SC - black sausage

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Mordonna22 at aol.com wrote:
> 
> I watch it every chance I get.  Here in the Valley of the Sun, it runs at 10
> pm on Saturday nights, just before Red Green.
> If I remember correctly, the episode about the international convention
> hinged around the Chef finding an actually good British Wine.  He didn't
> really believe in such an animal, but his ego wouldn't allow him to forgo the
> challenge from the French Chef about wine quality.

That was part of it, but the point of pride was to produce a purely
English meal of haute cuisine, including the wine. But the French chef
(or one in particular of several) was gleefully harrassing him on
general principles about fish and chips and rostbiff, and asked him
which brand of bottled sauce he would use for a certain dish, etc. There
was also, as I recall, a point at which he may or may not have stolen
the bottle of English wine necessary for the competition. Or did
Everton, the comis, drink it?

There was another episode along similar lines which involved The One
True Unprocessed Unpasteurized Stilton, which had to be bought illegally
from a farm which also grew another illegal crop of a more
pharmaceutical variety, which was under a police stakeout.

As I say, though, the whole thing about being mortally insulted by
unworthy clientele who aren't good enough to appreciate his cooking
without asking for salt or ketchup (there's great stuff in "Big Night"
about that, too!) and routinely calling the waiters morons as if they
belonged to a separate and inferior species, is a little too close to
real life in what I experienced as the restaurant industry for me to
laugh at unreservedly. I guess seeing a semi-psychotic primadonna is
okay on television, but in real life it's not as amusing. (Remind me
some time to tell you about the executive chef and the crusty rolls the
poor unfortunate delivery man claimed were not stale.) For all that,
it's a brilliant show, though, and I'm finding more and more stuff that
Lenny Henry (creator and title character actor) has worked on and
brought his particular nuttiness to. 

Adamantius, who remembers Master Richard The Poor of Ely sneaking into
one of his kitchens and singing about Serious Professions...
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com