Reminiscences of former "culture"

[gradus]

Anyone for Hirondelle?

[Frances_iom]

I don't think it will improve with age …

neither does the brain of even moderate drinkers it seems - http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 - maybe a 'wiser' approach would be to use the wine to give a few slugs a happier death than they deserve.

[Serial_Apologist]

I was given a bottle of Blue Nun some 20 years ago as a corporate Christmas pressie. I still have it! Any offers/suggestions or shall I leave it to the offspring to fight over Should it ever be opened, I will send tasting notes to the Forum wines committee.

German wines often turn effervescent if left unopened, so I'm surprised that that one hasn't exploded long ago!

[Lat-Literal]

I can remember Black Tower during the 1970s.

It may or may not have been a Liebfraumilch.

[Richard Tarleton]

Mateus Rose - in fact rather Pink Paraffin than Mateus Rose!)

Mateus Rose bottles made good lamps, with those fittings that you stuck in the top, and home-made lampshades. And not forgetting straw-covered chianti bottles, as found in the Spaghetti House chain in the 1960s hung in bunches on the walls and on tables with candles stuck in them with wax running down the sides....

I had my first pizza around 1965 - in what must have been one of the first pizza houses, on the Fulham Road, where I was taken by my cosmopolitan great aunt who introduced me to many of the finer things in life.....

[Stanfordian]

The Berni Inn chain with prawn cocktail starters, chicken in the basket main course and Black Forest gâteau for dessert.

[cloughie]

The Berni Inn chain with prawn cocktail starters, chicken in the basket main course and Black Forest gâteau for dessert.

...and the schooners of sherry!

[vinteuil]

The Berni Inn chain with prawn cocktail starters, chicken in the basket main course and Black Forest gâteau for dessert.

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...and the schooners of sherry!

... both very much featured in the programme referred to in the Opening Post :

I love some of the BBC Four programmes about bygone times. Tonight there's this - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b053pzmd ...

[ ... the background story of the Berni brothers (and others in the Italian catering trade) in the Welsh Valleys was something I knew nothing about, and was really interesting. ]



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[Serial_Apologist]

I had my first pizza around 1965 - in what must have been one of the first pizza houses, on the Fulham Road, where I was taken by my cosmopolitan great aunt who introduced me to many of the finer things in life.....

I can trump that, having experienced my first-ever pizza in a back street restaurant in Marseille while on a school exchange in 1961. The place, which was tiny and entered by separating ones way through multiple strings of Chianti bottles framing the entrance, hosted two furnaces visible behind the bar at the far end in which the pizzas were baked to order, the doors being flung open every few minutes to reveal the burning fiery beyond, into and from which said pizzas were scooped on a long-handled purpose-built flat shovel. I was not to have another as good until I was working in the kitchens of a large hotel in the early 1970s, when one of the assistant chefs, a middle-aged Italian woman we all called "Mama", said she was going to make us all a treat - which indeed it turned out to be: my first (and, let's face it, last) genuine article since that never-to-be-forgot schooltime holiday.

[Serial_Apologist]

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... both very much featured in the programme referred to in the Opening Post :





[ ... the background story of the Berni brothers (and others in the Italian catering trade) in the Welsh Valleys was something I knew nothing about, and was really interesting. ]



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Bristol was the citadel of the Berni Inn chain back in the early 1970s, with the historic 17th century Llandogger Trow at the helm. Saturday nights were the worst, being treated like items on a production chain, ordered off the table into the crowded bar for the coffee to make way. Berni had a house across the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Lea Woods, with a large garden where I did a bit of gardening for much-needed dosh once when briefly unemployed. The missus had the butler bring us chilled lager! Ah yes, I remember it well...

[vinteuil]

Bristol was the citadel of the Berni Inn chain back in the early 1970s, with the historic 17th century Llandogger Trow ...

... ah, the Llandoger Trow! Yes, I too haunted it once or twice, in the late 60s - during school trips to the Bristol Old Vic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llandoger_Trow

Perhaps Fr: Fr: might report on its current status?



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[Serial_Apologist]

... ah, the Llandoger Trow! Yes, I too haunted it once or twice, in the late 60s - during school trips to the Bristol Old Vic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llandoger_Trow

Perhaps Fr: Fr: might report on its current status?



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Apologies for my mis-spelling of the establishment's name - and thanks, vints.

[jean]

Bristol was the citadel of the Berni Inn chain back in the early 1970s...

We were told (those of us who sang at its consecration as I may just have mentioned before) that it was Berni Inns money that built Clifton Cathedral.

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[Serial_Apologist]

We were told (those of us who sang at its consecreation as I may just have mentioned before) that it was Berni Inns money that built Clifton Cathedral.

Yes that's right as I recall, jean! Fancy - you were singing there at the consecration; I was living just around the corner in Clifton Wood Road at the time! I did go to there once for an organ concert, at which Messiaen's 'L'Ascension' and 'Messe de la Pentecote', my favourite organ work, were performed. Can't now recall the organist.

[french frank]

.Perhaps Fr: Fr: might report on its current status?.

It's not a Berni Inn! Not sure what they brand it at as now. Ah, it appears to be a 'Brewers Fayre' Whitbread pub, frequented by the local gasheads (B. Rovers fans for the uninitiated). Ye olde Spyglass Inn, arr, Jim lad.


Here it is, on the left (Theatre Royal further along on the right). Red building on the right is the old Duke, which I'm sure Serial visited.Google would not let me pursue it further from this direction.