Hello again, friends – and you are our friends – and welcome back to FREELOADER, the newsletter with an appetite for self-destruction. 

We took an end-of-summer break, though our month on the beach (figuratively speaking – neither of us like sand) hasn’t kept us from cadging whatever free stuff we could find.

This time around, Joe drinks himself sober on one of Ireland’s northern islands, Kieran receives some startling texts, and Séamas O'Reilly returns with more stories of our freeloading forefathers. Plus, three more One Line Reviews and a laundry list of grievances thinly disguised as a joke section. Let’s get into it.

My name’s Joe, and I’m an alcoholic. 

I first discovered this when I went to a place called Lusty Beg, a picturesque island resort in County Fermanagh, in what some might term as ‘Northern Ireland’. Lusty Beg is a two-odd hours drive from Belfast, a place I’d never been to, but thought I knew well enough owing to the vast number of documentaries and photo stories I’ve consumed over the years. I was not prepared. The car was only in the loyalist enclave of Sandy Row for about ten minutes, but it was enough to witness several lorry-sized posters of Queen Elizabeth II, a hastily painted over STOP THE BOATS graffito on a shop’s shutters, and an actual Israel flag swaying in the breeze beneath a Union Jack. It was a steroidal BNP wet dream. Consider my flabber well and truly gasted. 

Once you’re out of sectarian Disneyland, though, the beautiful countryside begins to open up, stretches of green fields dotted with lazy cows. Lusty Beg Island is a comically short ferry across the lake. A horseshoe-shaped bay includes a hotel complex and a set of rooms and chalets set up like a film set street. They gave me one of the chalets, a three bedroom two bathroom lakefront cabin just for me. It was a bit like I was being hidden away as part of the witness protection program, but the feds had really taken a shine to me, and decided to give me a lovely little treat. 

We were here for Island Ash, a special look at a circuit of meals and spa treatments that will be available in the spring of next year. Dinner was to be cooked by Nathan Outlaw and James Peck in a covered outdoor area, the contents of which were being kept a secret. At a drinks reception, I managed to consume five flutes of Ruinart champagne in about 40 minutes, along with a lovely selection of finger sandwiches. This was just the start of my Descent. 

Soon after I was treated to a delightful massage, which was followed by an extremely tranquil sound bath. After all the flutes, it was hard to maintain consciousness; that hinterland between awake and asleep had the effect of psychedelia. I was simply too relaxed at this point, so dunked myself in the pool, with its hayloft window beaming warm sunshine into one corner. 

Again: too relaxed. It was time to be flung around for a bit, and the rib boat tour of the surrounding lake came at the perfect time. I took a pint of Guinness onto the boat, driven and tour-guided by Michael and Connor, the owners of Lusty Beg, and every time I tried to take a sip at high speed, malty foam would blast me in the face. 

Pre-dinner drinks were held by the lake along with crab and cheese gougères and Killybeg oysters with champagne and grape, of which I had about four of each and another four glasses of Ruinart, which would literally not stop coming. After a short walk through a bit of forestry we found ourselves at a beautifully decorated communal table, where slabs of meat and cast iron pans were hissing away behind us.

Outlaw and Peck split duties, with the former playing some Cornwallian coastal hits like cured seabass with ginger, fennel and yoghurt and an incredible smoked trout pâté, and the latter in charge of the fire; dry-aged pork chop with a Café de Paris sauce, grilled lobster with orange and rosemary butter. I blasted through another three pints of Guinness and inhaled a delicious dessert wine – provenance by this point unknown – with the chocolate choux buns.

We were all ferried back to the main hotel complex where we sat outside a small cottage-cum-pub. Traditional music played while I ordered a free-poured double Baileys and asked a poor young Irish woman how she felt about the English, and listened intently, and intensely, as she gave me an answer, which I now can’t remember, because of the double Baileys, which I then had another of. 

The next morning, the weather had turned. A gale blew through the trees and the lake chopped against its bed. It reflected how I felt; head like a sawmill, organs pulped, skeleton malfunctioning. It was the hangover your girlfriend tells you not to worry about. After checkout we drove back to Belfast, the winding uneven roads basically being like riding the Nemesis Inferno. Time to go home.

I shall now begin the 12 steps… to the nearest boozer*!

*I actually have gallstones and am not allowed to drink for the foreseeable. 

ENDO Chelsea: How many kidneys do you really need?

Since last we spoke, a number of dedicated freeloaders in other pastures have got in touch to give a state of the freebie within their corner of the lig-o-sphere. In the world of upmarket goods, how much access does a journalist have with the objets de luxe they’re reviewing? When it comes to fancy watches it’s, ironically perhaps, less time than you’d think. “Sometimes we get to keep the watches, but rarely,” a hack for a specialist chronometer mag tells us, “we’ll get to keep a Quartz Casio. I got some FAIRLY nice watches over the years, but nothing that I'd say would be vulgar.” Not that there haven’t been near-misses. “Once I wore a $500,000 watch on the subway because they had given it to me at a watch event – that went back a few days later”.

Closer to home, one hack claims to have achieved a lovely bit of freeloading for little more than the price of some copy, and submitting to the hideous ordeal of being known. “I think I technically made money from my honeymoon” they told us, gloat-particles emanating from their every word. “Everything was free – hotels, trains, restaurants – because I was writing about it – and then I got paid for the pieces”.

A strong showing in this twilight of the freebie, but beaten into a cocked hat by our last example, the lifestyle editor who suffered that purest of ecstasies, a conveyor belt of accidental gifts. “I’ve never worked in consumer journalism or product reviews,” they write, “but, for several years, my column sat directly beneath my mag’s Six Of The Best stub, a weekly featurette that showcased half a dozen products for any number of uses; the six best yoga mats, the six best rain jackets, the six best ski goggles, etc etc. Due entirely to proximity, hordes of PRs presumed I wrote both items, and would constantly send me products for consideration, which I was not in a position - financially or, I felt, morally - to refuse”.

ALTA: Navarra Media.

Here’s a load of bullshit that’s pissing us off at the moment:

Leaving the claw on chicken legs

‘Storytelling’

Bottarga

The big bowl of chocolate mousse thing people are doing

Performative maximalism

Performative minimalism

Wong Kei

Naming restaurants after French women, Italian verbs or English fruit

North London

Parmesan

‘Honest cooking’

Whatever this vibe is

Campaigning for VAT reductions

Jeremy King and his silly little suits

Restaurant-branded wax paper 

Self-actualisation through going for dinner a lot (Bourdainisme)

Soft launches

Food writing/writers

Wolfgang & Byron Puck’s ‘Generational Tasting Tour’, CUT at 45 Park Lane: As close as we’ll get to the Oscars dinner. 

A few months ago, my co-editor Kieran told me he was going to review Trèsind, the Mayfair offshoot of the three-Michelin-starred Indian restaurant in Dubai, for the Observer. I’ve been fascinated by Trèsind for a while, curious to know whether its multi-starred status was real and deserved or another example of the Guide’s, shall we say, financial jiggery-pokery. I’d assumed, because we are blood brothers, bound by sexual rituals we’ll both be taking to el grave, that Kieran would be taking me, Joe, to Trèsind, to sample the potential divinity of Amit Baygyal’s swashbuckling journey through the subcontinent. But then he told me he was taking his wife instead. 

Over the course of the evening, Kieran would send me updates from the table, telling me how good the dishes were, one in particular described as mind blowing. My jaw was clenched as I tapped replies like ‘wow’, ‘oh shit’, and ‘mad’. Kieran thought I was mutedly coming along for the ride, but what he didn’t know was that I was coping, seething, rattled, fuming. A grand betrayal had taken place, and as is so often the case, the betrayer themselves was oblivious to the pain they were causing. Weeks wore on, and every time Kieran would message me, an imaginary flash of his Trèsind experience would haunt my vision: him and his wife, sitting there, laughing at me. 

When I was offered my own chance to visit Trèsind, I of course accepted, and invited my own partner, as a sort of cosmic revenge against a party who was unaware they did anything wrong, and was even happy for me to try something they had enjoyed so much. I’ll fucking show them, I thought. 

The evening began with a giant metal container unspooling rose-scented dry ice vapour, which is meant to calm one down. I certainly needed calming down, as even being in Trèsind was triggering, the spectre of Kieran’s treachery leaving ectoplasmic pools all over the floors of my mind. This was followed by an excellent trio of amuse-bouches, the best of which was a king oyster mushroom chai that came with a za’atar cannolo. I texted Kieran about this, but he didn’t reply. 

The following dishes were all exceptional in their own distinct ways, blending a fine dining sensibility with a globetrotting curiosity in the techniques and flavours of other countries and continents. No better was this exemplified than with the butter chicken dish, which came gifted with gorgonzola tortellini. It was an absolute freight train of flavour, very nearly too much, spicy and rich, but exciting and confounding. Again, I messaged Kieran, trying to get a rise, but he wasn’t really falling for it. 

I kept looking at my phone, wondering how else to get my message across. My partner, whose patience was wearing thin at this point, gently requested that I put it away and focus on the now. I scowled at her, making a big fuss of ostentatiously putting my phone in my pocket, saying things like ja, mein Führer. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I wished it was Kieran sitting opposite me, even after what he did. I slipped to the loo, sat on the toilet seat and said as much to him. 

When I returned, my partner’s mood had fully soured. I’d been away so long that my dessert, a perfectly balanced pandan payesh with sour milk ice cream, had lost its ornate shape. ‘It’s not going to go cold, is it?’ I snapped at her as she wiped a tear away. Kieran would never be so feeble. 

The wine, a bottle of dry riesling that I drank most of, had gone to my head slightly, so I fired off a few more texts before forcing the old ball and chain to get a bus home while I went for a walk. 

Trèsind is an excellent restaurant, one of the best new places in town. Just make sure, for the love of God, you take the right person.

* 

How was that? Was that good? That was good, right? We’re never usually like this, it’s just – it’s been a while. Sorry. Oh God. 

Anyway, if you enjoyed this one, tell your mates, follow us on Instagram and join us again next month. If you need us, email [email protected] and we promise to get back to you within thirty working days. 

Arrivederci!