pumpkinstrokemarrow

The fifth management team have made the place into a Brazilian tapioca and food bar (without warm beer). As a result of which I learn that tapioca is not just the stuff known in my primary school days as frogs spawn. It is also a kind of flour used to make all kinds of floury things, including the thin pancakes used to wrap up savoury messes in Brazil. Their version of a taco. However, I did not try them, opting instead for oxtail served with salad, rice and beans. Not too many of these last - which was just as well as the dish as a whole was substantial - served in a red gravy. Oxtail excellent, on the bone and better than the version we have at home. I think it must have been boiled for a bit, glazed with something or other and then finished in an oven. Savoury and not fatty, although one's fingers were in a bit of a state when one had finished. Could have done with a finger bowl and a cloth rather than a paper napkin. This last disintegrating on one's sticky fingers.

Unusually, this special of the day really was a special of the day. Unlike the specials of the day in most places which are just selections from their boil in the bag menus.

I shall have to see if I can replicate the cooking of the oxtail.

Nearer home I can record the demise of Ember Inns, a pub chain which is visible in the Epsom area with half a dozen or more houses. The one nearest us is a place called the 'Cricketers', with what you might think is an excellent village pond side site but which has had an uneven history in the 20 years or so since the long time owner occupiers sold up. Several major refurbishments along the way and several quiet periods. The Ember Inn web site says there are 200 or so of them but tells one nothing about who or what owns the company. Is it a franchise? Is it really a branch of the Whitbread organisation? But we do know, because the well-informed young bar maid told us, that Ember Inns have been bought up by some venture capitalists, maybe the same people as who own Pizza Express and Zizzi. Maybe a pair of people called TDR and Capricorn Ventures. Or maybe Capricorn Holdings. Both versions of Capricorn appear to be into owning other companies but neither appear to be in the cuddly warm beer business. Now Ember Inns do sell perfectly decent warm beer, but their places are not particularly cuddly. Perhaps plastic cuddly, in the same sort of way as plastic paddy (theme) pubs are typically Irish. Are they going to get any more cuddly now that they are ultimately owned by some private equity types lurking in darkest Aldgate? Will the days of owner occupier pubs ever come back? Of owner occupiers not saddled with a monstrous rent and so content with a modest income. Who don't have to sweat the premises.