The Wheatsheaf Inn, Northleach

The Wheatsheaf Inn
West End
Northleach
Gloucestershire
GL54 3EZ
+44 (0) 1451 860 244
cotswoldswheatsheaf.com

by Peter Pain Perdu

Here is what I like: being in the country, feeling decadent, falling asleep in front of a fire and waking up with a velvety doggie muzzle against my palm. Here is what I love: all the aforementioned things but with breakfast. And this is why I love weekends at The Wheatsheaf.

The spread includes seasonal fruit — which in December was pears, clementines, and stewed berries, local honey, and yoghurt and cheese from Neal’s Yard. There were also pastries, or if you wanted something healthier, delicious bread so full of seeds any German doctor would approve. All this was mere window dressing though when compared with the majestic ham glistening at the end of the buffet. Last spring, a leg of jamon serrano flirted with all who gazed upon it. This time it was a marmalade-glazed ham perfectly seasoned with cloves.

Though I'm usually very abstemious, even on holiday, there's something about the Wheatsheaf that makes me thirsty. Perhaps it's the cozy open fires. Anyway, as I sat hungover, sipping my coffee, and looking over the menu, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop. “I don’t remember the table being quite so wobbly last night.” “That’s because we were absolutely trollied.” At least I wasn't the only one.  Luckily for all of us feeling rough as badgers, there was an apothecary jar full of remedies as well as a selection of various hairs of various dogs. Full bottles of prosecco and orange juice, pitchers of Bloody Mary mix and vodka. Did I mention you could just help yourself? You could and the full bottles didn’t stop at the booze. There were full bottles of ketchup, hot sauce, and HP on every table just like at a greasy spoon. This is so much better than the many restaurants that dole out pokey portions of condiments as if patrons are greedy children not to be  trusted.

As an American, I felt it my duty to order pancakes and bacon. The smoked streaky was nice and crisp and perfectly salted. The pancakes were light and fluffy. They were also very eggy. So eggy, their outsides had a delicate crust like the golden exterior of an omelette.

On day two, I ordered the French toast which was fantastic. The multigrain bread they used had been expertly dipped into a very cinnamony egg mixture, though only on one side. Whether this was intentional or not, I am not sure but it gave my French toast the effect of having a sweet shaggy beard.

I cajoled my companion, Blake Pudding, into ordering the full English. His sausage tasted as if it had been cooked hours ago and sin of all sins—the whites on his fried eggs were under done. As I was reading Edouard de Pomiane, I had to agree.  “Eggs sur le plat need the greatest care, since the white must be completely cooked and the yolk should be hot, while remaining fluid.” This full English left him wishing he'd just ordered the same perfectly poached eggs with ham he'd enjoyed the previous morning.

The dining room itself is a thing to behold. My favorite paintings are a set of four patrician gentlemen, all of whom resemble the monocled Monopoly man.  The juxtaposition of these Jeeves & Wooster extras with German pop artist Sebastian Kruger’s portrait of Kate Moss keep the room from feeling too serious. The décor is one part P.G. Wodehouse, one part rock and roll, and the result is that everyone is comfortable here. Long-legged Sloaney ponies in red trousers talking about summer in Fulham in daddy’s new Jag, San Franciscans in Gore-Tex discussing why Democrats need more young female senators whilst waiting with champagne packed picnics for a guide to lead them on the Cotswold’s Walk, Guardian readers, Telegraph readers, Grazia and Cotswold Life readers, people who don't enjoy reading at all, and last but not least, the long-suffering locals with obedient dogs who love the pub so much they’ll never stop coming.  Thank god, as nothing quiets the roar of the butterfly quite so much as stroking the ears of a silky spaniel.

Breakfasts of Mauritius: Sunset Cafe, Chez Ally, Black River Coffee

Sunset Cafe
Sunset Boulevard
Royal Road

Grand Baie

Mauritius

(+230) 263 9602

sunset-cafe-grand-baie.restaurant.mu

Chez Ally

Jardin de la Compagnie

Port Louis

Mauritius

Black River Coffee

Jules Koenig St

Nelson Mandela Square

Port Louis

Mauritius

(+230) 213 6846

blkrvrcoffee.co

by T. N. Toost

You’ve travelled for twelve hours from London, overnight, to Mauritius, three time zones away, spending £1,000 or so, only to get in a taxi and pay £30 to be driven for an hour to the opposite side of the island from the airport. You’re staying in a walled-in resort with beaches that are inaccessible to the locals, with a herd of other tourists who act as if they are allergic to the sun, and to physical activity, and to doing anything other than drinking Phoenix lager and eating fish and chips while yelling at their overweight children about not going too far into water for fear that they will be pulled under by a rip current and taken miles out and drown, ignoring the fact that their own native diet has rendered them each so plump and buoyant that the entire 1943 German Fleet would struggle to sink them. You watch them, braying and throwing litter past their distended stomachs onto the otherwise pristine white sand, complaining about how things in this damn country just don’t work, and you feel bad about judging them because to the locals you must appear so similar, but you want to distance yourself as much as possible from them whilst still maintaining somewhat cordial relations, since, you are constantly reminded, they are members of your extended family, and you have two weeks left of their shit.  

You, however, are more adventurous. And you’re hungry for breakfast. You could do worse than go to the Sunset Cafe in Grand Baie, where you can get an English breakfast – not full, but close – with fresh eggs, bacon, sausage, a tomato and toast, for about £8. An espresso – or four, as I had – costs an extra £6, but you don’t have to tip in Mauritius, and you can eat the whole thing while looking over that grand, grand bay, with its teal water and clean, bobbing boats, and then you can walk around the corner to charter a catamaran to bring you to some other, smaller island.

Or.

You could take a Triolet express bus to Port Louis for about 80p, which will take 45 minutes. If you sat behind the driver, you would smell years of accumulated oil and grease coming out of the seat, and your body would vibrate with the ancient Chinese engine, making you wonder why the girls all sit in the back. The driver would swerve around moving cars, speed up, slow down, stop dramatically, almost hit bikers and pedestrians and brick walls, then finally deposit you in the back of the Port Louis bus center next to an intricately decorated Hindu temple that wouldn't be out of place in the subcontinent. You might then walk up and down narrow one-way streets past vendors selling CDs and handkerchiefs and name brand shirts, across the central mall, around and through old colonial buildings, and find yourself opposite the Natural History Museum under ancient banyan trees, their aerial roots dripping like candle wax. You might walk through the park and into the dark marketplace, through clothes hanging like curtains from the ceiling, to the far side of the building, where you would find Chez Ally. Two women would be cooking in the back, and two or three men would be standing in the front, taking orders, spooning together dhal puris, making change and small talk and handing over food. For 60p you’d get two dhals and two samosas; if you’re still hungry, you can get back in the queue that is constantly being replenished with hungry Mauritians.  

Freshly fooded, you might then walk to the Port Louis Theater – it’s only five minutes away, behind the government buildings. It has been shuttered for years, but if you’re lucky, the caretaker would see you and invite you to take a tour. Founded in 1822, it’s an old, beat up colonial building; standing on the stage, you might imagine an audience of powdered concubines and their officers, who received their first commissions from Napoleon himself. The piano on the stage would still be in tune, even if the seats are no longer bolted to the ground. Exit the theater and, to your left, you’ll see a small chalkboard proclaiming prices for Black River Coffee. You could enter and see an impossibly beautiful woman working on an Apple MacBook Air, occasionally going outside to smoke, drinking coffee, greeting customers, and talking in low tones to the men preparing fish behind the counter.  Imagine ordering an espresso; the beans are all from South Africa, imported especially by her. I know, I know, in Mauritius they grow and drink tea. However, this is the first cafe on the island promoting what she calls “coffee culture,” which she might mention briefly. Ask her about it, because you don’t know what else to talk to her about, and she’s so beautiful and speaks with such a lilted accent and smouldering passion that you don’t want her to stop. Leave, for an appointment with your tailor, Mahmoud Affejee, feeling as if you made an impression, as if she’ll remember you later. 

Go to Mahmoud and get fitted. Pick the fabric, tell them what you want, and negotiate the price, because everything is negotiable on this island. Set up a time for the second fitting, when they mark you up with chalk and you’ll feel like you’re in a Dunhill advertisement, except in a tropical, windowless storefront instead of some London parlor.  

Walk up the street and get tea and sweets. The locals would notice you trying to decide what you want and will help you choose, which makes you feel strangely rushed, as if you’re not supposed to feel like that on the island. Then, buy an individual cigarette from the man behind the counter, and smoke them inside, feeling rebellious. Step back out and buy some straw bags on the street, or clothes, or fabric; buy cowbone rings, pineapples, another samosa, or fresh-mixed fizzy drinks. Then try to find your bus home – the pickup point changes hourly, it seems – and ride back the same way you came. Enter the private beach compound once more, and realize that if you tell everyone where you have been and what you have seen, they will all bleat inanities about your sanity and ask if you were mugged, or raped, or murdered, because you can’t trust these people, they’re not like you, it’s just not civilized, and for the rest of your trip you should stay behind your stone walls and pretend you’re better than everyone else.

Five Yoghurt Trends For 2015

by Joyce Carol Oats

‘I sell yoghurt containers,’ he said.

‘I LOVE YOGHURT,’ I cried.

The man looked surprised, perhaps a little hopeful. A few days past the dawn of 2015 and fate had placed us next to each other in an early-morning British Airways transfer queue at Heathrow Airport. What do you do? he’d asked me, and I’d told him, and he didn’t know what that was. But then when I asked him out of politeness what he did, and he told me, I was full of gladness, for yoghurt is my very favorite food.

For breakfast, of course, but given the opportunity, I eat it at every single meal. Provided, that is, that the yoghurt has not been made by Americans, in which case it all too often has its fat replaced by -- just thinking of them makes me want to gag -- thickeners.

‘I hate American yoghurt!’ I said to my new friend, ‘It contains... thickeners.’

‘Yes’, said the man, with the gravitas of a man who’s in yoghurt.

‘How do you get into yoghurt?’ I said, ‘Were you just really interested in dairy culture?’

‘Gotta make a living,’ said the man, and then he proceeded to deliver five key insights about 2015 In Yoghurt:

1. The Greek yoghurt market is saturated. As if with spilt milk. Fuck you, Chobani.
2. Yoghurt containers are going to change. There are going to be some new kinds of yoghurt containers, said the man. Will this make it more difficult for us to recognise yoghurt?
3. Indian-flavored yoghurts are also on the horizon. ‘You know,’ said the man, ‘Like, curry.’ But will it contain thickeners?
4. A new kind of Australian yoghurt will soon enter the market. ‘It’s by the guys who make soy milk,’ said the man. I love those guys!
5. Savory yoghurt is going to be a thing. ‘I think they extract the sugar from, like, carrots and broccoli,’ said the man. ‘Actually, the beet flavor is good.’ Look out for the beet flavor.

We got to the front of the line and I let the yoghurt container salesman go ahead of me: because of my gratitude for these yoghurt insights, and because he was also about to miss his flight. I waved him a jaunty farewell as I, too, approached the counter.

‘I need to pick up my boarding pass,’ I said to the counter attendant, ‘for BA 1506.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘That’s a codeshare with American, so you’ll have to pick it up over there. You were in the wrong line.’

‘Or perhaps,’ I said, with an enigmatic smile, ‘perhaps I was in exactly the right one.’