Are you a Scottish restaurateur? Do you need publicity? Well, get out the handbook and follow rule number one: introduce onto your menu a dish incorporating at least one element from the kitschy ice-cream van of common Caledonian favourites.
Deep-fried Mars Bar petits fours, Irn-Bru sorbet, Arran tablet with a Snowball parfait. The combination of familiarity with novelty and the added twist of couthy ingenuity spiced with patriotic pride; it’ll get your establishment five minutes on Reporting Scotland guaranteed.
Wacky regionalism is the Find the Lady of food culture. Each time it happens we clasp our foreheads and swear we won’t get fooled again. And then some chippy in Ullapool invents Macaroon Bar pizza and the centre spread is cleared for in-depth coverage. It’s happened again. The Parkville hotel is in Blantyre, a sector of South Lanarkshire that looks as though an international cartel of scaffolding erectors and tanning parlour operators left five minutes before you arrived. They’re started offering a dessert of Buckfast cheesecake.
That’s correct: Buckfast, the same noxious loon-juice which some claim reduces the area’s youth to vomit-flecked statistics whenever there’s a full moon; the same stuff that makes South Lanarkshire a byword for a long string of panicked vowels followed by a large number of exclamation marks. And now it’s been turned into the topping of a dessert designed to give those with the fortunate ability to get out of Blantyre the chance to say: “Oh, how witty. You can almost taste the disapproval of Kenny MacAskill and the tang of Stanley knife on cheek. Mmmm. Really, a triumph.”
A vile idea, isn’t it? But it isn’t the only rubbish notion the Parkville, in its custom-built box of modern corporate anonymity, has been pleased to have. It was a menu that offered the full panoply of prepared hot and bulky artery-laggers.
Basically, if it possesses the power to send you to your GP complaining you can no longer walk up stairs, then the Parkville will serve it. Sadly I wasn’t able to try the Black and Blue, a big meat discus of burger topped with black pudding and blue cheese. I mean, that’s just insult to injury. No longer are we in the realm of food and dining, people — we are in a dark place where greed, ignorance and recklessness are manning the barbecue.
For a starter, I was spoilt for choice; or rather the choice was spoilt by what was on offer. I could have had the haggis fritters. Or the deep-fried Scottish brie. Or the onion rings. Or the slabs of bread with Polyfilla mozzarella on top.
Or I could have had all of these on one plate, by means of a dish known as the Big Stoater. Ordering this out loud was almost as bad as eating it: “Could I have the . . . um . . . Big . . . yup, that one . . . right . . . there.” The waitress compounded the embarrassment halfway through by coming over to ask: “And how is your Stoater, sir?” It’s like eating hot, greasy gravel after it’s been swilled in a vat of offal. Next question.
Mains was stovies. Normally stovies are thick and sticky and come in a bowl. These were thin and dribbly and came on a plate, incorporating a few unidentifiable chunks of Spam-like protein to bulk it out. And then, finally, it was time for the Buckfast cheesecake. This was much like most cheesecakes but with a thin layer of gelatinous purple topping. There wasn’t much to say. It was just cheesecake, though the very idea of it did leave a bad aftertaste.
The Parkville, 296 Glasgow Road, Blantyre, 01698 822861, dinner for two with wine £45
Article taken from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article6590443.ece
The Parkville Hotel floors were & supplied by McKay Flooring Ltd.
http://www.mckayflooring.co.uk
Skype: mckay.flooring
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