Manolo’s Food Blog

All week Londoners have been enjoying an unusual spell of sunny weather. Could this be the explanation why low-cut blouses and scanty dresses dominate feminine fashion? Not since he walked the beach of Nice at age 17, a peak experience of his late boyhood, has Mr. Henry seen so very much of so very many bosoms.

Like great white naval vessels riding the high seas, bouncing breasts command the London concourse. Rule Britannia!

In every cafe, pub, and restaurant he visited this week, the waitress chose her outfit for a stage audition. Mistress Quickly, a tavern wench, or the village strumpet are juicy parts, to be sure, confident to bring advancement. These actresses really can fill the role.

Lately when Mr. Henry thinks of scones with clotted cream, visions of Devonshire dairy maids pop up. The word “pudding” now animates Mr. Henry’s imagination towards sweets not available on the menu.

Bottoms are nearly as uncovered as tops. Rare English sunshine illuminates scanty pants beneath gauzy skirts. It’s a little bit much, really. Or rather, it’s a little bit too little.

Mr. Henry likes the female form. He adores the female form. The unengaged parts of his brain think of little else but the female form. In his considered opinion, there is nothing like a dame. But he finds himself distracted by seeing so much female nakedness in this traditionally prudish country. Bombarded by pale-skinned and dark-skinned beauties, how can he be expected to absorb the subtleties of English Gothic architecture? Concentration flags. Mental acuity goes mushy. His train of thought follows the wrong signal switch and then he wonders why he bothered to trudge all this way just to abuse his feet on medieval paving stones.

When a man is tired of London breasts, is he tired of life?

Seeking revival in traditional pub foods – bangers and mash, fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, ploughman’s lunch – time and again Mr. Henry found the menu listing duck breast salad or felafel instead. The English pub has gone gastro.

On nearly every menu now there is a vegetarian selection indicated by (v). This represents a genuine revolution in English cooking. Results are mixed, but in two cases so far the felafel has been first-rate – freshly prepared, brightly seasoned, and crisply fried. Salads have been excellent.

The steak and ale pie Mr. Henry snagged at the Wellington on The Strand lived up to tradition. Judging by the crust’s sturdy exterior and soggy interior, it could have been made in the 18th century. It was timelessness itself.

The week’s most exciting taste without doubt were the Alphonso mangoes from India, pale orange with the creamiest, most aromatic flesh, available for only a few weeks each year. Mr. Henry bought them at the Saturday farmer’s market on Portobello Road. They are the food of Shangri-La.

Twice in one week Mr. Henry has eaten chocolate on meat. Is this a new national trend, a millennial generation mania? If so, why hasn’t anyone informed Mr. Henry about this before? He is supposed to be in the forefront of food fashion, not outside waiting behind the ropes.

At Columbus Circle, the AOL Time Warner Center is a bizarre amalgam of the authentic and the ersatz. The towers are handsome enough, if twin towers are what captivate your urban fantasies. Personally, Mr. Henry finds them deeply, doubly uninspiring. The interior is an essay in wasted space. Vast hollow chambers wind slowly round a half circle. Upstairs the celebrated Allen Room with its view down Central Park South is flanked by an awkward trapezoidal foyer larger than the performance hall itself.

Per Se (menu pris fixe, $275) and Masa, arguably the two best restaurants in the country, share a common hallway entrance from what looks like an upscale shopping mall, a decor suggesting Dallas or Short Hills. However, on a rainy Wednesday evening last week a veteran New York bum borrowed this entrance as a staging area to clean his soaked and blackened feet. Ah! New York City! Where wretchedness and superabundance reside side by side.

Down one flight at Cafe Gray, Mr. Henry could not resist ordering the loin of pork with braised shoulder and braised belly because they were finished with “chocolate stout” – a very light, subtly aromatic, slightly bitter chocolate ale. It was a remarkably appropriate complement to pork’s mild flavors.

Last night at Mary and Michael’s house, the worldly and curvaceous Donna, fresh from a day of rock-climbing, cooked an imaginative short ribs with tagliatelle topped NOT by Parmesan cheese but by finely grated bitter chocolate, a recipe borrowed from Giada Di Laurentiis.

Lighter and less insistent than Parmesan, the bitter chocolate awakened taste buds not otherwise aroused by the sweet round flavors of slowly braised short ribs. It was a success made more exciting by being so unexpected.

Will chocolate hamburgers be the next new thing? Let’s see….ketchup and bitter chocolate together, isn’t that almost a salsa molé?