Menus to be anglicised

Press, 2 June 1981, Page 25

Menus to be anglicised

From Ken Coates in London News that the House of Commons restaurants will anglicise menus which describe dishes such as potato soup as “potage pommes de will raise a cheer in many a comer of Old England.

It is nothing to do with patriotism, it is common sense, says the master cook at that traditonal home of English cooking, Simpson’s in the Strand, Mr Joe Curley. “My menu? I don’t have one,” he says. “I have a bill of fare and the things on it are written in English because this is England.” Mr Curley, the last man in Britain to wear the black cap from the old days of open-fire spit roasting, says that when tourists see “bubble and squeak” it sounds exotic.

“They quite like toad in the hole as well,” he says. There are those who say that food snobbery, like wine snobbery, has become an insufferable and confusing problem. But calling grilled Dover sole “Dover sole grillee” is all right, by the Arts Club chef, Mr Jean Conil, a former president of the International Academy of Chefs. “They have committed a terrible crime: it is a deliberate act of suppression of the tongue which is the international language of food.” he says. “It is a melody, it is mystery, it is romance, and they have thrown it away.” But Mr Curley will have none of this. The French brought their cuisine to Britain, first with William the Conqueror in 1066 and again later when French aristocrats fleeinv

the guillotine brought their chefs with them. The Commons decision, says Mr Curley, is all part of a fierce fight back of English regional cooking: the Barnsley chop, Exeter beef stew, and Devonshire sauce. “Now Hampshire roll is a typical example of what has been hidden all these years,” says Mr Curley. “It’s a sponge with a layer of apple turned over and served with apricot sauce . . . delicious. Anyone trying to give it an exotic-sounding French name deserves a punch on the nose.”