Food and Drink: Gastropod

MY HUNT for the acceptable face of American catering has come up trumps in the past at the Arkansas Cafe, in the Old Spitalfields Market. So mightily, meatily, marvellous is this modest barbecue spot that every year the American ambassador hires the larger-than-life proprietor, Keir Helberg, and his staff to cater for his Independence Day party, maddeningly causing the Arkansas to be closed on 4 July. On other Sundays and weekdays you'll find it serving stonking steaks, burgers, ribs, and pecan pie or cheesecake for a modest outlay. It's the real thing! Arkansas Cafe, Old Spitalfields Market, London E1 (0171-377 6999).

THE GASTROPOD has a natural enthusiasm for the reproductive process and is not immune to the allure of the lovely Jamie Oliver. Unwilling to be trampled on by a posse of teenage girls should his West Hampstead lair be located, I have tracked down his parents' delightful-sounding pub, the Cricketers in Clavering, Essex. "The wide choice of interesting and elaborate home-made bar food attracts a well-heeled set to this comfortably modernised 16th-century dining pub," says the current edition of The Good Pub Guide. Fans hoping to catch sight of the Naked Chef's flashing blades in the kitchen will be disappointed. Trevor Oliver, who has run the pub for 24 years, says they don't see as much of their son as they used to, but nevertheless they have had hopeful autograph hunters turning up. I suggest turning up for lunch or dinner instead.

TURN ON, tune in, veg out. Phone-in radio programmes usually consist of fruitless discussions between couch potatoes. Radio 4's live Veg Talk is making fruit and veg the subject matter, and unlikely stars out of Covent Garden greengrocers Gregg Wallace and Charlie Hicks. As seasonal fruit and veg comes into the shop thick and fast, Gregg and Charlie should be coming up with some plum tips every Friday after the 3pm news.

A DECADE ago, when few in this country had heard of them, the forward- thinking Thoby Young was calling his "fresh food co" a virtual farmers' market. The first and only national organic food delivery company has now set up Organic Nation, described as Britain's first comprehensive online organic food home delivery service. No more shopping around for organic this and that, as the catalogue lists organic meat, fish, dairy produce, fruit and vegetables, wine, beer, juices and milk among thousands of lines at what it says are competitive prices, having been bought directly from producers. Environmentally-friendly cleaning products can also be supplied. Delivery throughout the country is free on orders over pounds 75. Contact Organic Nation by phone (0181-969 0351) or fax (0181-964 8050) or visit www.freshfood.co.uk. If you're really old-fashioned, write to 326 Portobello Road, London W10 5RU for Organic Nation's catalogue.

D'OH! CONSUMER research - a piece of cake. Some food manufacturers see the way forward as being "functional foods". These products have manufactured ingredients which claim to reduce the risk of disease, by, for example, lowering cholesterol. Meanwhile more people are buying organic products. Not that organic is exactly new food - but, for the purposes of food marketing, products made with organic ingredients are. You'd have thought it was obvious that those who want more naturally produced food might not be persuaded by functional foods. A product research company has nevertheless investigated our attitudes to these two trends in a report called New Foods, the Future of Positive Health. Guess what it found? Give up? Let Gastropod end the suspense. It concludes: "Overall, functional products have less appeal than organic products."