One, a flat house-made slab of oozy chocolate that the restaurant calls a pâté, was rich and sumptuous, served in a thick rum sauce.
A flat housing market and debt-ridden consumers deserting the high street will make it hard, if not impossible, for the chancellor to meet his growth forecasts and the fiscal projections that depend on them.
An ex-employee of Countrywide, a particularly gung-ho American lender, recalls presenting a forecast of a flat housing market to a meeting at the bank in 2006 and being shouted down by salespeople, who argued that if they priced for credit risk on that basis they would be out of business.If the market cannot be trusted to ease up on property when it overheats, that leaves policymakers.
Cargill, founded in 1865 by William and Samuel Cargill, sons of a Scottish sea captain, started out as a lone grain-storage flat house in a frontier town in Iowa.
The renting alternative: buy your child a flat or house The student housing market has boomed over the last few years and parents have been getting on board.
Tory housing minister Gavin Barwell has a possible answer to our housing crisis, and it involves relaxing the regulations on how cramped a flat or house can be, so that young people can afford to get on the property ladder.
"We are doing all of this without the need for excessive state regulation that would destroy investment in new housing, push up prices and make it harder for people to find a flat or house to rent".
And I can't ever imagine having a flat or house".
Sometimes that results in someone who is confused and frightened being left in a flat or house entirely on their own.
Mr Miliband's scheme to help first-time buyers, announced the following day, means an exemption from stamp duty, a tax on buying property, when they pay less than £300,000 ($450,000) for a flat or house.
As a result, many are still being forced to rent a flat or house when, ideally, they would have bought one in the past few years.
