New figs

Having well and truly decided that I don't like the wet figs reported at reference 1 - I think I was a bit put off by finding out that they had been re-hydrated and that apart, they were far too sticky to handle. And all the goo adhering to the inside of their plastic bag was rather unsightly. So off to Bing who turned up the people at reference 2, Hatton Hill Organic. Three 500g bags of sun dried Turkish figs for around £20. Not as neat and pretty as the ones from Demos, but not bad at all. And not sticky.

Nosy as ever, I turned the label over to find that Hatton Hill Organic was just a trading name of Rohan Food Ltd, not some hard core organic foodie operating out of the quaint little Buckinghamshire village of Hatton-on-the-Hill at all. They actually appear to operate out of a shed on an industrial estate in Walthamstow, possibly one of the units snapped by Google Street View above.

And Rohan Food Ltd is unlikely to be anything to do either with the illustrious French ducal house of that name or the clothing company which also uses it. But possibly something to do with a company of the same name operating out of New Delhi. Or at least used to operate out of New Delhi: its status is reported at reference 3 as strike off whatever that might mean.

Reference 3 also tells me that the boss of this Rohan Food is also the director of a number of other companies, some of them food flavoured. While a chap who once appeared to have been his partner has a  name which involves both 'Rohan' and 'De Silva'. And Rohan Food seems to be very into importing various spices and herbs, but no mention of figs.

All in all, reference 3 provides a great deal of information, for free, plus some advertisements, from which I have snipped out the sample above. What on earth could the Datalog business model be? Are they reliable?

More important, are the food products from Rohan Food Ltd reliable? How often do the food hygiene people visit the shed in Walthamstow? How careful are they about turning over their stock? Where they get it from? When one buys figs from Grape Tree or Waitrose - or even a stall at Epsom Market - you feel you have someone to go to if it all goes pear shaped. Not so sure about this lot.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/an-italian-flavoured-sunday.html.

Reference 2: https://hattonhill.com/.

Reference 3: http://www.datalog.co.uk/browse/detail.php/CompanyNumber/07473787/CompanyName/ROHAN+FOODS+LIMITED.