The Kitchen Is On Fire

This episode features Eddy Tejada and Matthew Scott from Hot 4 U creating a vast swathe of mouthsounds all about setting up their food delivery business in the midst of the pandemic. They talk learning on the job, friendly accountants, eight hundred potato bears and cooking from the hip. They also tell all about how they really need to start writing things down and buy a calendar.

Before they arrive the weather is hot, the TickyOff Boyz still can’t agree on the future of Pidgin and Sam has parked in a peculiar carpark. Differing vibes for the respective TickyOff Brides this week too as Rosie Ramsden tucks into a healthy week and Abbie Herlihy reveals that she has never ever eaten a chilli con carne.

All of the above plus, there’s also more than enough time for Barbara Cartland to jump an egg shaped shark, Sam wonders on exactly what the Catholic Church’s position is on sexual congress and they both create potentially the greatest (or most foul) method of omelette cookery you have ever heard.

This is TickyOff, and if it aint broke, then it aint TickyOff.

Check out Hot 4 U here: @hot4u_ldn

This episode is sponsored by wine churchgoers dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP248-MOUTH_COOKERY.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:32am EDT

This episode of TickyOff features a third appearance by Will Beckett of the mighty Hawksmoor empire. Said steak and great service empire has, like other lesser empires such as The TickyOff Boyz meagre cut-rate ‘empire’, been shut for ages because of the goddamn coronavirus nightmare. Now however, Will and his bird of prey themed meat house gang are working on how reopen safely into the new world of hospitality.

Will talks distancing, Hawksmoor At Home, masks, trying to stay optimistic, trust in operators and why his partner in Hawksmoor, Huw Gott, is very lovely and very persuasive.
He also tells all about Today’s Special, a charitable endeavour Huw is in the process of putting together to help charities with covid related shortfalls in funding.

So all the above sounds very serious, and it is. Gravitas, intelligent discourse, calm heads prevailing. We know this is not why you come to TickyOff however. Fear not! Before William shows, James is stuck on a hard shoulder for seven hours, has seen elderly folk kissing in the deli aisle and thinks all humankind is a cow in a field or something. Sam meanwhile wonders if body heat alone can cook an egg, in your bed.

This episode is sponsored by wine bird of prey dropwine.co.uk

Please visit the below to check out Todays Special:

Instagram: @_todays.special

Twitter: @specials_todays

Direct download: TKIOF-EP247-GREY_BUTTERFLIES.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:14am EDT

Listen up listeners. This episode of the greatest podcast about food that humankind has ever even dreamed of is here. The gratitude y’all must/should have coursing through yer veins means there may not be room enough within those veins for blood! Be careful. If you feel lightheaded, lay down. If you die, lay down too. I guess you will lay down naturally to be fair, if you die. Anyway, don’t blame us.

This episode features a second appearance by (possibly) Sam’s favourite person on earth (Apologetic shout out to his children, wife, family and James) deputy editor of Q Magazine Niall Doherty. Niall yaps up a goddarn storm on his legendary airport beers, spatchcocking chickens and how to approach tough subjects in interviews. There’s also a solid ten minutes of connection issues and bad sound which I left in because it made me laugh.
Niall also tells perhaps the greatest celebrity hangtime story you’ve ever heard which somehow manages to include Noel Gallagher, Joe Biden, Peroni beers and a magician in a perspex box.

Before Niall drops by Sam has had a huge surprise, an Alex Turner moment and no sausages. James has had a weird skin condition, has a theory about Blue predicting the pandemic and may have had a traybake.

All this plus Frank Sinatra, a Coldplay related hair transplant and a decent amount of borscht chat.

This is TickyOff and what doesn’t kill you might make you stronger, or might kill you in the end. It’s tough to tell.

This episode is sponsored by wine para para paradise dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP246-A_RUSH_OF_BLOOD_TO_THE_HEAD_OF_HAIR.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:12am EDT

‘Hello, is it me you’re looking for?” So asked brother of Guy, Lionel Richie, in his 1964 hit cover of Adele’s ‘lover as ghost’ spooky hit song ‘Hello’.
Now, Lionel R raises a more than interesting question here. It’s all a question of perception. Let’s start here:

1. Is the person you are looking for Lionel Richie?
2. Is the person you are looking for Margot Henderson?

This gets more than complicated at this stage in that we now must consider whether Lionel is asking this question of humankind itself or merely addressing the globe spanning vastness of the TickyOff listenership direct.

It’s tough to tell. I’ll leave you to ponder on that and wonder why Lionel might choose to impersonate Margot Henderson of Rochelle Canteen, Rochelle At The ICA, The French House back in the day, author of ‘You’re All Invited’ and all round legend of London hospitality.

Anyway, my train of thought has completely derailed and I'm very sorry for the stupid digression above. Margot Henderson is on the pod!

Margot tells all about life in lockdown at the Henderson’s, mould on the march on the Mall (that’s a weird line), her move from New Zealand to London and the perils of skinning eels. She also talks about her favourite cooking utensils, turnip cake disasters, sausages with artist Sarah Lucas and getting a certificate from Pizza Express.

Before Margot arrives James is wearing some sort of animal on his head and really digs Michael Bolton but might be less keen on US policy hawk John Bolton. Sam has just woken up from a nap, once made a veloute and has never seen ‘The English Patient’.

Who knows what in all hell any of the above means, I feel like I may have hit my head before writing this nonsense. Anyway, it’s TickyOff and if you don’t know what that means by now then you will never ever ever know me.*

*Shout out Simply Red. Real talk.


This episode is sponsored by wine stars dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP245-POTATO_TECHNOLOGY.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:55am EDT

Hello. This is TickyOff. This is episode two hundred and forty four, If it was a fruit, this episode would be a peach fruit. Peaches are a very rare fruit which I believe is grown in cans. Peaches are also covered in the fur of human people. This fur is not harmless. It is sweet and delicious. Anyway, that’s peaches, this is TickyOff, which is also sweet and delicious and covered in human fur, but is not a fruit. It’s a podcast. Wake up.

This episode features Katie and Rick Toogood, the restaurateurs behind the brilliant Prawn on The Lawn in London and also in Padstow. K and R get into buying a restaurant while drunk, having their first child a week before lockdown, fish being in fashion and going up against The Codfather himself, Rick Stein, on his home turf.

Before the Toogoods show, James talks for a long time about Adrian Chiles and picks his favourite end of the world scenario. Sam meanwhile bangs on about the theme song from ‘Terminator 2’ and has eaten a cake his daughter baked. All this plus another serious chat about their business. This time whether or not they should change the name of Pidgin.

This episode is sponsored by wine duckers and dancers dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP244-THE_CODFATHER.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:26am EDT

You weren’t expecting it. Neither were we. But here we are. Listening to a pretty sensible, serious, thoughtful episode of the generally wacky and dumb TickyOff.
This episode features two guests, The Goddamn TickyOff Boyz.
Said boyz of T’Off basically have a disagreement about the future of their business for forty odd minutes. James thinks Pidgin should be one thing. Sam thinks it should be a thing that is a different thing to the thing that James thinks it should be.
Neither of them think that Pidgin should be The Thing. Don’t be silly. Pidgin is a restaurant, not an alien creature in the ice looking to do some serious physical, and emotional, damage to Kurt Russell in a cool parka.

Anyway, this episode is for anyone looking to hear two people yap honestly about how their restaurant can hopefully survive, adapt, and possibly thrive in a hostile environment….the more I think about it actually, maybe Pidgin IS The Thing!

All this honest disagreement plus: David Foster Wallace, Thai sausages, the death obsessed people of Brittany, thousand year old apple trees and Sam looks like Aslan.

It creeps, it crawls, it strikes without warning! It’s TickyOff.

This episode is sponsored by the Goldie Hawn of wine delivery services dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP243-OPEN_TO_BEING_OPEN.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:08am EDT

This episode of TickyOff features chef, restaurateur, cookbook author and all round wonderful being of a human kind Ravinder Bhogal. Ravinder talks her initial breakthrough into the world of food, fighting for her restaurant site, supper clubs and pop ups and some dangerous geese in Kenya. She also gets into her celebration of immigrant foods, the mini economies that homesickness can create and some utterly life changing guava fruit.

Before Ravinder arrives Sam shares a recipe for Big Tray Chicken, has been singing about carrots in the supermarket and has seen a bottomless pond. James meanwhile is very garlicky, reveals the aphrodisiacs of the ancient Greeks and learns all about French synth wizard Jean Michel Jarre.

All of the above top drawer content plus Tom Hardy as a punchy Roman, Ross Kemp’s podcast and another sensual instalment from Barbara Cartland.

It’s TickyOff. And that’s all we have right now.

This episode is sponsored by the very straight roads and advanced plumbing pioneers of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP242-GLADIATOR_2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:17am EDT

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