A hookbone rising from my food, and all things either good or ungood

[venta]

At least once a week, I trundle straight from work onto a train and head off to a dance practice. Being the sort of person who likes meals at nice regular intervals, I pick something up in the station as I pass through. A few years ago, that basically meant Burger King or Upper Crust. These days there are the heady alternatives of M&S Food and Subway. My default choice for some time has been Subway, because it's hot (ie more like a meal, in my book), made from something at least resembling real food, and inexpensive.

For ages, I've been wondering why stations never sell proper, reasonably healthy, takeaway meals - a bowl of rice and curry, a bowl of pasta, a plate of noodles... sometimes you can get soup, but the UK's highstreets are mostly very low on decent street-food options.

I noticed recently a new kiosk was arriving in Reading. I was inclined to dislike it, because a number of bike-racks were demolished to make space for it. Reading does have a lot of bike-racks, but it also has a lot of bikes and space is a bit short. However, stomach overcame principles...

Stewed![*] has a pretty simple plan: make one-pot, stewy sort of meals, sell 'em in tubs to commuters. Yesterday, I paid £3.95 for a reasonable-sized tub of beef goulash and mashed potato, garnished with a spoonful of fresh veg, and jolly nice it was too.

Probably not nice in the sense that if I'd had it in a restaurant it wasn't rave-worthy, and I might not be bothering to tell you. But if considering it on the same level as Subway and Burger King, it's a damn fine option and very good value. (They also do monster-sized pots at £5.95)

Yesterday I had the choice of beef goulash, a chorizo-and-chickpea thing, a Mexican 3-bean chilli (which was vegetarian) and I think at least one other thing (also vegetarian). I also had the choice of mashed spud, couscous or rice as a side-dish. My fresh veg was grated carrot, diced raw pepper, peas and soy beans (no choice to made there, other than do you want it or not). And I think my mash was made from real potatoes, not nasty regurgitated reconstituted stuff. And their website even suggests that all their food is gluten-free.

I'm most impressed. Finally: inexpensive, tasty, reasonably healthy-seeming food which is suitable for a good range of people. (I mean, I'm sure there will be people with dietary problems that aren't catered for, but offering vegetarian and gluten-free choices sounds like a start.) Now I just need everyone to start eating there to encourage them to keep going :) So, er, off you go.

[*] That website seems to deal only with their supermarket ranges - it looks like Reading is their first foray into station kiosk-land.

Comments

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Innocent pots sprang to my mind, too

If I won the EuroMillions (and a big jackpot at that) or otherwise had some other method giving me several million pounds which I had to distribute through an X-Prize style contest to try to benefit public life, it would be to try to incentivise fast food restaurants to serve a wide variety of fast food that was 5-a-day compliant, had sugar / fat / etc. contents that people would not criticise in the same way as they would for most fast food, sold at a price point that is attractive in practice and for the restaurants to treat their employees as well as you might hope. stewed! sounds like a good start. Subway, as per the original post, fits the bill moderately well also.

Failing that, McDonalds' salads (if you know what you're doing and can avoid the cheese, gloopy sauce, bacon, fried battered chicken etc.) fit the bill better than you might think, though their staff sometimes need educating that they exist. The salads at the US chain in the icon even more so, especially the part about needing to eliminate the baddies.

[venta.livejournal.com]

The main trouble I have with salads in general (I don't know about McD's salads, as I've never met one) is that they tend to be made out of (a) lardy things and (b) lettuce. And I like lettuce and all, but it does not a meal make.

M&S do now have a decent range of salads which are made of foody things which are not entirely lardy, but the likes of Tesco and so on still seem to believe that if you cover anything with sufficient mayonnaise it'll be a good meal choice.