skills.

Which fest tests the best?

Compared to a heavy hitter like CIF&DF (good god that’s an ugly acronym) that attracts thousands of punters, 300 or so people in a (beautifully decorated) glorified car park in Canton with a couple of choices of food and booze may not seem like much of a threat.

But like the hoary old cliché goes, sometimes small can be beautiful.

See, at the risk of sounding like the kind of loathsome soap-dodging hippie that I detest, what makes a festival great is never the music/food/booze/classic cars/crochet/whatever the hell else is advertised on the poster; it’s really about making connections with other humans. Ideally while in a slightly altered state of consciousness (especially the crochet crowd, they’re mad for it).

And that’s what Pipes succeeded in doing, not only by keeping the number of people within sane limits, but also by inviting some genuinely lovely traders and artists who actively enjoyed shooting the breeze with the punters.

Every stall had the kind of inspirational story behind it that a heavy handed X-Factor producer would have blasted Snow Patrol over and ruined, and they were more than happy to take a few minutes to share. The food phenomena that people really fall in love with are not just a sandwich, or a cupcake – they’re a story that we buy into. Whoever put this line-up together gets it.

In those rare quiet moments, CIF&DF can still capture this, but when the guy on the cheese stall has to marshall umpteen thousand hungry Cardiffians pillaging their way through his free samples like a horde of starving vikings, he just hasn’t got time to tell you about how he jacked in his soul crushing job working for The Man to go and do what he loves. And that’s a crying shame.

What’s your favourite summertime food festival? Do you prefer a good old fashioned burger from a greasy trailer or a vegan mung bean casserole served on gluten-free quinoa bread? Let me know in the comments or on twitter at @FuudBlog…

 

 

* Photo credit: Rain and mud via photopin (license)

The great British local. That pub within walking distance of home where the barman knows what you want before you do, and everyone knows your name except that weird drunk guy who never, ever leaves.

The default location for the excitable Friday night post-work debrief pint, the I-hate-my-job-and-I-want-to-die mid week desperation beer, and the ill-advised Sunday afternoon ‘one more won’t hurt’ glass of red.

A good local is a hard thing to find – it’s not just about location, despite what Kirsty and Phil might say, it’s more about… I dunno, fit I guess? When you find a pub that’s not only walking distance from your house, but also feels like an extension of your living room, where you can pass the time of day with the bar staff without having to worry that they think you’re coming on to them, or sit there alone supping an ale without feeling like a Barney Gumble-esque barfly.

Thanks to the Wetherspoons juggernaut and Brains (as much as I love them for being a Welsh icon), the average Cardiff boozer nowadays is as cookie cutter as a family-size pack of Oreos. The same faux-hand written signage;  the same ‘quirky’ symbols for ladies and gents; the same lager selection: Fosters (kangaroo piss),  Stella (Belgian fighting juice) or Carling (not even worth taking the piss out of).

But every now and then, you find an oasis; a tiny island of individuality in a sea of samey boozing dens. And that’s how, a couple of years ago, I washed up at the Lansdowne.

I knew we weren’t in a Brains pub as soon as we walked through the door; the wood-panelled British racing green bar festooned with dried hop plants and a plastic raven (that may or may not have been quothing nevermore) would have given even the hardiest corporate brand manager an instant coronary. There were DOGS in there for gods sake. And ham baps on the bar. Like we were in Yorkshire in the 1800s or something. It was bloody great.

And it has been ever since; from Christmases to birthdays, from the Grand National to the Six Nations, and from pub quizzes to beer festivals, the Lansdowne has been there, an unshakeable booze-dispensing rock.

Don’t get me wrong, the Lansdowne’s not perfect – the seating is made from reclaimed pews that could once have belonged to an extreme catholic sect who believed agonising arse-pain brought them closer to god.

Also, the fact that there isn’t a beer garden makes it a bit less appealing than say The Romilly or The Conway when the mercury edges up much past the 20 degree mark.

But then, my living room isn’t perfect either – sometimes there are woodlice, one of the pictures stays wonky no matter how many times you straighten it and there’s a horrible tea stain on one of the chairs – it’s still home though.

I’ll have the usual

So what’s so good about it? Well, The Lansdowne pretty much perfectly walks the line between ‘proper’ pub and hipster tap room. You can get a craft beer from their famous Fridge of Doom with a ridiculous name like Faceless Spreadsheet Ninja if you like, or a pint of Sharp’s truly awesome Cornish Pilsner on tap, but you can also have a pint of old-fashioned mild and sit in the corner with a pickled egg grumbling about kids these days.

You can play a tidy game of darts with the old Canton boys or crack open Cards Against Humanity with man-bunned hipster types; tuck into a grilled halloumi burger on your way to see a contemporary dance performance about gay Lithuanian communists in the 1930s at Chapter, or chow down on pie and chips before going down The City for the game.

And speaking of which, the food is bloody great without being gastropub pretentious. The Lansdowne was one of the first places in town to realise that pop-ups weren’t just for ‘that London’ and could work in the humble ‘diff – it was here that Hangfire Smokehouse reached critical mass before becoming a streetfood superpower, after all.

But their own chef, Gav, ain’t no slouch either. I’ve raved about the black and blue burger before (a huge, juicy, tasty beast of a thing, set off perfectly with a face-puckering slab of blue cheese), but their Katsu curries break the mould too, and are a welcome change of pace from the boil-in-the-bag tikka masala that most pubs offer. The best part is, the menu changes all the time apart from a few lynchpins, so there’s always something new to try. Not that you will, because the burger and the curry are so bloody good.

It’s also home to some cracking pizza – the yin-yang combo of a slice of their super spicy diavolo followed by a slice of the (sadly defunct) blue cheese and grape was a taste of pure pizza nirvana.

Then there’s the Sunday Lunch. For sheer value for money alone, the cow to plate ratio is nothing short of remarkable. And they’d be forgiven for banging them out without too much care given how busy they get of a weekend, but I’ve never had a bad one – perfect roast beef, veg cooked just right and Yorkshires big enough to wear as hats, with gorgeous (if potentially lethal) molten cauliflower cheese on the side.

Last orders at the bar

So we’ve established that the food and booze are great. But for a good pub to transcend to true greatness, it needs an iconic landlord/lady. A Moe Szyslac; a Mike from Only Fools and Horses; a Ted Danson from Cheers before he became a massive racist.

I’ve known some greats in my life, like Brendan the angry Irishman from the Coopers Arms in Aberystwyth, who would look at you like you’d just set fire to his favourite kitten if you ordered a non-alcoholic drink, or Roz from the Mount Pleasant in Mountain Ash who would positively fuck you the fuck up if you were impertinent enough to put your feet up on the chairs.

And the Lansdowne? Well they’ve got Binki. Canton’s finest award winning, art teaching, beer-brewing booze pixie. Not only does she share a name with death’s horse (kinda), she’s also got her own beer; she once came in at Christmas a bit pissed in a spangly dress, looking like she’d escaped from the set of strictly after liberating a couple of bottles of bubbly from the green room. On a busy day she’ll squeeze almost everyone in for lunch with the kind of conspiratorial wink most landlords reserve only for regulars who’ve put in 15 years of hard-time.

And that, really, is the secret of a great pub: making you feel welcome. Binki and the rest of the Lansdowne crew have always understood that, and that’s why they’ve got a bar so packed with awards that you need to bring a step-ladder to order a pint.

All of which makes it all the more devastating that she’s off to pastures new this month, leaving the good ship Lansdowne in the hands of a new captain. That’s a big ‘ol pair of shoes to fill, and I don’t envy them the task. But if they can just nail that warm welcome it’ll stay my local for a long time to come. Pint of the usual please, guv.

What’s your favourite Cardiff boozer? City Arms or The Conway? Brewdog or Buffalo? The Romilly or The Rummer? Let me know in the comments below…

If you liked this, you can follow me on Twitter at @FuudBlog or subscribe using the little blue box on the right!

“You won’t catch me drinking that Craft beer. Wanky, overpriced rubbish. Give me a pint of proper beer any d… oh… it tastes  quite nice actually. *takes another sip* that‘s really, really good… I might have another one… OMFGITSAMAZINGGIVEMEALLTHEPRECIOUSCRAFTBEERS“ – me about 18 months ago.

Yes, I admit it. I’m a huge craft beer fan. At its best it tastes amazing, it’s hellish strong, and really, it doesn’t cost that much more than the mass-produced stuff – at least not if you live in a city (half the time it’s cheaper than Peroni).

There’s eleventy-billion different kinds, so many that I’ll never be able to try every one if I live to be a hundred. Yet paradoxically, I can’t help trying, Pokemon style, to catch ‘em all. How could you not like it?!

But craft beer has an image problem. It’s gone from being the next big thing to the current big thing, and soon it’ll be the last big thing. And everyone knows that’s when the knives come out. There are already lots and lots of articles being written about how ‘craft’ is ruining beer. And then, there’s this Budweiser advert:

 

Now I’m admittedly biased, but I can’t help thinking it would have been more cost effective to get a giant billboard saying THIS BEER IS FOR YOU, YOU FUCKING PLEB. YOU DON’T DESERVE NICE THINGS. NOW SUCK IT DOWN AND STOP ASKING QUESTIONS, I’VE GOT A NEW POOL TO PAY FOR.

Part of the problem of course, is the name. It stinks of marketing doublespeak, something shat from the cocaine addled mind of a slithering, Audi-driving ad executive before knocking off early for the day to go seal clubbing.

But what if you just… stop calling it that?

Recently I was lucky enough to spend a bit of time in Oregon, the heartland of all things hoppy, and the spiritual home of craft beer (or one of them, anyway). Only, they didn’t call it ‘craft beer’ or ‘craft ale’ there. They just called it ‘beer’.

Every bar had at least a couple of different kinds on tap next to the Bud, the Coors light, and America’s answer to Skol, Pabst Blue Ribbon (A local confided that, ‘basically, after I’ve had three or four really good beers I’m too drunk to taste anything, so I just switch to PBR for the rest of the night”). And this was in small town blue collar dive bars, not swanky uptown brewpubs. Ditch the label and the idea that it’s a high-falutin’ fancy pants drink and it just becomes another flavour to choose from.

Taste the rainbow

Speaking of which, I’m going to completely dismiss argument number one from the anti-craft beer lobby – i.e. that it doesn’t taste good. That’s like saying you don’t like music because you heard a Justin Bieber song once. Until you’ve tried a few, how can you know? You’ve got to kiss a few frogs before you find your prince, so to speak. There are more ‘flavours’ of craft beer than Japanese KitKats, so there’s got to be at least one that hits the spot for you.

And how about the idea that pretentious arseholes drink craft beer? Well, yes, there is a bit of truth to that one. There are people who’ll rant on for hours about hop varieties and the merits of whiskey barrel vs rum barrel aged brews. But really, are they doing any harm? I say let nerds be nerds – some people will always get sucked into the minutiae of stuff that others find massively tedious (see –vinyl, comic books, baking), but do they ever really sneer at non-anoraks for not knowing as much?

Do vinyl aficionados run around blowing up CD factories* like an audiophile’s version of Sarah Connor trying to take out Skynet? Do comic book geeks ever assault innocent people for not knowing whether Dick Grayson or Jason Todd is the definitive Robin?** Has Mary Berry ever dropped the c-bomb and headbutted anyone after one too many sherries because they put too much bicarb in their brownies? Never happened (except maybe that last one).

For the most part beer nerds are just excited about what they love and want to share it. They’re no different to that guy who kept going on and on about how great Breaking Bad was. Over and over, he’d tell you how it was so great, and clever and funny, and in the end it got on your nerves, but one day, you decided to give it a try. And then you watched all 5 seasons back to back one weekend and your girlfriend dumped you.

I can’t help thinking if the craft beer haters gave it just a little try, they might start to see things a little differently.

Cats and dogs, living together…

But, friends, like Owain Glyndwr uniting the people of Wales against the English or Mance Rayder bringing together the wildings, I’m here to say can’t we all just… get along?

There’s absolutely a place for mass produced cheap-as-chips beer. Planning on being sat on the beach with a barbecue and a cooler bag for 6 hours? Get some Saint Omer stubbies in from Tesco. Off out for the Autumn internationals? If you start off on the Goose Island IPA you’ll be in bed before that middle-aged valleys harridan stuffed into a skin-tight Wales jersey in the corner starts drooling over Halfpenny’s thighs – it’s Brains you want. On a stag/hen do with one of your more questionable mates that’s likely to end in broken relationships, ruined friendships or grievous bodily harm? Stick with a sub-Stella lager to mitigate the fallout.

Likewise there’s a place for craft beer – when you’re at home on a Friday night in front of Gogglebox after a bitch of a week, or when you’re settled in to a sun-drenched beer garden on a Saturday afternoon with your favourite people, or indulging in some cheeky daytime drinking on an unplanned weekday off. Basically any occasion when you can a) take a bit of time to taste what you’re drinking, and b) you’re not too far North or South of payday.

Cardiff has some great places for craft beer – The Lansdowne in Canton perfectly mixes a great selection with a proper pub feel, and Brewdog, with it’s insanely helpful staff and mind-bending variety, is great for craft beer virgins and confirmed hop-heads alike. Go on, give it a bash…

* I’d like to thank 1998 for that reference to a dead media format.

** Dick Grayson, obvs.

Where do you stand on all things crafty? Know your Weizen from your Saison or do prefer a good old fashioned pint of mild? Let me know in the comments below…

If you liked this, you can follow me on Twitter at @FuudBlog or subscribe using the little blue box on the right!

Cardiff in the summertime is one of the best places on the planet. There are times when you’re safely installed in the beer garden of your choice (probably The Cricketers), strolling through Bute Park with an ice cream or sitting cross-legged on the grass on Llandaff fields with a picnic, when it can feel like paradise.

But there are other times. Times when you’re sat outside an overpriced chain restaurant on Mill Lane watching sunburned stag-do mobs of 20st bald men in identical checked shirts drinking till they puke through their noses. And then you think, “I wish we could be a bit more Italian about things sometimes…”

See, our latin cousins are just that little bit more suave than us – it’s all indie outdoor cafes, Aperol Spritz and people watching, and to top it all off they get to eat some of the best grub in the world.

Well, us Cardiffians may never be quite as cool, but it is possible to get a taste of real Italian style eating without leaving CF10.

When the moon hits your eye…

Café Citta is a proper little chunk of Italy plonked right in the middle of Church Street. It’s cramped, noisy, and hot, and it’s fucking brilliant.

It doesn’t look like much from the outside, and it’s not in a sexy location, rubbing shoulders with such salubrious neighbours as Poundstretcher and a closed betting shop that’s now a Chinese. And also closed.

But then you walk through the door and it just feels like the real deal – like the kind of place where you’d expect to find Hemingway sat in the corner necking grappa, telling dirty jokes with the old men and flirting with the waitresses.

If you walked out the door after your meal and found yourself whisked Tardis-style to the Dorsoduro in Venice, away from all the fat American tourists, it really wouldn’t be that big of a shock.

The food is great – of course it is, it’s Italian innit? Not that boil-in-the-bag Bella Pasta shite mind you, but proper Italian. I had Caprese for starters – super fresh, sweet tomatoes and perfect creamy mozarella, all swimming in herby olive oil.

Pizza seemed like the way to go for main, and I wasn’t disappointed – the toppings were melt in the mouth garlicky wild mushrooms and crumbled Italian sausage which was really satisfyingly meaty with a hefty spicy kick.

Like all the best ones (see Ffwrnes), Citta’s pizzas are cooked in a wood fired oven too, so the base is light and crisp in all the right places. I’ve had pizza in Italy and New York, and Citta’s is easily as good.

But it’s one of those restaurants that’s about the atmosphere as much as the food though, and for the full experience you want to be in a big group, at least two pints or a good strong cocktail already downed – just in that sweet spot between garrulous and shrill. Order red wine, drink it a bit too quick (because even the cheapest bottle on the menu is great) and spend a couple of hours reminiscing loudly before all being too pissed and full to work out the bill. And imagine you’re doing it all in Italian.

You can probably go for a nicer Italian meal in Cardiff; if you’re going for the old-school Valentine’s day/birthday/apology-for-a-drunken-argument dinner, then Casanova is definitely the testicoli del cane.

But I’m not sure you can go for a more Italian one.

What’s your favourite Italian restaurant in the ‘diff? Let me know in the comments below…

If you liked this, you can follow me on Twitter at @FuudBlog or subscribe using the little blue box on the right!

Picture this: a dusty, windswept wasteland. Bizarre custom built vehicles. Feral children roaming wild. Strong female characters. No, it’s not Fury Road, it’s Cardiff Street Food Circus.

Or rather it was, because unfortunately it ended on Sunday. Yes, that does make this blog post utterly useless on a practical level, but I couldn’t go along to the last one and not write something about it.

Traditionally Britain doesn’t really do street food, unless you count chip vans and 18th century cockney urchins hawking cockles in Dickens novels.

Which is probably why Street Food Circus’ line-up was as international as that World music stage at Glastonbury that nobody really likes; Hokkei took us far East with its buns (the pork bao were a thing of beauty); we stopped by the Pacific Northwest with Chuck’s Portland hotdog (complete with popping candy and coca-cola onions). We headed South of the border to Argentina with Patagonia Steak Shack’s melt in the mouth sarnies and hung out in the bayou and beyond with Hangfire Smokehouse, Cardiff’s undisputed champion of meat.

And yes, the whole concept of street food does carry a waft of the Shoreditch-dickhead-with a-man-bun, but my god is some of it good – and SFC was a great way to sample some of the best in Wales.

Some of the food on offer was admittedly about as ‘street’ as Boris Johnson; The only place you’d find a corner posh enough for Jol’s scallops or braised rabbit gnocchi is on the purple side of the Monopoly board, but then the whole trend is a bit of a foodie construct, so you can’t be too precious about it.

The Final Chowdown

I have to admit I wasn’t on top form for my final visit – mildly hungover, I could only manage two meals in an hour, instead of the usual four (the shame).

We had to start with Hangfire, because a) they do some of the best food Cardiff has to offer, street or otherwise, and b) they’re so popular they normally run out in the first 30 seconds (you’d be forgiven for thinking they were called ‘Hangfire Smokehouse Sorry Sold Out’).

Cracking ‘cue as always from Shauna and Sam – good old-fashioned pulled pork, smoked for about a zillion hours with the kind of love people normally reserve for kittens or exceptionally cute toddlers. Served with ‘slaw and a bit of a twist in the form of a pretzel bun (chewy, but in a good way).

Next up, one of Purple Poppadom‘s Frankie Rolls. Flatbread, dipped in egg (whoa, whoa – bear with me it gets better) with the filling of your choice (I gave the paneer a bash) and finished with tangy red onion and pickled cucumber chutney and a curry sauce. If you’re not drooling after that description you’re either dead or very full.

On to Mr Churro’s for dessert, and it turns out we’ve been doing donuts completely wrong. They’re meant to be long and thin, covered in sugar and cinnamon and dipped in thick hot chocolate. Well played, Spain (or possibly Portugal).

We rounded it all off with a couple of pints of Pipes‘ Kölsch (perfect sunny day beer), and all in all it was a good way to say farewell to one of Cardiff’s most interesting food destinations.

That’s not to say that SFC was perfect – at the risk of sounding like my Dad, I’d rather eat my mildly pretentious sandwich/hotdog/kebab without having my fillings rattled out by the PA system (seriously guys, it’s Sunday afternoon, we can turn the pumping electronica down a bit, yeah?!).

Then there was the ever-present danger of being ankle tapped by one of the hordes of yummy mummies hurtling across uneven terrain at full tilt with their prams and ending up face down in your paella.

But for all it’s little flaws it was an awesome way to spend a few hours eating yourself sick. Farewell SFC, can’t wait to see what you do next.

Cheers to Ms Duke for taking photos of me stuffing my face, documenting something which she unfortunately has to endure on a daily basis.

If you liked this, you can follow me on Twitter at @FuudBlog or subscribe using the little blue box on the right!

Well, shit. Turns out it’s been over two years since I last found the time to write a Füüd blog. Sorry about that. I can only imagine the soul crushing emptiness of a world without me talking total nonsense about stuffing my face.

Well, I’m back baby – a little older, a little wiser and a lot heavier, but with a spanking new leather jacket. Think the ‘68 Elvis comeback special.

In that time Cardiff’s food and drink scene has gone bananas. Or more accurately, burgers. Which brings me to my new blog. Be gentle, it’s been a while…

If you’re not sitting down, you probably should. If you are sitting, I’d recommend you adopt the brace position for an emergency water landing as pictured on an airline safety card.

See the thing is, I never thought I’d say it, but I’m a bit bored of burgers.

*cue sound of jaws hitting the floor, cars skidding off the road and babies being dropped*

I can explain. Let’s rewind a bit.

In the beginning…

Picture the scene; it’s the late 80s/early 90s. I were just a wee lad (in South Wales, not Yorkshire) and burgers were a genuine treat.

There were only a couple of places you could get them; dodgy burger vans in lay-bys that stank like slaughterhouse bins on a sunny day, and Wimpy (Bender in a Bun FTW). Although you could, of course, get them out of a tin if you were desperate *shudder*.

As I got a little older, Burger King and Maccy D’s stormed the UK in a greasy blitzkrieg. You didn’t have to go to the big smoke to get a Big Mac any more, and we gorged ourselves on rank after rank of neatly identical, slightly disappointing burgers that looked nothing like the pictures. We thought we were happy.

Until 2001 when the Kiwis came. GBK landed like a softly spoken antipodean atom bomb, and our minds were blown by their crazy twists on a humble slab of mince in a bap (“this one’s got egg and beetroot in! Fucking mental!”). They were pretty good, especially if you had a voucher, otherwise you’d have to sell both kidneys to afford some fries.

But then the posh hipster burger invasion yanked the rug out from under us once more. Thin, irritatingly attractive men in plaid shirts with elaborate facial hair and tattoo sleeves were serving us burgers on another level. And a bit of wood.

Paradoxically more and less pretentious than GBK, they brought us strange new words like ‘artisanal bun’, ‘haystack fries’ and ‘aioli’ (previously nothing more than a good way to get rid of vowels in Scrabble).

Proper actual cowmeat, real cheese rather than ‘cheese food slices’. Buns that don’t taste like they were rescued from the skip behind Tesco, and so many eccentrically tasty twists on the humble German sailor’s sandwich. Truly, the last few years have been a burger lover’s golden age.

But how many can you really try before you’ve exhausted your burger lust?

Gotta catch ’em all

I’ve had some of the best Cardiff’s got to offer – I’ve kept it real with The Lansdowne’s Black and Blue burger (best all rounder in town in my opinion) tripped on GotBeef’s blue meth inspired Heisenburger (try the dirty fries) and strutted my way through a John Wayne at the Grazing Shed.

I’ve glued my mouth together with one of Chuck’s deviant but delicious peanut butter slathered numbers, heaped my patty high with pulled pork at The Smokehouse, and been spectacularly underwhelmed by Five Guys’ finest. I’ve not been to Burger and Lobster though. It’s too bloody expensive.

Christ, I even attempted to spit in the face of god with the obscene Man Vs Food burger at the North Star a couple of years ago (it didn’t go so well).

The point is, I don’t really feel like I need to broaden my burger horizons any further.

So please, hipsters and foodies of South Wales – it’s time for something new.

Tacos anyone?

“The first rule of burger club…”

Bearded men with unnecessary spectacles and undercuts: if you insist on opening yet more burger places, we need to lay some ground rules. Here are some things you need to consider to make your burgers truly great:

1. Structural Integrity

Picture the scene; you’re biting into a burger so face-meltingly wonderful that the aroma is enough to make a grown man weep with joy.

Melt-in-the-mouth kobe beef that was massaged and fed beer twice a day for it’s entire life, a sourdough bun, handmade by a mystical old crone in the Bavarian alps to a 2000 year old recipe; razor sharp cheddar cheese with a wanky name made from unicorn milk…

You sink your teeth in… and the entire thing vomits itself out of its artisanal casing and splatters all over your plate (or, more likely, artfully rustic block of wood).

This is not Masterchef. I do not want a ‘deconstructed’ burger, and I don’t have the necessary engineering qualifications to rebuild it. Heston Blumenthal built a pub out of pie, and he’s a dick. Surely you can keep my burger in one piece for more than one bite?

2. Proper crispy bacon

There’s nothing worse than wading into a bacon cheeseburger only to find that, instead of the gloriously crisp, salty pigmeat garnish you’d been expecting, someone has chucked in something the consistency of a half-deflated innertube sellotaped to some spam.

Chewy fat on burger-bacon should replace high treason as the only crime in Britain still punishable by hanging.

Part of the problem is British bacon; for a post hangover sarnie, nothing on this earth can touch it, but for a burger? It’s got to be US style – so overcooked and crispy that you can taste the carcinogens.

3. Free(ish)chips

Don’t charge extra for fries. Add a bit on to the price of the burger if you have to – if we wanted cheap and nasty we’d be queuing up at the clown’s place downing cans of Monster and legal highs after ramraiding JJB sports.

A burger just isn’t a burger without at least a pittance of fried spuds on the side.

It’s like getting your child a Scalextric set for Christmas without any cars. Before hitting them with a stick.

4. Plates

It is not the apocalypse yet. I’d much prefer my burger (and INCLUDED fries) on a plate, not a piece of debris.

It’s great that you’ve found a pretty piece of driftwood floating in Penarth Marina and lovingly restored it, but it took humanity tens of thousands of years of trial and error to work out how to make china, the least you can do is break out the crockery for the paying customers.

5. Chicken burgers

Don’t be fucking ridiculous.

Thank you for reading the return of Füüd! Hopefully I’ll be able to find time to ramble about grub a bit more regularly soon. If you liked this, you can follow me on Twitter at @FuudBlog or subscribe using the little blue box on the right!

Everyone should visit a beer festival at some point in their life.

Now, you may be thinking that they’re full of potbellied middle-aged men with unkempt beards and leather waistcoats downing suspiciously coloured pints of dubiously-titled-tipples like Bishop’s Finger and Wizard’s Sleeve. And for the most part, yes you are absolutely right.

There are indeed a great many beer festival-goers who have an encyclopedic knowledge of Marillion concept albums, smell a bit like wet dog and appear to hold joint British/Middle Earth passports.

But over the last few years Real Ale has morphed into Craft Beer like a bespectacled nerd blossoming into a sexy hipster in a shit rom-com. More and more young people are drinking it, to the point that nowadays you’re just as likely to run into Scott Pilgrim at a beer festival as you are Gandalf.

This is definitely the case at one of Artisan Brewery Co‘s monthly mini-festivals, which I visited last Saturday. If you’ve not heard of them, this tiny Cardiff based brewery makes a damn fine range of craft beers in a worryingly flammable looking shed in Canton (or, if you’re trying to sell a house there, Pontcanna).

The first thing you notice is indeed the overall coolness of the place. People at nearby tables are discussing the music festivals they’re organising, the toilets are artfully derelict and there’s even a man in a shabby-chic suit jacket wandering around with a Macbook doing something vaguely creative. Probably one of those food blogger wankers.

But aside from that, it is cool cool as well. There’s a reason Glastonbury does not happen in early March.

Every time I got up for a wee I expected my legs to shatter in mid-stride like a liquid-nitrogen soaked T-1000 Terminator. I’m fairly sure I spotted David Attenborough narrating a family of polar bears rooting through some nearby bins. It was, to coin a colourful South-Walian phrase, bastard freezing.

The only respite was the jaffel sandwiches that were on sale, which for the uninitiated (i.e. me, until I googled it) are essentially toasties made with a medieval, Game Of Thrones-esque version of a Breville machine. I went for the peri-peri chicken, which was pretty good, but not quite spicy enough to stave off the frostbite. To be honest I only ordered it so that I could stick it up my shirt and defrost my internal organs anyway.

The beer itself was excellent, which I probably should have mentioned approximately 500 words ago. The Bohemian Pilsner is a good choice if you’re a beginner with all this craft beer malarkey, as it’s not like being punched in the face with a fistful of hops. I really liked the Smoked Lager, which I can only describe as tasting a bit like ham. In a good way.

By the end of the afternoon, I tried everything repeatedly except the weird Espresso-flavoured one, and enjoyed them all (which explains why I woke up with half a takeaway curry down my shirt and a splitting headache).

If you get the chance to go along do it – the beer is good, the atmosphere is supremely laid back and it’s child and pet friendly too –  but until the weather gets a bit warmer I’d recommend bringing one of those alien snow-camel things off of Empire Strikes Back so you can slice it open and sit inside it for warmth. Or failing that a dog big enough to fit your feet under.

Meanwhile, in Middle Earth…

But as great as the hipster-friendly Artisan Brewery Co. events are, I strongly urge you not to restrict your beer festival exploration to the trendy end of the spectrum. The Great Welsh Beer and Cider Festival normally kicks off in early June at the Motorpoint Arena, and while it’s an incredibly fun day out, it is most definitely not trendy.

There are stalls selling t-shirts that say “This is not a beer belly, this is a fuel tank for my sex machine”, men wearing leather cowboy hats indoors, and yes, people actually taking notes.

In short it’s a cross between being in a Terry Pratchett novel and the bar from Star Wars. At any moment it feels like the house band could break into this:

Last year I saw a man wearing a leather gimp mask in the shape of a wolf’s head carrying around a baby-sized towel. Seriously.

With this kind of hardcore specialist crowd, it’s not as easy to blag your way through; for example, don’t do what I did as an uncouth rookie and attempt to order a pint. Bilbo behind the bar did not approve, and looked at me as if I’d just stamped on his collection of lovingly hand-painted Warhammer miniatures. It’s definitely the done thing to stick to halves at these things.

Which is probably wise when you think that the alcohol content of some of these brews is around the 9% mark. And amazingly, lots of them taste great – last year I fell a little bit in love with Tiny Rebel Brewing Co’s Hadouken, which is named after a Streetfighter special move, and has much the same effect after 3 pints.

So the point to this blog, if there is one, is that whatever you call them – Real Ales, Craft Beers – they’re well worth a bash, and where better to have a go than a beer festival – one of the few occasions outside of an 18-30s holiday to Kavos where you are actively encouraged to mix dozens of dangerously strong alcoholic drinks in the course of a few short hours. And with significantly less chance of waking up with “YOLO” tattooed on your arse.

Thank you to everyone who came along last week and helped to make it so blog-worthy – my lovely lady (and skilled proofreader) Sarah, Dave, Jas & baby Felix, Amanda & Kev and Del & Edie the dog. This week’s pictures were provided by the highly-talented @dwj_del, who spent 15 minutes taking pictures of my feet in a lift on Friday. In a non-seedy way.

Less than 24 hours after writing this I will be in Iceland for four days, sampling everything from Reindeer Carpaccio to rotted shark meat. If there’s not a food blog in there somewhere I might as well give up now.

I have a very complex relationship with Jamie Oliver.

I love his food. 15 Minute Meals is currently my go-to recipe book when I can’t be bothered to look anywhere else, and you have to admire anyone who single-handedly took down the Turkey Twizzler.

The man is unquestionably a culinary genius.

But you see, there’s a problem. Unfortunately, he’s also a massive knob.

His dodgy cockney geezer schtick, his overuse of the word “attitude” and, perhaps the most infuriating thing of all: the way he insists on taking a bite of whatever he’s just cooked so huge that he has to dislocate his jaw like a boa constrictor, before moaning orgasmically and describing it in the vocabulary of your Dad trying to sound like Jay-Z – Jamie is hugely annoying.

And yet… I still kind of love him, and the rest of his TV chef colleagues.

Primal scream therapy

There are few things quite as life-affirmingly joyous and therapeutic as yelling at TV chefs. For someone like me who never really ‘got’ football, it fulfills a primal urge for hurling abuse at the television.

I LOVE shouting at the sheer ridiculousness of cooking programmes.

TV chefs are like TV detectives – they’re simply not allowed to exist without some kind of trademark idiosyncrasy. Channel 4’s Fabulous Baker Brothers have their infuriating puppy-dog enthusiasm, as if everything they cook is laced with MDMA and blue smarties; Nigella has her knowing porny winks and soft-focus keys-in-a-bowl fake dinner parties; Rachel Khoo has her face-meltingly twee Parisian fantasy life, like a scene deleted from Amelie for being too adorable; they’re virtually cartoon characters.

In fact they’re so unreal I’d quite like to see them all in a brutal Mortal Kombat style beat-em-up game; Lorraine Pascale would incapacitate her opponents by blinding them with her suspiciously clean gleaming white t-shirts; Paul Hollywood would melt the other chefs using his laser eyes of piteous disdain, and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall would simply patronise his enemies to death. The final boss would be Delia, or maybe a reanimated zombie Fanny Cradock.

Don’t try this at home, kids.

The point that I’m rambling semi-coherently around, is that anyone who can watch an episode of any of the Premier League cooking shows without the odd cry of “Oh piss off,I’d burn the house down if I tried that!” or “Where the hell am I supposed to get one of those  from?!” is taking it all far too seriously.

For starters, if you’ve ever tried to follow a TV chef’s recipes, then you must know that other than giving you a vague approximation of the ingredients, what you’ve just witnessed them do was entirely fictional. It might as well have been done on a green screen with Andy Serkis playing the role of the butternut squash through motion capture. Even their books belong in the fantasy section, next to the Lance Armstrong biographies.

Jamie says cook it for 5 minutes? Nope, anything under 20 will give you a raging case of salmonella. Nigella tells you that you just can’t compromise on that one special ingredient? Sorry, you’re out of luck, it’s only available for 2 weeks of the year in the foothills of the Andes (or possibly Waitrose).

Basically, without the skills and resources of a professional chef, a BAFTA winning camera crew and a visual effects team to put whizzy labels next to everything on screen, there’s a strong chance that your goat’s cheese souffle is going to come out more like a collapsed Victoria sponge full of Dairylea.

But you know what? In spite of all the bullshit, I genuinely think the advent of the TV megachef has made the world a marginally better place. They may be out-of-touch, egomaniacal and fame hungry, but they inspire idiots like me to have a go.

Unless you’re particularly lucky, your parents probably didn’t teach you much about cooking; as a generation most of us can barely knock up a fry-up. But the Nigellas, the Hairy Bikers and yes, the Jamies of this world, are the people who teach us to cook now, and for better or worse, they’re at least encouraging us to give it a try.

So, hats off to the TV chefs. Except Gordon Ramsay. He’s just a dick.

Thanks again to everyone who’s read my ramblings so far – don’t forget you can follow me on Twitter at @FuudBlog or subscribe using the little blue box on the right!

When I was growing up during the 80s and 90s, the world of food was a very different place.

Things we take for granted now like sushi and hummus were the preserve of Hollywood movie stars, and vegetables other than peas and carrots had not yet been invented.

If you were brought up on a council estate like me, then the majority of your diet came covered in one of three things; batter, breadcrumbs or gravy. It was a more naive, less health-conscious time to say the least.

So, with the help of YouTube I thought I’d take look back at some of  the nutritionally disastrous tat that our generation ate as children, so we can all reflect on how lucky we are to have survived this long.

In no particular order, these were five of my favourite things to munch on in between building Airwolf out of Lego and watching Thundercats:

1. Crispy Pancakes

Or, to be more precise, Minced Beef Crispy Pancakes. There were other flavours. I know there were, I saw them on TV, but they never made it to the benighted little Valleys town where I grew up.

I’ve heard it said that the first man to eat an oyster must have been pretty daring. Personally, I think the man who decided to stuff mince and gravy into a pancake, cover it in breadcrumbs and then deep fry it is twice as much of a mentalist.

In the ads they were depicted as golden, crunchy pockets of meaty joy, packed to bursting point with delicious filling. In reality, they fell into a weird no-mans-land between crispy and soggy, were always a bit greasy and didn’t really go with anything.

And speaking of the ads, they were nearly as weird as the product. Check out this faintly pervy and wrong effort from 1991 which features a geeky teen with a serial-killer like fetish for decorating his bedroom with used food packaging after trying to seduce an underage girl with breadcrumbed savoury pancakes:

2. Pop Tarts

Pop Tarts were for people who lived on the edge. There were at least three different ways in which these eye-wateringly sweet pastry and jam abominations could kill you before (or during) breakfast.

First of all, they reached such staggeringly high temperatures after a few seconds in the toaster that biting into one was akin to blowtorching yourself in the face. In fact, they spent virtually the entire advert warning you about it:

Pop Tarts could actually get so hot in the toaster that if you forgot about them they could potentially burn down your house, according to a Thomas Nangle from Ohio who sued Kelloggs for just that in 1992 (they settled out of court).

The final danger came from eating the bloody things, which were essentially diabetes wrapped in greasy pastry.

Just to underline how dangerous Pop Tarts are, the US Military airdropped 2.5 million of them on Afghanistan in 2001. The US Military does not drop healthy things on Afghanistan.

3. Sodastream

Only the posh kids had a Sodastream machine. Even now it still holds a place on my bitter little list of items I never got for Christmas as a child, alongside Optimus Prime and Castle Grayskull.

Sodastream was a fascinating thing for a child – the machine itself looked like something a villainous one-eyed Iranian scientist would use to make enriched Uranium, and you had to buy all kinds of exciting and dangerous looking accessories including gas canisters and special bottles to go with it. And it made (briefly) fizzy pop. For the equivalent price of a second-hand Ford Capri. Amazing.

Of course this was the 80s, and there were still milkmen who would deliver pop to your door along with your semi-skimmed a lot more cost effectively. As long as you didn’t mind having orangeade every single f*cking week without fail for about 15 years.

Here’s their ad from 1980, featuring the vaguely sexual tagline of “lets get busy with the fizzy.” And a possessed granny.

4. Mini Kievs

One man was the undisputed kingpin of the great breadcrumbed food racket of the 1980s. I am talking, of course, about legendary turkey enthusiast Bernard Matthews.

I always like to think of Bernard as a wild haired mad scientist hurling terrified live poultry into various Rube-Goldberg inspired contraptions that spat out culinary atrocities like Turkey Twizzlers, Golden Drummers and, my personal favourite, the far more sophisticated and refined Mini Kievs.

In case your memory is a bit fuzzy, Mini Kievs were bite-sized dollops of indiscriminate animal protein wrapped around a molten core of superheated cheesy garlic sludge. And despite that unnappetising description, they were bloody delicious. I even liked cold Mini Kievs, which were the mark of a particularly sophisticated buffet in the late 1980s.

I couldn’t find an ad for Mini Kievs, so here’s one for Golden Drummers which was apparently made in 1937:

5. Smash

You don’t have to be Michel Roux to make mash. Buy spuds. Peel ’em, boil ’em squash ’em. Job done. But this was the retro-future of the 80s – people didn’t want to be messing about cooking things when the invention of hoverboards was so tantalisingly close. We wanted instantaneous space food.

Enter: Smash, and that infamous advert:

Officially they were the smash martians, but I prefer to think of them as the super-evolved remains of a post-apocalyptic kitchen laughing at the extinction of the human race that began with the inability to boil and mash actual potatoes.

All you had to do with Smash was mix boiling water with a spoonful or two of  dried, powdered spud, and voila –  a gritty, oddly chewy mass of sickly yellow quasi-potato, that tasted nothing like its component parts.

But for some reason I LOVED Smash as a kid. I much preferred it to actual potato, despite the fact that it always smelled a little bit like gone off milk. I probably just liked the Martians.

I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids…

And now, the shocking Scooby-Doo-style twist ending to this blog; every single item that I’ve mentioned above as if it’s a misguided relic of a bygone era, like colonialism, fox hunting or Jim Davidson, is STILL AROUND. Much like colonialism, fox hunting and Jim Davidson.

Which gives me an idea for another blog… watch this space…

Thank you for all the suggestions on Twitter – I was amazed by how many people actually read my last post, and writing this one felt like recording the proverbial ‘difficult second album’ so all help was gratefully received!

Füüd is now on Twitter! Follow me at @FuudBlog where I will bore you with pictures of my tea and hilarious Chinese Takeaway Menu typos.

In an amazing display of overconfidence and disregard for my physical well-being, I took on The North Star’s Man Vs Food challenge last week.

I’m stupid, but I’m not suicidal, so I didn’t go for the Dead Budgie Hot Wings made with the terrifyingly named Naga Ghost Chilli (which is used to make stun grenades. No, really.). I also avoided the “Ever So Slightly Big” Scotch Club Sandwich – an entire loaf of bread stuffed with so many fillings that it constantly teeters on the brink of collapsing in on itself to form a black hole.

I chose what I thought would be easy pickings – the dubiously titled Fun in a Bun. After all, it’s “only” a 45oz burger, topped with onion rings, cheese and crispy bacon. Oh, and it comes with chips too, in case you were still feeling a bit peckish.

I have no idea why I thought I could eat the equivalent of a dozen quarter-pounders. Was it a complete inability to visualise  imperial measurements? A man-crush on Adam Richman? Or just good old-fashioned idiotic male pride? Probably a combination of all of the above.

According to one of the extremely lovely staff at the North Star, about eight people have finished the beef behemoth in about 6 months. No word on how many of them have secured a place in the X-Men thanks to their mutant power of gluttony.

Of course, I couldn’t take on a challenge of this magnitude without a wingman. The fearless Pete the Greek played the Goose to my Maverick (sorry Pete, if you wanna be Maverick, you write the bloody blog) and joined me in my quest.

After a day of near starvation, and with our despairing other halves cheering us on/sighing and rolling their eyes, we leapt headlong into the heart of meaty darkness looming before us.

Meatpocalypse Now

We were the first to arrive for last week’s installment of culinary S&M, so we were blissfully unaware of the sheer quantity of food heading our way. The first clue came when we were told to sit next to each other rather than opposite – because the table wouldn’t be wide enough for both plates.

There was an audible gasp from all four of us when the first burger arrived, carried by an alarmingly slight waitress who must spend the other six days of the week doing a Sarah Connor-in-Terminator-2-style training routine to make it through a Wednesday evening shift. She wished us luck and retired to a safe distance.

I can’t tell you much about how it tasted after the first couple of bites; for that brief moment, bacon, onion ring, cheese and burger were in perfect  juicy delicious harmony, and for a piece of meat the weight of a small child it was cooked amazingly well. But there was no time to sit there and enjoy the bloody thing. We had a job to do.

The pair of us dived into the fray with no regard for our own safety. And my god did we pay for it.

By the time I’d finished the first quarter it was like being waterboarded with mince. After 45 solid minutes of eating every mouthful became like chewing on a leather sofa cushion. The human mouth just isn’t capable of dealing with a 3 inch thick slab of cow.

Pete began laughing hysterically like a madman being led to the gallows, and our other halves looked visibly concerned that it was all going to end in some kind of horrible internal injury.

And if we hadn’t accepted defeat at the halfway mark they probably would have been right. A combination of impending gastric doom and the insurmountable psychological mountain of a huge pile of rapidly cooling mince meant we had to throw in the towel.

Fifty Shades of Mince

In short, it was fun in a weird Fifty Shades of Mince kind of way. Not proper fun, but that strange, unpleasant kind of fun that makes people run marathons and bungee jump out of helicopters. You do it Because it’s There. Just don’t be too disappointed if it defeats you.

Ah well. At least I managed dessert…

Thank you very much to everyone at the North Star – you were all insanely nice and lots of fun, and we particularly appreciated how you kept popping back to make sure none of us had died.

Also, I highly recommend that you read Ed Gilbert’s brilliant blog on the North Star’s Man vs Food night – he not only attempted but defeated the 3lb megaburger last year. I assume that when he’s not blogging, he spends his spare time wrestling grizzly bears. On fire.

Füüd is now on Twitter! Follow me at @FuudBlog where I will bore you with pictures of my tea and hilarious Chinese Takeaway Menu typos.