Trash Blanc

Here’s a talk made for us at TrashBlanc.com. On Thursday 31st July the ICA poses the question of why it’s so hard to ship fresh English lettuce into E1.

The blurb:

Leila McAlister of Leila’s Shop will pose questions about why, from her position in central London, E1, it is so complicated to stock certain ‘normal’ things, such as fresh lettuce from England. James Alwyn of Chi London, a company that promotes commercial opportunities to reduce carbon emissions, will talk logistics of transporting and the artist Caitlin Elster will discuss materials and packaging, addressing the normalisation of salad bags.

Lettuce will be available on the night.

FACT! £20bn of wasted food goes down the swanee every 365 days in the UK. On wasted food. That’s according to this three month old report in the Independent.
There’s lots wrong with food in Britain right now, from battery operated chicken to Gordon Ramsey’s utterly inconceivable ubiquity. But surely none of these issues come close to the sheer scale of the waste mountain we’re creating. Forget late night eating. It’s time for Trash Blanc to live up to it’s name, get amongst the garbage and see what sort of madness is going on in the Great British food industry.

We’ve long bemoaned the difficulty of acquiring top notch food at a decent price after the hour or 11pm in London. A city that purports to be a world capital turfs it’s citizens onto the street at closing time where the choice is grim. A bag of chips from the chippy or a pot noodle to take home from the corner store.

There are gems out there, we’ve been to one or two, but it’s a hard job tracking them down, and you can almost forget about finding them spontaneously.

So with all that in mind, and not wanting to come over as our usual negative selves, TrashBlanc.com is going to spend a bit of time on the coal face of late night London Eating.

Here’s our first report, and for the weekend that was in it we started at the Marathon Kebab. Befitting of it’s Camden location on the Chalk Farm road, Marathon is a big hit with the local musos. So much so that there’s a resident jazz-guy playing his sax along to lounge tracks in the back room. Atmospheric, yeah. The food is a step up from the standard kebabary. But only just. And for that it charges a pretty penny. £3.00 for a falafel kebab, £1.80 for nine onion rings and a mammoth £2.80 for a can of wife-beater. As Ricky points out in the video, getting served cans of Stella in a chip shop is a bonus to begin with, but paying nearly three large ones is a steep price.

Whether all of this is worth it depends on a couple of crucial variables.

1. Your distance from Camden. If you’re there already by all means go for it, but it’s not worth more than £5 in a taxi.

2. Your level of inebriation. This isn’t too crucial. TB had only a couple of pints and still took some enjoyment from the experience.

3. You tolerance for jazz, man. Speaks for itself.

All in all we’re giving a positive review, but with the proviso that there’s got to be better late night eats out there, right?

We wrote last week about Londonization, chain eating, the pleasure of knowing the same over-priced menu on ever high street. Well what are we going to do about it? We’re going to tell you what, right here on TrashBlanc.com we’re going to find the very weakest links in an all too familiar rusty toilet chain. Nobody is going to be spared. If we see what we think is a self replicating food emporium, we’re going to KAM IT HARD.

And we’re going to back that camera action up with some good hard facts. Like just who owns these cookie cutter outlets drowning London in a sea of ubiquity. And why the UK is a particular victim to this widespread lunching malaise.

Now we’ve got to lay down some guidance here as to how we approach this task. Sure MickeyD and the King are bigtime chains, but they’re not even trying to fool anyone. They’re saying “We’re cheap, we’re shit, we screw the planet daily, but hey, we sell 50 gazillion burgers worldwide per hour so fuck you pal”. Point absolutely taken.

No, we’re after the likes of old man Carluccio. The sly conieving types who pretends to inject class into the market until you get home to find your house knocked to the ground, your children gone, and a plate of very average blue cheese gnocchi being sold at £9.95 in their place. We’re not standing for this shit.

So here’s the chain of shame. It’s not definitive by any means, you comment and we’ll add.

• Carluccio
• Apostrophe
• Hamburger Union
• Busaba Eathai
• Gourmet HotDog
• Strada
• Eat
• Pret a Manger
• Pizza Express
• Leon
• Paul
• Ping Pong
• Wagamama
• Yo Sushi
• Wasabi
• Miso

TrashBlanc was in London for a full week last week so our AZBarLondon.com side project got a boost of life. Check out our visit to the Dolphin on Mare Street, Hackney.

(Scene of the detestation, Haymarket Wagamama. Thanks for pic Ewan-M)

Londonization. The French term for the decimation of the high-street by chain stores and chain restaurants. Walk down any street in the UK and you’ll see exactly what they mean. While we at TrashBlanc.com have to ‘fess up at this juncture to a fondness for H&M under-garments (boxer briefs, size large since you ask), we’re growing progressively less fond of eating where everybody knows the names, on the menu.

We’ve discussed prime offenders such as the Gourmet HotDog chain before. But now it’s time to do some solid investigation. Why? Becasue we’ve just eaten in Wagamama and let us tell you something, it was the worst bowl of soba noodles we’ve had in a seriously long time. Like ever! Bland, oily, mushrooms that tasted like they’d come from a metalworks. Three pieces of soggy tofu. All this ours for £7.50 (US$15).

When Wag came on the scene it was a breath of fresh air. All minimal underground hipness. Communal benches, open plan kitchen and servers with PDAs. Wow, the glamour. Surely this was modern China at it’s very best. Shame the miso tastes more like run-off from the lifeless Yangtze river.

Wag was launched by a man, Alan Yau, who has a handfull of Michelin stars and an MBA-esque know-how in successful franchising to his name. Well Yau has sold starred eateries and he’s obviously enjoying the proceeds somewhere far away from London.

Wag have over 20 locations in London, 50 in the UK and imminent expansion is planned in the US. They’ve also opened up in Heathrow T5. Now that makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is a notion that TrashBlanc will ever eat in Wag again. Not happening.

What is happening is a month on TrashBlanc devoted to exposing London’s other hyped but dodgy chains. We’re looking at you Carluccio.

TrashBlanc get’s back to London on Tuesday and the first stop is going to be a trip to the personal trainer to lose the South-By-Belly. After that we have a ton of video and written SXS-Eeats to get live so stand by.

In the mean time we’re fully up to speed with our photo uploads. Check them out at flickr.com/photos/keepingitfake

Everyone should have a dream in life but few of us really do. The Ice Cream man does though. To give away a half a million sticks of frozen dairy throughout the US. A truly amazing individual

Watch video here.

Here at TrashBlanc.com we like to think we go the extra mile so that you don’t have to. We bite the burgers, finger the fries and taste the tacos so that you can get straight to the good stuff. 8 out of 10 times we come away with exactly what we put in. Three dollars worth of bland bananas. But every once in a while we hit the mother lode.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Stoney’s Pizza Van is something special. Check it out.

Overall rating ****
(out of 5)

Price: $3 per slice.

Video’s here.

We’ll have more on our trip to the wonderful Hula Hut out by the lake in Austin, but for the moment you can check the Trash Blanc lowdown on the Mexican Margarita. A little sweeter and greener than the standard tequilla cocktail, this house drink started off our last night at SXSWi with some style.

Overall rating: *****
(out of 5)

Price: $4 per shaker of liquid goodness.

Video’s here.