Heston’s spruiking for Coles is just a step too far
HESTON Blumenthal’s Coles products are made with a fair dollop of endorsement, preservatives and fillers.
YOU know, I wish Heston all the luck in the world. He’s such an agreeable bloke as far as I can tell, and those who really know him will tell you the same.
Intelligent, unpretentious, articulate, funny and, of course, gifted with a magnificently inquiring mind that has encouraged him to keep asking the question: “What if?”
I’m just not sure about the Coles thing. Supermarket spruiking seems right for Curtis Stone; he is essentially an American television celebrity chef nowadays. But for a guy with two restaurants in the World’s 50 Best List? For a guy who has written serious books? Made some of the best food television ever?
Now, to be fair, Heston is not spruiking for Coles; he is spruiking his range of food products, “HESTON for Coles,” which is almost, but not quite, the same thing. And if you think the Coles positioning bothers the food snob in me, you’re wrong: I shop at Coles most days. The better the range, the higher the quality, the happier I’ll be.
If Coles were to sell Ortiz anchovies, Ardoino olive oil, Forum vinegar and Bruny Island cheese, I’d be a happy bloke. And I know that for Heston to have 300 waiters and 300 cooks working at Dinner or Fat Duck every night, it means raising a bit of cash outside.
That’s fine too. At Heston’s level, it’s all a matrix: the restaurants support the books, which support the TV shows which brings in the commercial opportunities, which funds the boss being away from work all the time doing telly, which brings in the punters, and it ALL brings in money.
It’s just that Heston’s Coles products aren’t really that flash. To be honest. Perishable products all, they are made here to recipes that include a fair old dollop of personal endorsement marketing. And a few other essentials too, like preservatives and fillers.
You don’t have to take my word on this. I went down to a Coles store in Brisbane, grabbed a selection of HforC products, and hauled them round to Ryan Squires’ restaurant esquire so he and his head chef Ben Devlin could cook and taste. I trust these guys.
For the record, we tried Beef & Pepperberry Sausages, the modestly named My Remarkable Beef Burgers, Slow Cooked Asian Pork Roast with Lemon Myrtle, Heston’s equally modest My Remarkable Tomato Sauce and some buns from the Coles Bakery that — the sales assistant assured me — were the Heston Brioche Burger Buns but which had been repackaged as a generic Coles product on orders from above.
Go figure; they sure look the same.
“I wouldn’t put my name on that,” was Squires’ comment on the sauce. “It’s sweet and vinegary … But we all know everyone has different tastes.” The sauce was his “biggest disappointment” of the range. That promised “hint of a fiery kick” was so much just a hint that none of us could actually perceive it. Devlin added some good quality fish sauce and the improvement was instant.
We cooked the “remarkable” burgers over charcoal.
“Angus beef seasoned with Pink Lake Salt minced one way then cut against the strands for a juicy burger with big flavour,” says the label.
“Flavour is not bad,” say my notes. “Meat is pasty.” And it was. Whatever Heston’s theory on mincing beef, it’s lost in translation at the factory.
We cooked some sausages over charcoal, some in a pan.
“The texture is really springy,” said Squires. Really.
“Not bad, but the pepperberry doesn’t really come through,” said Devlin. “They’ve got that wrinkly English sausage look to their thick cases.”
No argument from the umpire. The buns, warmed, were fine.
Finally, we cooked — or at least heated — Slow Cooked Asian Pork Roast with Lemon Myrtle, a “dish that’s full of Eastern promise.” You roast a marinated, pre-cooked (sous vide) piece of meat, add the sauce, roast a bit longer, et voila.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” said Devlin, “but it’s not great, either.”
Squires pointed out that, because the piece of meat included several different muscles, some of it was juicy, some dry, and some in-between. Full of promise, we all agreed.
There’s another matter to deal with.
HESTON for Coles actually discourages people to cook for themselves with decent produce, the kind you know where it’s come from and what’s in your mouth, or sourcing something made by hand rather than a factory. That’s not a great thing.
Take Heston’s burgers. How flippin’ hard is it to buy good, freshly minced beef, season it and make burger patties? And at $4.25 a patty for Heston’s, the value ain’t remarkable either.
I suppose people who can cook have always made money out of people who can’t. But I sure hope that isn’t the whiff of golden-egg goose I’m smelling.