The Arnold Review

Cuisine

A Review in Cuisine - 14/02/2023

£4.50 Tesco Supermarket Like the cliché scene from a zombie film where the protagonist is forced into an infected-filled mega-mart to get supplies, I found myself sidestepping mindless patrons at my local Tesco for an avocado, and whilst soon looking for a place of respite to catch my breath and steel my fraying nerves, I found a quiet sanctuary. A seemingly unvisited and unloved place at the end of one of the supermarket's long and droning aisles, bereft of the hordes rushing the frozen piz...

Chado Tea Shop - Avo Toast & Istanbul No. 2 tea

A Review in Cuisine - 20/12/2022

Chado Tea Shop Cihangir, Istanbul Squirrelling my way around the "Camden of Istanbul", my other half told me about a perfectly lovely little tea shop. One that I simply had to visit due to my recently acquired interest in any tea other than the mundane English Breakfast tea I'm so accustomed to. So, whilst she had to jet off to a different country for work, I thought I'd head down the road from our Airbnb and kill some time before she came back. Open until late and serving light bites and ...

Arada Beyrut Cafe - Istanbul

A Review in Cuisine - 02/11/2022

Breakfast for two - 152 Turkish Lira per person (around £7 each) Beyoğlu, İstanbul, Turkey Fancy a breakfast where each individual ingredient comes on its own plate or bowl knowing that you're not the poor person that has to wash about 100 billion of them before the end of your shift? Then head on down to the hustlin' and bustlin' Arada Beyrut Cafe in Istanbul where you can fill every square inch of a table with items of food! A fairy chilly Saturday morning didn't hamper the hordes of peo...

Marmite Breakfast Biscuits

A Review in Cuisine - 09/10/2022

£2.80 Tesco Marmite. It can be the salty tar that bonds kings and paupers together in harmony or the unbreachable wall between love and hate. A savoury sludge that hits all the right notes like a seasoned jazz musician playing a solo straight from the heart...but that's only if you like jazz. For those that don't, it's the awful noise of some escaped mental patient slapping a piano like a wilding until the whitecoats burst through the door and capture them. During a trip to the 'big Tesco' ...

Pret - Pesto Salad

A Review in Cuisine - 17/06/2022

£5.75 All good Pret locations After a mundane morning of slowly tapping on a laptop keyboard and calling it 'work', I had built up quite a monstrous appetite - one befitting of someone who really puts the hard graft in, and because of where the lifeless, blue-tinged, hospital-lit and cold boxed shit-of-a-room they call an office is located, only a Pret looms nearby ready to force people in looking for a quick lunch. I forwent my usual Pret fare of the posh cheese and pickle baguette thing a...

Urgot Bruncherie (Barcelona) - Madoughnut

A Review in Cuisine - 23/04/2022

€9.50 Barcelona Around a 23-minute walk away from the hustle and bustle of the tourist funnel that is Las Ramblas, Barcelona, sits a corner-cafe serving brunch to the locals. Luckily, it's too far away from the main areas, so any globetrotters that make it all that way are there for a reason and not just dropping in because there's a queue at Burger King. And speaking about dropping in, surely a party of three can drop into a hot brunch zone at peak brunch time on a Saturday without a reserv...

Eti Gold - Caramel Chocolate

A Review in Cuisine - 01/03/2022

“Looking like one of King Midas' test touches, the Eti Gold bar hummed the air with a sense of false opulence not too dissimilar to the "look, we too can bump gums with the upper-class" products like Nescafe Gold and every other shit with 'gold' added to their line. Rose gold...there's another.” The hills of Istanbul steepen forever upwards. Cars parked wholly on the sidewalks surrounded by cats and dogs, and carts selling freshly-squeezed juice of pomegranate or orange. The roads are the o...

Neat Burger – Chik’n Burger

A Review in Cuisine - 28/12/2021

Neat Burger, London £8.99 - burger only (£1.50 for extra cheese) A while ago I decided to better myself and join the only elite club I’d ever be able to get into and became a vegetarian. Not quite the to the lofty heights of being a vegan card-holder as I’d rather inhale the takeoff blast from a rocket destined for deep space. The switch to ‘not being good enough to be a vegan’ was surprisingly easy considering I couldn’t class a meal as an actual meal unless it had some form of meaty protei...

Plant Kitchen – No Pork Streaky Bacon

A Review in Cuisine - 05/05/2021

Marks & Spencer £3 Vegetarians will tell you (usually when asked, not bleating on and on spoiling pure silence like vegans) that they made the switch to a plant-based lifestyle because they don’t want to be a part of the suffering of animals and the destruction planet and yada-yada. Yet they’ll snuffle about looking for a meat substitute that looks and tastes exactly like meat, and if their vegetarian burger doesn’t taste exactly like a meat burger they’ll throw it back on the plate and decl...

Melrose And Morgan – Mince Pies

A Review in Cuisine - 10/12/2020

£12.99 from Selfridges, London The Christmas season is upon us once again making us wonder where the hell the rest of the year went as we emerge from a second national lockdown, shielding our malnourished eyes from the dazzle of fairy lights and seasonal Xmas glitter – because if the birth of Christ himself has taught us anything, the man loved a party and loved his tinsel. Along with the same ten Christmas songs on repeat and the burning cold of a misty London day, mince pies start their as...

"It just tasted of, according to my notes at the time, 'eating the wrong air', which I can only unfold to be that it felt like something was really not right"

"Looking like a small lost surfboard returning to shore along with the treasures and plantation of Atlantis placed atop"

"I had already lost my mind about the potential food combinations I could create. Cheese with honey? I am Greek royalty. Tomatoes dusted with exotic spices? I am a Mediterainnian millionaire. A doughnut with my coffee? I am an uncouth American. "

"I'd never thought 'this is what they probably smell when they push open a sarcophagus' prior to opening these"

"Adding more grey to the flavour of grey"

"If cutting open a poached egg is like cutting open a baseball, you're probably in a place that sells tinned chicken"

"Looking like one of King Midas' test touches, the Eti Gold bar hummed the air with a sense of false opulence not too dissimilar to the "look, we too can bump gums with the upper-class" products like Nescafe Gold and every other shit with 'gold' added to their line"

"All of the marketing material on the walls lovingly stated how much your meal saves a planet’s worth of water by not watering cows or some shit, and how plant-based living is the best ever or something. I dunno, I didn’t properly read any of it"

"Along with the same ten Christmas songs on repeat and the burning cold of a misty London day, mince pies start their ascension from the depths of our collective memory to adorn every inch of prime retail-shelving estate"