In the late 1980s, a new "delicatessen" opened near our house in Sheffield. Its name, though, was misleading. From its ceiling dangled no brightly coloured boxed panettones; on its counters there oozed no unpasteurised foreign cheeses. Its mainstays were bread cakes filled with roast pork and apple sauce (in Sheffield, we call rolls "bread cakes"), and freshly sliced corned beef and tongue. A particular favourite of ours was something known as crab salad, to be taken home in a little polystyrene pot. A combination of egg mayonnaise and crab stick, it was good in sandwiches. Some days you felt like corned beef, and some days you felt like crab salad, and that was how we rolled in the long summer holidays.
I suddenly remembered this crab salad as I read the story of Steve Allen, who ordered crab bruschetta in the Swansea branch of the "New York Italian" restaurant chain Frankie & Benny's only to find that it had been made partly with crab stick, AKA surimi, which as you doubtless know is an emulsion made from the pulverised meat of cheap white fish bound together with additives and salt to give it the pinkish appearance and taste of real crab. Allen was distinctly unimpressed, particularly when his waiter assured him the dish was 100% crab. So he complained to Frankie & Benny's owner, The Restaurant Group (turnover last year: £580m), and duly received a letter admitting the dish did indeed contain crab stick. He then wrote back, suggesting that failing to mention this was an offence under food regulations. The Restaurant Group, however, stood firm, insisting it had "taken advice" on this. Only when Swansea council trading standards and the press became involved did the chain finally withdraw the "crab bruschetta" from its menus.
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