Category Archives: Europe

Avast there! Aboard Quantum of the Seas, the biggest floating food palace ever

Posted on by under cruises, Europe

If you’ve always thought a cruise was not for you then it may be time to think again, after all where else can you get to eat in 18 different restaurants only a short stroll from your bedroom? 

ARM2A stomach-boggling variety of eateries is only one of the attractions of the just launched Royal Caribbean cruise ship Quantum of the Seas, the third biggest cruise ship in the world at 347 m and one able to carry 4,000 passengers.

DODGEMS2Onboard are the first dodgems at sea, the first trapeze, the first skydive simulator – Ripcord by iFLY – the first Jamie’s Italian, the North Star – a stomach fluttering glass pod that swings out and over the ship to give you a helicopter view – and the Bionic Bar where two hyperactive robots log your order and then go into blurred motion at the optics, the ice dispenser and the mixer taps before finally giving it all a good shake and sliding your refreshing beverage towards you. Continue reading →

The fat of the land

Posted on by under Europe, food

Pigs and parmesan aren’t enough for the people of Emilia Romagna, Italy, they want to have their art and eat it too. Nick Harman heads out to sample a bit of both.IMG_2912‘I’m going to London tomorrow.’ enthuses the Italian man at Due Platani , a trattoria in the countryside just outside Parma, ‘I’ve got a reservation at Chiltern Firehouse after three months’ wait!’ Well you don’t want to be a downer on anyone do you, but I had to bite back a ‘why bother?’ I mean I had just eaten a superb meal of local, seasonal produce such as pumpkin ravioli, so good other chefs come for miles to eat them, in a room joyfully filled with people of all ages and with not a WAG or scenester in sight.

IMG_3086It was followed by pasta ribbons mixed with a perfect balance of duck ragu, enough to add flavour to the fresh pasta but not swamp it, then some guinea fowl with spicy sweet mostarda, and had ended with my being invited to see a huge mound of fresh ice cream come surging out of an ancient gelato machine before it was rushed to eagerly waiting tables. You don’t get that in West London. Continue reading →

Don’t save it for Sunday

Posted on by under Europe, food, sherry

Jetting into Jerez to taste a lot of sherry and to put aside some prejudices

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The dark interior the of sherry bodega in Jerez stretches away to what seems like infinity. On each side black painted barrels are stacked in Goth splendour three barrels high. Outside, even in September, the sky is a brilliant blue and the temperature is enough to make pedestrians hug the shady side of the street and drivers turn up the aircon full blast.

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Inside it smells musty and mouldy and of sherry. It’s an aroma redolent of Christmas and Sunday dinners, and for anyone of a certain age it’sHarveys Bristol Cream that immediately springs to mind. Which is apt, as this is where it comes from Continue reading →

Pepper Big

Posted on by under Europe, food, Northern Europe

Down in ‘Fannet’ food has taken a space age turn. Nick Harman visits the UK’s biggest greenhouse complex to find how our red, yellow and green peppers are produced.

pepmainI can’t get rid of it; ‘This is Planet Earth’ by Duran Duran keeps looping around my brain as we wait for security clearance to enter the world of Thanet Earth. Damn those catchy 80s popsters and their irresistible ‘hooks’.

I soon lose the beat though as we round a corner and I get my first sight of the massive greenhouses covering the rough equivalent of four Heathrow terminals, or 40 football pitches if that helps. Very, very big, is perhaps the best way of putting it.

IMG_2437Before the greenhouses fell to earth all this land in Thanet, the bit of the UK that includes Margate, Ramsgate and Broadstairs, grew brassicas – cauliflowers mostly -which apparently ‘smelt a fair bit.’

Now four clean, bright and odour-free greenhouses occupy the space instead. They stand on compacted earth with as little concrete as possible used in their construction. This is what modern farming looks like; efficient, virtually waste-free, ecologically as sound as possible and with no mud or muck about. Continue reading →

The world’s biggest buffet

Posted on by under Europe, food, Southern Europe, wine

Eat for England.  Les Grands Buffets, Narbonne, France

Remorseless eating machines | The world’s biggest buffet

I agreed to it for a laugh, really. “The world’s biggest buffet”? Well that surely had to be a barn-door target for some snarky reviewing.

At first we couldn’t get to the place to even mock it from the outside. Instead we sped with increasing impatience up and down the fast two-lane on the industrial outskirts of Narbonne, trying to find a way in. Massive signs advertised furniture stores,car exhaust fitters and flooring warehouses, but the only way to access the area seemed to be to drive the wrong way around a roundabout and then floor it down a one-way street against oncoming Renault Twingos.

So we did that and made our way on foot across an airfield’s worth of tarmac to an enormous building that also seemed to house an ice-rink or a roller-rink. It was hard to tell: it was closed and dark, just like every other “grand surface” in the area.

Les Grands Buffets

Continue reading →

Meeting Marco Pierre White. The shark at sea

Posted on by under chefs, cruises, Europe

First of the rockstar chefs, rejecter of Michelin Stars and grabber of headlines, Marco Pierre White is one of P&O Cruises Food Heroes. Nick Harman catches up with him mid-voyage

IMG_2347‘’I signed around 1500 of these yesterday,’ says Marco Pierre White indicating a pile of menus in front of him, ‘there’s about another 1000 still to go.’

‘You should get a rubber stamp made up.’ I suggest tentatively, ‘that would make it a lot easier wouldn’t it?’ He turns the Marco stare on me and there’s a beat of silence. ‘But it won’t be the same will it?’ he points out, ‘the people getting it won’t know it’s fake, but I will.’

boatNo longer a Michelin 3 star chef, he eventually threw them back saying that he was sick of trying to impress people who knew less about cooking than he did, Marco is still a man who doesn’t cut corners and doesn’t let customers down. Continue reading →

Sharp and sweet. The vinegars of La Guinelle

Posted on by under Europe, Southern Europe, vinegar

Foodies talk a lot about balsamic vinegar and its amazingness, but in the South of France I find an artisan making something a drop more interesting and rare
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‘You need good wine to make good vinegar,’ says Nathalie gazing watchfully over her militarily ranked wooden casks. The south of France sun is beating down on the covers that shade the casks from the full heat, her dog is flopped out on the road outside. It’s too hot to do much. Time moves slowly here. Continue reading →

Always mind the scallops

Posted on by under Europe

DSC_2560‘Dredging for scallops is like trying to pick up your wallet on the fast lane of the M25, in the fog.’ Nick Harman meets the Rye ‘scallopers’ just ahead of Scallop Week

It’s all a bit quiet down on Simmonds Quay in Rye, East Sussex. The scallop boats are moored tight and the fishermen are in their huts. The stormy weather that hasn’t ceased battering England for weeks is once again stopping them from going to sea.

‘We haven’t been out more than a couple of times since Christmas,’ sighs one fisherman sadly. At this time of year scallops are an important harvest, but the boats are small, under 10m long, and crewed by just two men. The big seas would be too much. Continue reading →

In a Maltese City Garden

Posted on by under Europe, Southern Europe

At the Phoenicia Hotel they take luxury and food very seriously. Nick Harman goes into their garden to meet the head chef and to taste the Maltese difference.

Saul bounds away up the vegetable patch like a puppy in an apron, still talking to me over his shoulder. Then, after grabbing a few tomatoes off the vine, he comes hurrying back. ‘The freshness is fantastic,’ he said biting into one ‘and with the kitchen just over there it gets straight to the plate.’ Saul could be any keen cook enthusing over his vegetable plot, but this particular patch is a massive seven and a half acres in size. It’s the back garden of the Phoenicia Hotel, Malta and Saul’s the Head Chef.

The gardens are grand and have bird’s eye views over the harbour, especially from the luxurious Bastion swimming pool. These verdant acres have been many things since construction began on the hotel in 1939, including being bombed in the war and used as a children’s playground, although no one is saying which did the worst damage. Continue reading →

Blessed are the cheesemakers

Posted on by under Europe, Northern Europe

DSC_1185Up early in the morning  to walk through dappled light to the dairy that’s nestled by a babbling brook. The cheese makers’ life? Well not exactly, as Nick Harman finds out

‘I don’t like getting up too early, so I don’t,’ says Philip Wilton  of Wildes Cheese leading me into his dairy. Outside far from being a vista of green fields and rolling hills, the view is of grey skies glowering over the streets of North London, as well as the bulk of Spurs’ football stadium just down the road.

‘You should have seen this place when I took it on,’ adds Philip as we wet our shoe soles in antiseptic and put on white coats, ‘it was a right mess.’ Actually he uses a stronger description; his cheerful conversation is peppered with expletives. He has created a proper dairy, three fully fitted out rooms, in a tiny unit on an anonymous industrial estate, a dairy so small you couldn’t swing a kitten in it, much less a cat. Continue reading →