2013 Lord Mayor's Big Curry Lunch - Big Curry - if you are in The City please support

Last year this great event managed to help raise over £230,000 for a great support charity for soldiers and happy to say they are repeating the lunch this year at the Guildhall in The City of London...if you can please do support...great way to get a great curry too...ABF Soldiers Charity will be very appreciative. It is on Thursday 18th April 2013. For more information here is the website http://bigcurry.org/events/lordmayor

New Beginnings...

After a few months break the FFCC is up and running again we are off in a slightly different direction... no One Direction for us!

We have decided to split the organising around members and hopefully this will add some new venues and types along the way as well as give everyone a piece of the decisions on where and when to go... Looking forward to it.

Tom is in the Captain seat this April - Marlow the venue back in to the Tiger Club (no mention of the toilets please Ed!) Watch the Twitter feed for updates and the reappraisal of this fine wee curry house we last visited a couple of years back. Should be a blast... probably starting out in the Prince of Wales around the corner. Looking forward to it great to be back in the proverbial saddle.

Mid Week Buffet

Decided to pop in and try the mid week buffet at The Ocean Village on Bridge Street in Maidenhead last night with two friends.

Now we believe at the FFCC that what you pay is not an indicator of quality when it comes to curry and so an offer of £6 cash only for a buffet we were optimistic.

Sadly it was not to be - the food was not bad it was perfectly fine but just very very bland flavouring. Which was a shame.

These guys are always friendly and polite and welcoming and we have eaten here before with mixed results and last night was more of the same.

Choice of starters, samosa, bhaji, chicken tikka and spices all very ordinary: mains was a choice of three curries, two chicken and one lamb all with tender meat but again just very bland, making food as bland as this is crime... We are sure locals will throw their arms up in outcry but thus is very bland ordinary curry and these guys can do so much better.

Won't be trying the mid week buffet again a definite 4/10. .

Ouch! The hottest curry

We have been talking amongst ourselves a lot recently about the Scoville Scale - Nagas & Scotch Bonnets and all thing chilli related when we came across this!

Bless the Daily Mail.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2257120/Doctor-eats-curry-hot-known-The-Widower-chefs-making-wear-goggles-face-mask.html

Ed - sounds like one for you.

James Isherwood & Blogging about food

There once was a man... who dared to blog about food and wasn't a 'expert' - here is the story (Oh, and beware the language in here is a little fruity!)


http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/nov/08/top-chefs-unite-against-blogger-s-review

As foody-bloggers - the Isherwood story is a worrying one for anyone with an opinion.  We have, over the years of writing about curry, been contacted by a few curry house owners who didn't like what was written.

Very occasionally there have been little legal threats but they never materialise because ordinary people writing about their experience and then letting others know is not something to be afraid of if you own a restaurant but something to learn from.  Listening to customers who experience your products & services are valuable inputs to making you more money in the future. Listen to them - it can make you a better restaurant and a far more profitable one.

Pub Curries

In recent weeks because of both work and being out and about around the country I have had chance to sample a lot curry in pubs rather than traditional (as I call them) curry houses. I have learnt I think the three big trends for pub curries.

There are it strikes me three types:

1. Slop - far too many pubs get away with a basically mild brown indeterminent meat based slop that gets called curry. It invariably isn't hot, it normally tastes old as it is clearly coming from a big pot somewhere. But importantly it comes with rice which is normally stodgy. The way to avoid these is they are normally merely described as Lamb/ beef curry...avoid. this really is just cashing in on curry being a popular dish and wanting orders for mild rubbish.

2. Faux Curry - or fake curry which ever you prefer. This is slightly better than slop as the neat contained within is normal more 'meat' looking and again they are always brown. Faux curry is more related to lumpy gravy or the emptied out content of a pie than to a real curry. The clue to this stuff is they normally offer a poppadom with it to add authenticity but it doesn't and it frequently gets called balti which in places it is served normally means you get the rice and 'curry' in different bowls - these curries tend to get called Rogan Gosh because it sounds inoffensive the uninitiated. The clue here is avoiding anything described as rogan !

3. Made to order - one in 10 curries in pubs are actually made...not just pulled from a big pot. Many obviously are made for serving say 10 and then they have to make a fresh batch. Good normally and often un pretentious fayre...these curries are good tastey and normally chicken. The clue here is always ask if freshly made... and invariably they are described as hotter than normal because getting a consistent heat is tough so they warn people.

Anyway those are my musings after the recent foray into the dark and shadowy world of pub curry.

If you want a good example of a fresh made curry in these parts you won't go better than The Guardsmans Inn curry Wednesday in Maidenhead on Green fell Road.

Really, this is just for the record....regular readers.

For our regular readers we aren't getting together this month...November is always a little strange month because of that chap Guido Fawke messing around with Parliament all those years ago and you know we British love a good firework display....

But in reminising with an old friend recently we got into a discussion about how curry houses cope with larger groups after our entry abput Wargrave recently...ie not handling larger groups too well.

His theory is that 6 is the maximum your shpuld take to a curry outing because above that orders go wrong, bills get added up wrong and it is plain hard to chat as the table gets too big. You see tjis is the kind of important discussion FFCC members get inthralled by!

What is your experience with big numbers of eaters?