Co-operative Group faces democratic litmus test | Letter from Steve Thompson, Co-op Group national members’ council

The Co-Operative Group’s head office in Manchester. ‘Whether one-member, one-vote gives members a stronger say will depend on management allowing genuine decisions to be voted on,’ writes Steve Thompson of the national members’ council. Photograph: Christopher Thomond

As a member of the Co-op’s national members’ council, I find it disheartening that the Co-operative Group’s reformed constitution could result in less democracy, not more (Report, 13 April). Whether one-member, one-vote gives members a stronger say will depend on management allowing genuine decisions to be voted on and members having the information they need to come to a properly considered decision.

The fact that the members’ council has taken a decisive position reflects the strength of feeling and concern at recent events.

The litmus test for our democracy is whether the chief executive, Richard Pennycook, and the new chair, Allan Leighton, take action in response to the council’s votes on what should happen with the AGM motions and on the board elections, including reinstating the full list of six candidates for the board.

A well cooked, juicy steak accompanied by some little mushrooms together with a few chips, a jacket potato or a green salad is the perfect meal. With traditional butchers shops disappearing from the high street to be replaced by a supermarket, the choice of cuts of beef and other meats has become increasingly restricted. Thankfully online butchers are filling in those gaps and they are even competing with the supermarkets over price. The following link will be of interest to all meat lovers Online Butchers

Council members voted for the reform package last year; this is a test of whether the management will honour those commitments, and if the members are genuinely able to hold the board to account.

Steve Thompson

Member, Co-operative Group national members’ council

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/13/co-operative-group-faces-democratic-litmus-test

Are your treats shrinking? Cadbury’s cuts number of Fingers in pack

Cadbury’s provoked outrage earlier this year when its multi-packs of six Creme Eggs were replaced with boxes of five.

Trend: boxes of Creme Eggs have also become smaller (PIC: ALAMY)

Although labelled as a Cadbury product, Fingers are made under license by a Saint Albans-based company, Burton’s Biscuit Company. Over a billion of the biscuits, which were launched in 1951, are consumed in the UK every year.

In a statement, Burton’s said that the new, smaller packs were rolled out last year “responding to consumer demand”, along with a larger, 171g “sharing pack”. The company said that the recommended price of the packs had been reduced from £1.99 to £1.79 – though it remains up to supermarkets if they adopt new pricing.

“We firmly believe that the variety of pack sizes for different occasions offer consumers the best value for money for a great quality product. Whilst we can’t comment on retailer pricing, our data shows that the price has significantly fallen since the introduction of the new sizes,” a spokesman said.

o Is this the best hot chocolate in the world?

In 2012, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) revealed that British chocolate bars had been reduced by around 10 per cent in just one year while prices remained the same, leading the ONS to warn that customers were facing inflation “by the back door”.

Although rising costs are commonly cited as the reason for such reductions, some confectionery companies also claim to be trying to fight obesity. Last year, chocolate giant Mars shrunk its Mars and Snickers bars as part of pledge to cut to cut the calorie content of its single-serve products to a maximum of 250 calories.

OTHER SHRINKING FOODS

Birds Eye Beef Burgers

This is one of the biggest reductions in the past few years: Birds Eye beef burgers were once 16 to a pack, now they now number 12. This 25 per cent shrink was accompanied by an increase in price from £3.98 to £4.29 in Asda, Morrisons and Tesco.

Twix

In 2012, Mars, Inc. (who make Twix) announced a 250 calorie cap on all single-serve confectionary by the end of 2013. The result is that many of their products have now been downsized to meet these requirements. Twix have been cut down from 58g to 50g, marking a 14 per cent reduction.

Snickers

Another of Mars, Inc’s products, Snickers bars were cut down by 17 per cent, from 58g to 48g. Prices remained the same at roughly 51p, until they were raised to roughly 60p (except for Asda, who sell them for 45p).

Mars bars

Mars, Inc.’s third largest prolific cut is of the Mars bar, which has gone from 58g to 51g, a reduction of 12 per cent. Of course, the prices of neither Twix nor Mars bars have been lowered.

Dairy Milk

When Mondel?z restyled Cadbury Dairy Milk, getting rid of the old, block-like design and making it curvy, they thereby reduced the weight of each bar from 49g to 45g. A comparatively paltry reduction at just eight per cent, but worth a mention for the “smoke and mirrors” technique.

Bassetts Liquorice Allsorts

Bags of these used to be 215g and cost £1.70 in Asda and £1.48 in Sainsbury’s and Morrisons. The new, abridged bag of allsorts now weighs 12 per cent less at 190g. Only Asda have reduced the price.

A juicy, well cooked steak accompanied by some button mushrooms together with a jacket potato, a few chips or a green salad is the food of the Gods!. With supermarkets replacing traditional butchers shops, our choice of cuts of beef and other meats has become increasingly restricted. Thankfully online butchers shop are filling in those gaps and the latest ones are competing with the supermarkets over price. The following link will be of interest to all meat lovers Rib of Beef

Walkers cheese onion crisps

Since being reduced by six per cent from 34.5g to 32.5g, bags of Walkers crisps from Sainsbury’s cost 55p each. That’s 6p more than they used to, prior to the reduction.

And it’s not just food that’s growing smaller, household goods are diminishing, too…

Dettol anti-bacterial wipes

Once upon a time, you could buy a pack of 40 anti-bac wipes for £2 in Asda and £1.80 in Ocado. Now you can get a pack of 36 wipes for £2 in both.

Finish dishwasher tablets

Ocado used to sell packs of 28 dishwasher tablets for £7.65. Now they sell packs of 26 for £10.

Pledge furniture polish

Previously £1.30 was the lowest price for 300ml of multi-surface polish offered by a major retailer. Now, the same amount will get you 250ml.

http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568344/s/45570424/sc/26/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cfoodanddrink0Cfoodanddrinknews0C115320A190CCadburys0Edrops0Etwo0Echocolate0EFingers0Efrom0Epacks0Bhtml/story01.htm

Bubba Gump Shrimp Co: restaurant review | Jay Rayner

Hook, line and sinker: Bubba Gump Shrimp Co’s huge, bright interior. Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Observer

A well cooked, juicy steak complete with some button mushrooms together with a jacket potato, a few chips or a green salad is the food of the Gods!. With supermarkets replacing traditional butchers shops, the choice of cuts of beef and other meats is severely restricted. Thankfully online butchers shop are filling in those gaps and they are even competing with the supermarkets over price. The following link will bring good news to all steak lovers Buy Roasting Beef Online

13 Coventry Street, London W1 (020 3763 5288). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £90

At the top of the stairs up to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co by London’s Piccadilly is a sign. It reads: “Stupid is as stupid does”. Perhaps I should embrace this as a gift from the god of restaurant critics: here, my child, take this slogan that they have nailed to the wall for you and riff on it. Tempting though it is, I think dismissing an operation like this as stupid – even if stupid is part of its skill set – would be a waste of everybody’s time. Why bother going if it was simply to confirm a few prejudices?

If you read this column you probably care a little too much about your lunch. People like us endlessly compare notes on this Peruvian-Italian fusion opening or that artisanal salt-rubbed duck leg café. We also know there are places we would never visit. Meanwhile hordes of people are coming to London and spending their money in places like Bubba Gump. This intrigues me. I put them in the same category as SM torture gardens: while generally I might not wish to participate, I would like to know what goes on in there.

And so I ascend the stairs from the ground-level gift shop and, as instructed, follow the smiley faces on the floor to the reception desk. Lunch at Bubba Gump is like attending a rave in 1987, only without the music, the drugs or the fun. For those who are not aware, the restaurant is a spin-off from the ultra-conservative, thoroughly emetic 1995 Tom Hanks movie Forrest Gump, in which the eponymous character makes his fortune by forming an Alabama-based shrimp company with a chap called Bubba. There are now more than 40, with the majority in the US. None are in Alabama. Be aware: the waiters will force you to take a quiz on Forrest Gump trivia.

The concept of movie-based restaurants is, I think, a fertile one that has been under- exploited. Why, for example, has nobody opened A Last Tango in Paris Café, with a fine line in buttered crumpets? Where is the Apocalypse Now Diner with its take on steak tartare? Instead, we have Gump. The site is vast. I went looking for the loo and found a primitive tribe yet to make contact with civilisation. I also got lost. After a while one raw-wood booth with its faux lean-to roof looks much like another. Everything is slapped with quotes from the movie, like half-remembered song lyrics.

Fruit of the loom: the pear and berry salad with ‘indeterminate white chicken protein’ at Bubba Gump. Photograph: Sophia Evans/Observer

The menu is long and picture led. It comes on wipe-down laminated sheets. And this, I think, is part of the appeal. It offers a sense of heat-set reliability. For most, eating out is an uncertain business, and not unreasonably so. Those of us who make a habit of it are used to having our expectations unmet; to spending money on the gristle-strewn and depressing, and chalking it up to experience. It’s a bizarre way to behave.

Others don’t wish to do so. Bubba Gump is part of a large, successful commercial concern. It could only be so if it made money out of lots of people going there. And if lots of people go there it must have something to offer. And it does. But let’s deal with the horrors first. There’s the blood-orange margarita, shaken at the table in what looks like the central piece of a game of KerPlunk. It tastes of children’s fruit sweets and tooth decay. This, apparently, is the “fun size”. I assume the “depressive” size would come in a cast-iron bucket.

We order a pear and berry salad, which is made with pecans, raspberries, strawberries and indeterminate white chicken protein. It is dressed with a close cousin to the blood-orange margarita. Rejecting a salad because it tastes of children’s confectionary is a new one on me. There is another problem. It is made with oak leaf lettuce, by turns brown and rust coloured. It makes the plate look like it has already started composting.

‘The paper cones contain breaded shrimp, fried battered fish, and “hush pups” – deep-fried tumours of fish with sweetcorn’: Jay on Forrest’s Seafood Feast. Photograph: Sophia Evans/Observer

In an attempt to show willing, we order Forrest’s Seafood Feast, which is “No 1 Guests Favorite”. Yes, of course it’s spelt like that. The item pictured is a red metal contraption holding four paper cones. One has breaded shrimp, the next fried battered fish, and the third “hush pups” which are deep-fried tumours of fish with sweetcorn. Our waiter is moved (or trained) to tell us that the cones aren’t full of these items. They are laid on top of chips. Lots of chips.

I admire the honesty. Like everything else here it isn’t cheap. At £15.50 is it too much to hope the chips will be cooked? There is half a field of flaccid potato on the table. The deep-fried items taste of all hope lost. Next to them are dipping sauces made with so much emulsifier your own bodily fluids start to bind with the dish. We have a dessert sampler of various sugared carbohydrates alongside cream from a can. I expect a “cease and desist” letter from my pancreas any day soon.

But that is not the whole story. For we also order a bucket of their skin-on prawns – the Shrimper’s Net Catch – with Cajun spice. And they’re seriously bloody brilliant. They are cooked sensitively, have real bite and the seasoning is bang on. If some street-food truck set up offering buckets of these poured out on to newspaper, bearded hipsters would travel from all over for the pleasure of getting their fingers sauce- and prawn-slicked. They would be Instagrammed to within an inch of their lives. I am minded to dismiss this outbreak of good cooking as an aberration, but it’s not. We order the Jambalaya and, again, it is full of perfectly cooked fat prawns, which gives real heft to the mix of sticky rice and spiced sausage.

The Shrimper’s Net Catch at Bubba Gump. Photograph: Sophia Evans/Observer

And there’s something else. The staff are terrific. I travel a lot. I have been subjected to service from sweet human beings who have been beaten into the ground by humanity-sapping training manuals. Even if the waiters here have been forced to drink the corporate Kool-Aid, it doesn’t show. They are sharp, funny, engaged and on it. Yes, the premise behind Bubba Gump is excruciating. Yes, a lot of the food should be classed as cruel and unusual punishment. The prices are high. But there’s a reason people come here. They want to feel safe and they want to be looked after. I might wrinkle my nose in oh-so-sophisticated disdain, but for some, that’s what matters.

Jay’s news bites

? A critical piece about a corporate restaurant chain demands a positive recommendation of a corporate restaurant chain, so here goes: Pizza Express still does the thing. The fact that it gets bitched about is a mark of how successfully it is stitched into middle-class culture. It’s a reliable product, at a reasonable price, which allows parents of small kids to feel like adults while eating out as a family. My choice: an American hot (pizzaexpress.com).

? Gin is still in. Stovell’s in Chobham, Surrey (reviewed here in 2012), has launched its own brand, Stovell’s Wildcrafted Gin, made with local wild botanicals. If it’s as good as their unprissy food it will be worth trying (stovells.com).

? So farewell then, Food For Thought, the homely vegetarian restaurant which has been on Neal Street in London’s Covent Garden since the 1970s. As they themselves put it: “For more than 40 years Food For Thought has withstood the corporate march, refusing to be processed, packaged or pocketed.” Sadly, it seems they are unable to withstand rising rents. It will close on 21 June.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1

Follow the Observer Magazine on Twitter @ObsMagazine

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/05/restaurant-review-bubba-gump-shrimp-co-jay-rayner