Antennae Garnish

THE MARKETEERS of South African wine brand Stormhoek have obviously been sampling the product to excess during the latest advertising campaign. Pictured: huge club-like Chupa Chup (singular of Chups) designed to showcase just how fun and 'off-the-wall' the wine is. Needless to say it was stolen by day two of the Tesco wine fair. Probably by the poor girls who had to keep trying to justify what it meant. It promoted underage drinking anyway. Whilst I quite like S's blog, their hyperactive marketing is really beginning to get on my nerves, as are Mondavi's latest thickheaded posters (their hippie-hating nature is beautifully discussed by Jamie Goode).

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I am drawn, moth to the candle to 'delicacies' in restaurants. Last year I nearly projectile vomited after consuming duck tongues at Laureate [PREVIOUS POST] which hissed me off. Anyway, the other evening I selected starter of Nigerian Snail and main course of Tripe. The snail was split into three segments, like a baked fig. Being about the size of a human hand, I wanted to bail-out of its leathery, dried-snake, consistency consumption, but didn't for fear of losing face and offending the lady proprietor/chef/waitress at the Jolly J., Lee High Road. And so the slippery, earthy, wanton gastropod ended up spending the night in my digestive tract despite my dining companion pointing to antennae garnish. Similarly, honeycomb tripe qualified as "towelly" was scooped up, mingled with rice and encouraged to stay put with a litre of 7.6P/C African Guinness...