The Arnold Review

Cuisine

Riverford - Organic Mince Pies (Authentic Bread Company)

A Review in Cuisine - 15/12/2023

Out of care for the earth and sheer laziness, I've been buying from Riverford Farms; an organic 'you get what we grow' seasonal-type fruit and veg box, and as the festive season began its boisterous entrance, Riverford announced they were selling mince pies that piqued my Christmas curiosity and got my taste buds ring ting tingling, too. It arrived in a simple box which visually spoke 'organic', 'good for the earth', and 'because of the other two points, I'm mightily expensive'. Flipping tha...

Tesco's 6 Merry Mince Pies

A Review in Cuisine - 04/12/2023

For me, the Christmas season only starts when I procure boxes of mass-produced mince pies and eat myself into sheer insensibility, and right off the rip, this is a bad way to invite festive cheer into my life. Like every year, Tesco has a selection of mince pies going from the standard "Tesco Value" mince pies, up to the snooty Tesco's Finest range. I set aside my life of pure luxury in the name of festive science with the cheapest box available and upon employing an exiting walk like Scroog...

Crackd - The No-Egg Egg

A Review in Cuisine - 27/07/2023

I'm not usually influenced by anything, but as soon as I read a book or watch a cartoon about space, I suddenly and desperately want to become a space cowboy. What's better than turning your back on some small and easily resolved issue, then hopping into your spaceboat and sailing off to the other end of the galaxy? Certainly not the food you'd be eating on the way. Crackd - The No-Egg Egg most likely won't be the de facto egg substitute of future space rangers, because it sure-as-balls isn't...

Meatless Farm - Chickenless Roast

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...

"I could feel my day slipping away from me like the £6.25 I had spent on this box of dropped-looking turds"

"The filling felt like the taste equivalent of an asterix at the end of a word; easily unnoticed"

"Perfect for scrambled egg stock photography"

"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"