"wales" news and stories

Curry and naan. Photo: jumbledpile, Flickr

This is a case of the ultimate guilty conscience -- or stomach.

Flash back to 1996, as a customer walks out of the Seaview Palace Tandoori in Swansea, a coastal city in Wales, without paying for his £10 late-night curry meal -- about a $17 bill, for those stateside.

Now, nearly 13 years later, the Daily Telegraph reports the customer is finally footing the unpaid tab plus some.

The police received an anonymous apology in March from the dine-and-dash customer, along with £60 (approximately $100) cash to be passed on to the Seaview Palace Tandoori restaurant owner.

It seems the customer finally wanted to settle his debt, with extra money added to take inflation into account.

Little did the customer know, the restaurant had since been torn down. The police spent the last five months tracking down former Seaview Palace Tandoori owner, 48-year-old Samsul Bari.

This is probably going to start a trend: hospitals in Wales have banned vending machines that sell soda and candy.

They are going to phase out the vending machines over the next six months. But one hospital, University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, will still have junk food vending machines in 2010. Not sure why they get special treatment, but if you're visiting someone in a Wales hospital and have a craving for Cadbury chocolate, you'll have to go there.

The junk food machines are going to be replaced with machines that have healthier food options, such as fruit juice. Though I hope they're looking at the sugar content of some of those so-called "healthy" fruit juices.

Just in time for lunch comes this news story from the UK.

Skelfayre has been fined 16,900 pounds after an investigation discovered that one of their warehouses was infested with rats and maggots, and that rats had gnawed at some of the food and urinated and defecated on some of it as well. In July of last year the food was recalled and destroyed. The food was headed to care homes, which I'm going to assume is what they call nursing facilities in the UK(?).

Oh, there were bird droppings around the food too. Let's get on to better food news, shall we?

How far would you travel to have your favorite meal? Or rather, how far would you have it sent? Rap star Kanye West, along with 7 other diners, will be enjoying a feast of Indian food this Wednesday from the restaurant British Raj's, located in Wales, though he will be dining in New York City. The bill for this meal is to exceed $3900.

Even with shipping costs, why is it so much? The actual cost of the food, eaten in the restaurant, would run at about $17.50 per person. However the restaurant's Executive Chef will be accompanying the meal to New York, ensuring quality control, customs clearance, and proper service. The $3900 price tag actually reflects the loss the restaurant will experience during the two evenings the chef will be away. His travel and accommodation costs are extra.

Apparently the dinner will include "onion bhajees, chapati breads, biryanis, pappadums, a specially prepared fish dish and vegetables on the side." Kanye isn't the first to receive this kind of service though. The music promotion company that arranged this dining experience previously ordered food to an after-show party for Snoop Dogg from the same Wales restaurant.

Source

Like the Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919, the story of a Swiss freighter that almost exploded with cooked tapioca is safely behind us but still bears mentioning. In August 1972, the cargo of the Cassarate included timber and tapioca. The former caught fire and the hot water and steam created while dousing the blaze caused the 1,500 tons of Thai tapioca below deck to swell in the oven-like conditions. The Cassarate made an emergency stop in Wales, where the fires were finally extinguished. The hundreds of thousands of portions of tapioca, bound for Holland, never did wind up bursting the ship's hull. A recently updated Snopes page has excerpts from local newspapers that covered the incident.