Complete Tosh.com

The ongoing heady celebration of what is possibly Scotland’s finest ever football win had me thinking back to World Cups of yore. And, specifically, Mexico 1986, when Gordon Strachan scored against the West Germans and found himself too short to jump the advertising hoardings while celebrating.

And then, in what’s possibly an alarming insight into the workings of my mind, my thoughts drifted to the second most memorable thing from that World Cup – a TV ad for McEwans Lager, which ran during the Scotland matches on ITV.

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A highlight of a recent trip to New York was eating at Gordon Ramsay’s new place at The London hotel. We ate there on New Year’s Eve – an astonishing nine-course tour de force, during which the couple at the next table got engaged, and after which we got a little tour round the immense kitchen. The chef de cuisine there, Neil Ferguson, was born in Millport – the island just down the Clyde from Dunoon, where I was raised. We’re everywhere, I’m afraid.

So it was a good night. I’m fortunate enough to live in a city with some great restaurants, even luckier to have been able to eat in a few of them thanks to an indulgent Mrs Tosh, and the joys of (other people’s) meedja business expenses. And the meal in Ramsay’s in New York ranked as the best I’ve enjoyed in a restaurant; not because of its scale, but because of the mixing and balancing of flavours, perfect again and again.

It was food that simply tasted like very little I’ve ever experienced before. I’ll spare you any attempt to replicate it in words; I lack the vocabulary. Let’s just say it was damn fine. And I’m probably sold as a result (plus, of course, the clear Scots Mafia connection).

I’ll accept I didn’t necessarily have a typical experience. The menu was special, it was a special night, stops were pulled out. But I was not surprised to see m’colleague Gareth MacLean’s warm review of the place on our travel site in January, or the Indie’s four out of five review around the same time.

And, thus, I was surprised to see this very lukewarm review in the New York Times, which I’ll guess will be a Huge Deal because it’s the New York Times and Their Word Goes in NYC restaurants.

Now, of course, I disagree with what it’s saying, although I accept that maybe the day-to-day menu is less impressive than the one I experienced on December 31. What bothers more is the style of the review, and how that style appears to interfere with the substance. My suspicion is the theme for the review is founded less on food, more on Ramsay’s TV persona, and thus the riff the reviewer can derive from that. That’s a very Bad Thing, for reasons I’ll explain at the end.
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…but I still love this game* [thanks Sasha!] if only for the wonderful reworking of Tears For Fears’ 80s production classic, “Shout”. Now “Sprout”.

* The sharp-eyed will note this is a year-old viral meme thing that I’m only blogging about now. You may find faster viral meme thing suppliers elsewhere.

In homage to the Google foodblog I thought I’d set up my own office foodblog. Enjoy.

Here’s a late candidate for most Onion-like real story of 2005: over Christmas a would-be iPod owner found a piece of sealed “mystery meat” in the music player’s box, rather than the player itself.

It’s the quote in the ABC news story that seals the deal. Says mother, of son getting the prezzie: “He went from joy, really happy joyful,” she said, “then to discover this, just angry and hurt.”

Indeed so.

It doesn’t appear they fried it up to see what, exactly, it was, which is a shame.

In other food news, don’t forget to check out the deep fried pizza porn I left on Flickr for you all, just to prove such delicacies exist in my homeland. The example pictured was scoffed literally moments later by yours truly, and I’ve had absolutely no chest pains yet.

I’m pleased to note my 2003 post on a nasty form of nut fungus is making its annual trip back up my “most read” stats.

That is all.