Who let the ‘dogs out?

How do you sell an old food idea to middle-class people with money to burn? You add the word ‘Gourmet’ to the name, sprinkle in some chorizo, jalapenos or avocado and charge twice the normal price. It’s expensive so it must be good, right? Gourmet burgers have been flooding the streets of Britain for the past 5 to 10 years, with chain restaurants, food vans and pubs all getting in on the action. In slightly improving the quality of the meat, experimenting with the bread and adding some ‘unusual’ – though not always complementary – ingredients (“ooh, sweet potato chips!“) they’ve won over those who once lived for Big Macs before they saw Super Size Me.

In the past few weeks I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen – and some who won’t – usually whilst waving a beer bottle like an accusatory finger but sometimes whilst sober, that the same thing was about to happen for the humble hotdog. Bubbledogs has been open in London Town for a few months now, shipping overpriced hotdogs with champers to the pop-up punters. And I’d ignored it. But I then wandered past a pub offering Beer Dogs and decided I had to go there for my birthday (I think the difference was it was a plain-looking pub, not a preening hipster-hive). After that I went to a restaurant in East London and saw the hotdogs section of the menu was bigger than that of the burgers. I realised there this was about to become the big thing. And my suspicions were confirmed when I was sent a snap shot of a JD Wetherspoon’s menu:

Wait, that’s my idea!

If Wetherspoons is getting in on the act, you know it’s mainstream. So I’m going to check them out. There’s a blogger out there who’s roaming the capital to review all the burgers he can (I do like his witty blog title), ranking them all and clearly getting a lot of advertising in the process. Now I’m not angling for sponsorship but I am going to dip my toe in the food critic waters. Deep breath… here goes.

Okay, so it all began at the Fitzrovia Belle and their hallowed Beer Dogs. Having invited my colleagues to the pub to celebrate my birthday I pushed through the Friday crowds to the bar with a degree of concern, not 100% convinced that these hotdogs were real since the website pointedly omits them from any menu. This concern was entirely unnecessary – the back of the pub is littered with the Beer Dog menus, boasting a fairly decent range (including one with coleslaw and pineapple – if I remembered that right). I opted for the Iberia, with cheese, chorizo and jalapeños  The sausages come in pork, beef and veggie flavour, though our token vegetarian had to check if hers was actually veggie-friendly which resulted in a slightly worrying look of confusion on the waitress, so it’s probably best to double check if you go.

Oh god it was goooood

The food itself was actually amazing. The sausage – or is the proper parlance the ‘dog? – was exactly what you want from a frankfurter – meaty, tangy and surprisingly thick (if there’s a way of describing a hot dog without straying into innuendo then I can’t find it so just deal with it, okay). The toppings were okay, they did what they advertised but were nothing special. But the bread – my memory fixates on the bread; they’d clearly toasted it giving the whole thing a crunch to contrast the melted cheese. And the Cajun Fries were also pretty damned tasty – I prefer a fat chip myself but for a fry they were top notch. I’d definitely go back. I always remembered hot dogs as being cheap party food or pre-sports base-level sustenance but the Fitzrovia provided a cracking introduction for my tour of London’s gourmet offerings.

My second of the Gourmet Hotdogs available in London came as a bit of an accident. The Lofty Turtle is in the middle-of-nowhere, otherwise known as East Sheen, but has legendary status with a bunch of my mates due to my getting slightly drunk in a taxi and someone having the presence of mind to start recording my ramblings on their phone (I think I ranted about bloody pretentious reptiles). So we always planned a trip there; the gourmet hotdogs on the menu were just a happy coincidence.

Despite the place being somewhat hard to get to it’s actually really nice; big screens showing comic book movies, a pool table, craft beers – it ticked a lot of boxes for me. But to refocus – I am writing this for the food after all – as I glanced at the menu of hotdogs (options restricted to purely pork for the ‘dog) I once again opted for the ‘flashiest’ option; the “Big Bad Wolf” – cunningly named as there are three forms of piggie; the pork ‘dog, pulled pork and bacon. This sounded like my kind of meal.

The Big Bad Wolf – overloaded

It arrived on my table on one of those wooden boards – a sign of a fancy food if ever I saw one. It immediately proved to be more than a handful; as I unhinged my jaw to take the first bite I tipped the bun and two bits of pulled pork bounced off the table and into my friend’s handbag. Much to her well vocalised chagrin. But this shows just how dry the pulled pork was, PP should not be bouncy. The hot dog in general was quite disappointing, the flavour of the ‘dog somewhat drowned out by the other meaty paraphernalia. The pulled pork was more chunks of dry meat, resembling tandoori chicken, than it was pulled pork as I understand it. And the bacon was solid and chewy and it tended to fall out of the bun. The bun itself was a baguette rather than a bun, and it seemed to be one of those half-baked deals which hadn’t been quite finished off properly before being served. It was okay, but a fairly dry and underwhelming experience overall.  And I can’t even remember the chips, which is damning because I could happily live off chips. Nice venue but I wouldn’t go out of my way for the food.

So – those are the first two stops on the gourmet hotdog tour of London. I think it’s Bubbledogs next, with it’s overpriced beers and hideously trendy reputation. Watch out hipsters – I’m coming to eat your food!

Iron Man 3

Okay, I haven’t bothered with any reviews recently – this is becoming a very running/eating dominated blog. So now that I’ve been to the cinema to watch a blockbustery type film I thought I’d opine about it.

Well, Iron Man 3 was about as inevitable as the sunrise. Marvel’s on going movie schedule is as unstoppable as the tide –  to use another meteorological metaphor. The primary-coloured, one-liner filled superhero movies have enough inventiveness and charm behind them to make them eminently watchable without ever really challenging any cinematic conventions or preconceptions (as perhaps the Nolan Batman films have). They don’t worry people, they don’t scare people, they just serve as shiny, mindless entertainment and as such are perfect box-office fodder. Iron Man 3 adroitly continues this tradition and ensures that Downey Jr will be back for more Tony Stark-ery despite his contract being up for renewal. It’s a cash cow and I doubt they’ll stop any time soon.

Now this cynicism should not suggest that I didn’t like the film. As I said, it is perfect mindless entertainment. You sit back and relax, comfortable in the knowledge of roughly where we are in terms of yellow-and-red action heroism and enjoy the wizz-bang action. And I did, I really did. And I enjoyed the one liners, especially the interplay between Stark and the almost-but-not-quite-cliché bullied-kid. And I liked the shiny suits, the big explosions, the gun fighting and the punching. I liked that Shane Black once again set his movie at Christmas time (I love that little idiosyncrasy in his films). I enjoyed all that. But ultimately it did still feel a little hollow. The characters came and went, Rebecca Hall had woefully little to do and I just couldn’t care about what might happen to her character. Guy Pearce does a great job of injecting menace to his mad scientist but even he felt slightly limp as a character. Ben Kingsley provided a surprising amount of charm to his mini-character, so he maybe wins the most points on that basis. Oh, and the final action sequence. It looked impressive (though the logic of it made me wonder *SPOILER ALERT* why, if he had an army of suits just sitting there, did he not use them earlier when he was being tortured or Pepper was being injected with bad stuff? It just doesn’t make sense – and when you question stuff like that in the midst of a giant action sequence something’s wrong) but as with the rest of the film, it felt weirdly… lacking. There was little peril, little tension, and as a consequence the conclusion felt a bit anti-climactic.

But this all sounds very negative. I enjoyed it, and I’ll watch it again. And I’d recommend it to anyone who’s enjoyed any of the marvel films before. It’s miles better than Iron Man 2, and probably Thor and Capt America, but not Iron Man 1 or Avengers. So it’s good, just don’t expect a masterpiece.