I do hope The Greasy Spoon is unpretentious. Know what I'm getting at? I'm always happy to recommend the bog-standard option- if I think it's up to scratch. Take tinned sweetcorn for example. Niblets. The stuff made by the Jolly Green Giant. A terrific product. Can you really tell the difference between corn, taken off the cob, and the tinned variety?
Heinz Tomato Ketchup is another winner. It's just got that certain something. Many tinned beans and pulses are excellent, too. As is Uncle Ben's Long Grain Rice. That rice with the starch removed. Brilliant for making a non-mushy kedgeree. And there was that infamous television programme when Rick Stein, during a blind-tasting, turned his nose up at various organic and corn-fed chickens and declared a plebby battery supermarket chicken the pick of the crop.
But garlic's a different matter. Let me tell you more. Mrs Aitch recently bought a plump head of garlic from a farmer's market and vineyard shop down in Hampshire. It came from the Isle of Wight. It may- or may not- have been organic. I can't remember. But what I can tell you is that this sun-kissed garlic head was larger in size, juicier and packed full of flavour. It was an utterly different beast from the pathetic, inspid, flavourless, ersatz garlic bulbs currently offered in your local British supermarket; in our case, Sainsbury's, Nine Elms- and even- dare I say it- Waitrose, Belgravia. Supermarket garlic, it ain't good.
