a hint of sarcasm

am i still ill?

Let the Vulcan die with diginity

April 26th, 2012

If you live South Wales you’ve probably heard of the Vulcan pub, perhaps only as a result of the long-running campaign to save it from being demolished.

The Vulcan is a pub that has been around for over 150 years, and the area that it is in has seen radical changes in the past 40-odd-years. It’s been around so long that the area that it was originally built in no longer exists, yet somehow it lives on, just.

Where it is now is a nowhere area – in between the city centre and Adamsdown – everything around it has been demolished, new buildings have been built up and it’s no longer a residential area – save for the 21-storey block of student flats right next to it.

Local brewery, Brains, keeps threatening to close it and knock it down, suffering the fate of every other building around it – but a high profile campaign that started in 2008, which drew in celebrities like The Manic Street Preachers, politicians like Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and thousands of signatories on a petition has saved it thus far.

Here’s the problem with the campaign to save the Vulcan – despite 5,000 people saying that they want it to remain, none of them actually go to drink there. It’s a love affair with the past that has to end, and will inevitably end, probably soon.

Hell, if they can’t even get the students in from next door – of which there are about 650 – to help them pay the bills by buying a few cheeky pints, what chance have they got?

I’m not one of those people that thinks the past should be unnecessarily levelled to “make way for progress”, but in some circumstances it is right to do so. The Vulcan now stands out like a sore thumb, and it’s preventing anything else from being built on the land around which it stands, where workshops were demolished a couple of years ago, and now is just a tarmac car park. It’s almost there out of spite.

The Vulcan had a reprieve, its supporters had a chance to make a go of it, the fought the good fight, but it didn’t come off – send The Vulcan to Switzerland, it’s time to end it all.

Save the Vulcan campaign

What Cardiff needs (from a ruling party)

April 19th, 2012

With council elections coming up soon, May 3rd, Welsh citizens get their first chance since the last general election to decide who runs their area for the next four years.

I would argue that these local elections are as important as, if not more important than, Parliamentary elections; the voter pool is significantly smaller, so in a lot of cases “every vote counts”, and the candidates that are being voted for can make a difference to a city, an area, an individual or set of individual directly. Think about it, what was the last thing that David Cameron or Nick Clegg did just for you, your area or your city? The councillors that are being chosen here are working for a smaller group of people, so their attention is more focused and they can make a difference for more people on a more personal level than an MP, and in Wales an AM, probably would (or could).

Cardiff has always been known as a new, little city with big ambitions, but right now is at a crossroads. In years past there was a clear direction, that was presented by necessity – like the replacement of The Arms Park by the Millennium Stadium – or by a policy decided and directed by the council – like the decision to revamp the city centre, focussing on retail and the courting of big chains, but right now Cardiff does not have a very clear set of change policies or ambitions. The global recession certainly helped on this change in priorities, since there are now very few investors willing to pour money into big, adventurous projects – where before they may have had a go, and Cardiff council would have been willing to grease the cogs of bureaucracy for them.
There are a few half baked ideas, which are continually being announced, changed, then eventually scrapped, for example:

The Cardiff “business district”
Transport hub (AKA a bus station)
Ely “Urban village”

In fact, these two projects are really one and the same, since they encroach on each other’s area, both being situated on Wood Street. These are the only two (major) projects that I can think of that are “in the pipeline” that could significantly affect Cardiff’s fortunes, and both of them are long talked about with no visible progress having been made in at least 4 years.

Cardiff’s bus station terminal was demolished in 2008, the highly visible area surrounded by construction boarding and has been used as some kind of parking lot for construction vehicles ever since. The latest set of plans set out the site of Marland House, about 100m East of the original bus station site, as where the new “transport hub” will be built, and on the site of the old bus station will be the “Cardiff business district”.

According to Cardiff council the plans are still on time and work will begin later this year, which means demolishing Marland House and all surrounding buildings, including the NCP car park. To do this the council will need to use compulsory purchase orders to get the current tenants of Marland House to vacate, these businesses include National Express, Londis, Boots, CEX and Burger King. I have seen no indication that the process of purchasing Marland House, or the land that Marland House stands on, has even begun – though if somebody wants to tell me otherwise, I’d be glad to hear the details.

All this is getting to the real points I want to make, that Cardiff is a unique city that needs a particular type of administration, and this is what we need:

Thoroughly planned, innovative projects that benefit the city as a whole.
Firm leadership and decision making, because we have endured too many years of “flip-flopping” and bowing to public pressure, like in the case of the “school restructure” debacle.
Ideas that buck the trend, not just follow it, or are a knee jerk reaction to other city’s plans, like the “Enterprise zone” farce, that was a reaction to Bristol’s proposal (which has now started construction).
A leadership that will engage with its citizens wholly, and take ideas for the future from them. Cardiff has an amazing pool of talent, as demonstrated by some of the groups that have been set up in recent years, such as ThinkArk.
A more open council, with good communication at its core. We don’t want to have to read the formal minutes from council meetings, or sub-committee meetings to know what is being discussed or planned in our city, or else be kept in the dark until its formally announced and there is nothing we can do but comment on the decision that has been made.

I think these are some very simple things that can be achieved very easily, but will positively affect every resident and business in the city and make our “capital village” a much better place to live and work.

Food hygiene ratings; excuses for low scores are a cop out and I can prove it, with my 5/5 rating

August 12th, 2011

Guest blog from my partner, Misia (@safetypin_)

It was reported today that Adonis Kebab House in Cardiff has closed following an E.coli outbreak. Five people were affected – one was hospitalised. As far as I’m concerned, this simply isn’t acceptable.

E.coli is easily preventable in cooked food. If fresh food is stored and cooked properly and preparation areas are kept clean, it is highly unlikely that an E.coli contamination will break out. But Adonis is not unique in its failure to sell uncontaminated food. A quick Google search will reveal a staggering number of UK restaurants that have been forced to close after being linked to E.coli outbreaks.

It’s important to remember that E.coli is a serious disease. The infection primarily causes severe and painful gastrointestinal problems, but other complications can arise as a result of the infection. It can necessitate hospitalisation even for fit and healthy adult, but E.coli can be fatal for those who are already physically vulnerable. A pregnant woman who contracts E.coli has an increased risk of miscarriage or premature delivery. Children and the elderly are especially susceptible to developing hemolytic uremic syndrome; the symptoms of which include a low red blood cell count, a low platelet count and kidney damage, which can ultimately lead to death.

Many of us have heard the story of Mason Jones, a boy who died after contracting an E.coli infection in 2005, aged five. The outbreak of E.coli that killed Mason Jones was traced back to a local butcher who failed to meet basic food hygiene standards. This story is a sobering reminder that all the recent discussions about the Food Standards Agency food hygiene ratings aren’t just a big fuss over nothing. The FSA hasn’t designed this scheme for fun. It’s there to protect people; to prevent new cases like that of Mason Jones – which is why I’m always furious when I read a quote from a restaurant owner making excuses for their low food hygiene rating.

The most common excuse is that the restaurant failed “on a technicality”. I can say with complete confidence that there is no “technicality” that could leave an otherwise clean and safe food premise with a rating lower than 3. The reason I’m so certain that this is true is that I’ve recently been through an inspection from the Cardiff Council Food Safety Team myself. I’m in the process of setting up a food business in a residential kitchen, but the guidelines are exactly the same as for those working in a professional kitchen (and, for anyone who’s interested, we received a rating of 5. It’s really not hard to achieve).

The guidelines are simple. A booklet filled with information on how staff should keep themselves clean, how food should be stored, how to keep the kitchen clean, how to ensure that food is cooked properly and how to prevent pests is provided, and it is required that every staff member signs to show that they have read the booklet. The booklet is detailed but simple – it’s designed to be understandable even to those with a limited understanding of English. Most people would already do all of the things listed in the booklet instinctively – storing raw meat away from fresh vegetables, washing your hands before and after handling food etc. – but the fact that you’re required to have read it before opening a business ensures that nobody has any excuse to neglect to do any of these things.

The only part that could be considered a technicality is the record-keeping. The council inspector confessed during our meeting that one of the main reasons restaurants don’t receive scores of 4 (good) or 5 (very good) is that they don’t keep a record of what happens day-to-day in their kitchens (though I’d like to stress that he did also tell us that you can’t get a rating of 2 or lower based only on that). While this in itself isn’t going to affect the quality of the food, it’s still a very important part of running a food business. Kitchen workers aren’t expected to write an essay each day – all that’s required is that they sign to say that they’ve cleaned the kitchen and checked for any problems, and that they make a note of any issues that arose that day and how they were resolved. It takes less than two minutes to fill out and it ensures that everyone can see that they are complying with the food safety rules they promised to follow when they started trading.

So when a restaurant receives a low score and blames it on a technicality, this can only mean one of two things: Either they’re lying – and they haven’t actually been keeping their kitchen clean and safe – or they simply can’t be bothered to take a few minutes a day to prove that they are doing everything correctly. I would never choose to eat in a restaurant that does either of these things. For obvious reasons, I would avoid any establishment where I can’t be guaranteed food that has been safely cooked, but I would be just as likely to steer clear of somewhere that doesn’t take their duty to keep track of what’s happening in their kitchen seriously. If they’re that lax with such a simple task, where else might they be slacking?

I believe that we all have a right to know how committed a restaurant is to serving safe food to their customers, and I don’t think any of us should eat in a restaurant that has a score lower than 3 (generally satisfactory). I implore people to continue to name and shame the restaurants that are failing to meet the standards we should be able to expect, whether that’s because they genuinely aren’t doing the things they should be doing or because they simply aren’t willing to put in the time to prove that they’re doing everything right.

I don’t particularly want to have to deal with an E.coli infection myself, but with a young son the importance of knowing that the food I buy isn’t contaminated is more important than ever. All I require from a restaurant owner is that in exchange for the money I’m paying, you can assure me that you have done everything in your power to make sure that it’s safe for me to eat. And, let’s face it, that is not something I should have to ask for.

To find out the food hygiene rating of any UK restaurant, simply search for the restaurant here http://ratings.food.gov.uk/QuickSearch.aspx

Night bus or drunk bus?

July 14th, 2011

Cardiff Council’s “Economy & Culture scrutiny committee” this week released a report digging into Cardiff’s night time economy, putting forward some recommendations that will go to the council’s executive meeting later this year.

- Calls for a clear strategy and management of the night time economy

- Better enforcement of licensing and other rules in the city centre by officers

- Business signing up to a ‘standard’ for customer services

- Investment in opening up the city centre at night for family and culture events

- Improved public transport links to allow people to get home without relying on taxis

I see improving the transport infrastructure after 11pm as the second most important point of the five, after the development of a strategy and management structure, which the city is sorely lacking at the moment, and which I believe is the main reason that our city goes adult after dark, and is a staple on the Bravo programme “Booze Britain” (which I was actually on once, but that’s a different story).

Many cities have bus services that run through the night, London, Reading, Manchester, Sheffield, Edinburgh; it really isn’t a ground breaking idea, nobody will earn any medals for innovation in implementing it.

Not long ago, Cardiff used to have bus services that ran after 11pm and I remember it well, for the fact that I refused to use it. It was around at the time I was in my late teens to early twenties, out on the town most Friday or Saturday nights, the service should have been perfect for me.

However, the service had a particular target of passengers and was run solely with that in mind, and I did not fit into this group.
It was specifically targeted at the pissed up revellers, and run like a big smelly, testosterone filled crèche.

The buses would run from the drinking hot-spot at St Mary Street (Westgate Street), call at Greyfriars Rd (another road filled with bars) and then make no stops until it got to the area that it was designated, and even then it would only make one or two stops for alighting passengers. They essentially functioned as big private-hire minibuses, waiting for everybody to get on and then pulling away (perhaps never to return?).

The services were a “special service”, different to daytime buses, and users treated it as such. Almost every person on it, especially as it got later into the night, would be jumping around, shouting at random persons, throwing things, generally making it a very uncomfortable ride. The perception that these were “drunk buses” was exacerbated by the fact that there was no return journey, nor any pick-ups or drop-offs on the way. They might as well have walked down St Mary Street banging a drum, shouting “Bring out yer drunks!”.

In the other cities that I mentioned previously the services run as an extension to the normal services, making almost the same journeys, just less frequently. The daytime bus service never really finishes, it just transforms, and the customers see it as they normally would and this in turn affects their behaviour towards it. They aren’t seen by the majority as “drunk tanks”, and are used by shift workers, something I don’t think many could imagine of the L8 Bus service that Cardiff Bus used to run.

So, Cardiff Council and Cardiff Bus, if you really want to improve the “night time economy”, don’t segregate it into categories and cater for only a certain type of “reveller” (I hate that word, when I go out I don’t “revel” as far as I know), the drunk who needs to get home and doesn’t want to stump up for a taxi.

Review: Cote Brasserie

June 21st, 2011

I like Cardiff Bay. I lived there for a while and it was pleasant, but lacking in community – but I guess that’s what you get when you build 10,000 plaster of Paris carbon copy apartments into a new area that’s inhabited solely by chain restaurants.

Cote Brasserie opened in November 2010 to little fanfare, taking over the spot previously filled by the “The Bay”, a Chinese restaurant which – despite being right on the “Sunset strip” of the Bay – always seemed to be closed or empty.

Cote Brasserie is a British owned chain of faux French restaurants with dining areas dressed up to look like Café René from “‘Allo ‘Allo”, because that’s what all French restaurants are like, right?

We walk in at 7:30pm, and the first thing I notice is that the dining room is half empty, with diners dispersed sparsely over the 30 or so tables that they have. The second thing that I notice is something I don’t think I have ever seen in a restaurant before; some of the empty tables weren’t completely empty – they were being rough ridden by dirty plates and glasses, complete with leftovers and everything.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m sure the golden rules in the “front of house handbook” include;

Never start clearing plates before everybody on the table is finished eating.
Wait to be asked for the bill, don’t offer.
Clear plates before bringing the bill.

From what I know about restaurant etiquette, there should never arise a situation where a patron is paying their bill over finished plates of food, dirty knives and forks and empty glasses of wine. But here we have it (and not only at one table) – we’re talking at five or six tables. I could immediately tell that service at this place was going to be “different”.

Despite the numerous empty tables, and those that were “otherwise occupied” by our dirty friends, we were told to come back in half an hour – alright, perhaps they’re busy and want some time to sort themselves out – it looks like they need it – so we go for a walk around the bay, to check out the new bridge that’s being built over to the BBC production studios.

We come back at 8 o’clock, and to our surprise nothing has changed. The same half a dozen tables are still in the same state, and the manager who asked us to come back has completely forgotten who we are, staring at us blankly when we said we were back. We’re told to “take a seat over there”, with an extended arm point to the corner of the restaurant, a table set up for 6 people. Bewildered, we head over to this table and sit awkwardly as we’re unsure what exactly we’re doing. Are we being seated, or are we being told to wait while a table is prepared? Do we take our coats off and get settled in, or are we going to be on the move again soon? We peruse the menu with uncertainty, I resign myself to ask after a few minutes.

“We’re just preparing a table for you,” the waitress clarifies when I ask. The whole experience so far has been nothing short of a shambles; it’s as if the place opened a day ago with staff who have never worked a day in a restaurant in their lives. Perhaps they hadn’t? I wouldn’t be surprised.

So, eventually we get shown to a table – huzzah! I’m prepared to reset and start again with an open mind. The dining area is bright and open, and the windows have been replaced since Cote moved in with big French windows which can fold open completely in the summer – I imagine this would be a pretty good spot during an event in the Oval Basin.

We got a glass of house red wine each, but at £4.50 a glass, in hindsight we would have been better off getting the bottle (in fact, we rarely buy single glasses; I was “off alcohol” at the time, so I was only intending on having one glass – something I wouldn’t follow through with, but I digress).

So, we had a good look at the menu and Misia was very happy to see foie gras in the list of starters – she’s forever complaining that she doesn’t have enough foie gras in her life (sometimes I swear she’s the cast off of some aristocratic family, with her penchant for expensive delicacies). I kept it simple, opting for the soup of the day, which was something with celeriac – I didn’t actually catch exactly what it was. We also chose our mains, the lamb shank for me and a half a chicken for Misia.
The grills menu looked pretty good, with choices of steaks with a multitude of sauces, but alas, I just had to try the lamb, if only to find out what a “veal and rosemary sauce” was like.

Our starters came out quickly and were tasty; Misia, usually hard to please, says it’s one of the best examples of foie gras that she has eaten, and the soup was of good consistency. I’m sure the secret ingredient was cheese but I couldn’t pinpoint it and I didn’t ask so I guess we’ll never know. Maybe one day I’ll write a book following my quest to find out what the soup was that I had at Cote brasserie, embarking on a round-the-world trip following clues to locate the chef that was on that day, eventually finding him in a remote jungle in north-west Burma, and he’ll tell me that it was in fact cheese all along.

Starter plates cleared out, and my six week run of abstinence abruptly ended as we ordered our second glasses of wine. Mains were up pretty soon, might I take this opportunity to tell you that the initially ramshackle service we had received has by now picked up, the restaurant is mostly empty now though.

My lamb shank looked good, in a “veal and rosemary sauce”, it’s always good to have an assortment of baby animal products on one plate – give me a suckling pig too, please!
Lamb is very easily overcooked, I did it myself so often that I gave up and leave it to Misia or the professionals now. I’m pretty sure that at one point in my life I lived primarily on a diet of overcooked, dry lamb. That was a very low point. Luckily, this chef knows how to do it properly and it fell from the bone like it was dying to get away.
The sauce was full of flavour, and not of oily fat as can sometimes happen. The rosemary was particularly evident, although there was some kind of berry in there too which made for a sweet taste.

Misia’s chicken looked pretty damn good too, a “Breton” chicken, for what it’s worth; “Corn fed and reared in the heart of Brittany”, so, a snooty upper class chicken. But in all seriousness, it wasn’t anything special. Without the garlic butter, the chicken was lacking in flavour, and the meat was a hair’s breadth off overdone.

Creme caramel for me and creme brulee for Misia is what we chose to round off with. Misia is something of a creme brulee conneiseuer, so if this stands up to her test then it must be a testament to how good it is – but it wasn’t, “a bit gloopy” apparently. I’m not so hot on desserts – I don’t have too much of a sweet tooth, as I think I’ve mentioned before. It was typical of a bought-in dessert, so I suppose I won’t be offending any of the restaurant staff by saying that it wasn’t anything special. A decidedly average end to an average meal really.

There’s nothing left to say really, our impression had been tainted from the moment we stepped foot into Cote Brasserie. It’s a chain and you can certainly tell. There’s just no passion, not even any fake passion like you get at other chains. Would I eat here again? Not likely, considering the other options available at similar prices in the same area.
My one line verdict; “If this was a pub, the food would have been good. As a restaurant, the experience went from harrowing to somewhat adequate and the food was lacking in ‘Je ne sais quoi’”

Rating: 3/10
Bill: £61.80