G&P Awards - Food and drink

Restaurant of the year – Lots of competition this year, from places owned by celebrity chefs that, because the celebrity chefs are off filming, shagging or filming their shagging, are actually quite good, to Modern French, which is always quite bad, from places doing simple things well to places doing complicated things well to little places that just do the best red snapper straight out of the sea. G&P has catholic tastes. That’s why honourable mention goes to La Deedah, Anton Fircups new place in Knightsbridge, simply because one can order ‘vodka luge’ as a starter and, if you book ahead, the luge is in the form of a statue of yourself, with the vodka emerging from spigot of choice. Congratulations on Anton for scooping the ‘fist date venue’ award at last month’s ‘Grazia’ awards. But we also love the family run restaurant on the Greek island of Krappos. Their red snapper recipe, which has no red snapper in it at all, is much appreciated by any tourist staying for more than a week where, because of bountiful shoals and a truly buggered economy, red snapper if just about the only thing left to eat. The winner is ‘Lennies’ on the A437 just outside Macclesfield. This unpretentious layby café serves the best bacon sandwich in England, meaning the best in the world. Lidl bacon on supermarkert value white means that the bacon grease is half way to your elbow before you have the sandwich half way to your mouth. What sets this bacon sandwich apart is the particulates from all the lorries trundling past. Try the ‘asthma attack on a plate’ the next time you are there.

Food of the year – hot scotch egg. Of course.

Drink of the year – tea. Yes, that’s right, tea. Here’s why: Beer is your go-to drink when you are feeling thirsty or it is still first thing. Red wine is fine but needs a decent roast dinner to go with it and one does not always have access to an Aga, a cook or a decent fowl. White wine used to have a reputation as being drunk by the rougher sort of homosexulaist. Now it has the reputation of being drunk by ‘Lambrini girls’. Until it is rehabilitated and it is safe to once again drink with the rougher sort of homosexulaist, it is off the list. Gin is all very well, in its place. That place is the bathtub where it is distilled and where it can also be pressed into service as dissolving evidence. Scotch is an alcohol beverage perfected by a race who have brought the abuse of their own bodies to a fine art. Think; if you wouldn’t have a piercing, a tattoo or a deep-fried mars bar inside you, why would you have any other tartan product? Other drinks are available but frankly, they are all variations on the above. Cocktails? Any of the above with enough vimto to disguise the taste. This leaves us with tea. Because; there’s a ‘phone ringing, in the White House, at two o’clock in the morning and if there’s a crisis brewing there had better be a cuppa brewing as well, when you are taking a decision about whether or not to deploy the special forces in a supposedly allied country, you do not want to be doing this with a beaker of Jim Beam in your mit, you want hot, fresh tea. And as we have been asked, the G&P blend of choice is English Breakfast with half a spoonful of camp coffee, a pinch of an OXO cube and just enough Bovril to give the beverage body. And three sugars.