FOOD / Gastropod

NEXT WEEK, the Red Fort restaurant in Soho, London, plays host to a unique culinary event when the septuagenarian head chef to the former royal family of Bangladesh, Mohammed Samir Uddin, takes over the kitchen. Samir Uddin, son of Kamir Uddin, is heir to the secrets of the kitchens of the Nawabs' palace in Dhaka, renowned for the delicacy and sophistication of its cuisine, and he is perhaps the most accomplished cook in Bangladesh.

The overwhelming majority of 'Indian' restaurants in Britain are operated by Bangladeshis, yet authentic Bengali cuisine remains practically unknown in this country. Samir Uddin is accustomed to cooking celebratory feasts on improvised fires in the open air for literally thousands of guests attending lavish wedding parties. Quite how this will translate to the confines of a Western restaurant kitchen remains to be seen, but the gastronomic delicacies on offer sound irresistible.

Highlights include barbecued shuti kebab (made from beef tenderised with green papaya), kabuli (rice and peas with chicken), and there will be the opportunity to sample

an authentic biryani, which is really nothing like the curry-with-rice-

mixed-in that we are accustomed to, but a delicately spiced assemblage of meat and rice cooked by infusion in a sealed pot called a dumm, a technique becoming fashionable in the most sophisticated hotel restaurants in India.

Throughout the week, the Red Fort (071-437 2525) will offer a buffet lunch for pounds 15 and an evening dinner menu for pounds 20, but readers who book in advance, mentioning the Gastropod, will receive a discount of pounds 5 per head off either menu.

A SLOVENIAN lager, Lasko Goldenhorn, is to front-line beer-drinkers what Nicaraguan coffee was once to the provisional wing of the Caffeine Alliance. Slovenia was the first former Yugoslav republic to achieve independence, in June 1991, and amid all the misery in that region remains an oasis of comparative calm with a rich brewing tradition.

Lasko Goldenhorn is so called in honour of a mythical mountain goat (the Zlatarog) that brought peace and fertility to a country, renowned for the quality of its hops, on the sunny side of the Alps. A relatively malty brew, with an extremely soft, smooth palate and a dryish finish, it stands comparison with the famous Czech Budweiser Budvar, but at present is available only from the Beer Shop in London (071-739 3701), plus a handful of Nicholson's pubs around town.

ALONG WITH cheese lovers across the country, the Gastropod was saddened eight months ago when Dairy Crest decided to close Hawes Creamery, the last remaining manufacturer of Wensleydale to be located in the eponymous Yorkshire valley and, heretically, switched production to a plant across the border in Lancashire.

It was, therefore, with deep joy that this column received tidings of a management buyout that has resurrected the business as the Wensleydale Creamery. Even better, this wonderfully sharp, crumbly cheese is now available nationwide from the delicatessen counter at Safeway supermarkets for pounds 2.39 per lb. Accept nothing less.

AH, PARIS in the spring. Lovely. Enough even to diminish the Gastropod's fear of the gourmet - how would you feel if the national dish proposed sauteing you in butter and garlic? There recently, your sluggish sleuth slithered into the Blue Elephant for lunch. The Thai restaurant, which has affiliates in London, Brussels and Copenhagen, is the winner of the Prix de Marco Polo-Casanova, an award for the best non-French restaurant dans tout Paris. Maurice Casanova is the proprietor of Le Fouquet restaurant and, 16 years ago, began awarding a prize to 'the best restaurant in Paris'. Since 1986, the honour has been extended to the best establishment serving foreign food.

Parisians, with their characteristic lack of irony, seem to adore crossing the hump-backed bridge over the lily pond into the recreation of a Thai village, bedecked with lush jungle greenery and (fake) exotic blooms. Appetite undiminished by such extravagance, the Gastropod particularly enjoyed the unusual dishes from a vegetarian menu pioneered by the similarly kitsch Blue Elephant in Fulham. These included keaw wan pa sunant, a chewy green curry with aubergine that is thickened with the peculiar ingredient they call yod pheang, a nutritious flour apparently extracted from soya beans.