"You need edges at the front after your bool - and you can't insert edges after the bool because of the "Cannot start up a hole"-issue"

Didn't know this issue! And sorry, I should have known from OpenGL that polys with holes (like the face after the boolean) are evil. ;-)

This actually answers a lot of questions I had on other modeling problems; assuming Maya will automatically create 'true' edges for me after certain operations is probably wrong. As a newbie I'd been avoiding sub-ing too much 'food' because of the extra detail I don't want.
(This also tripped me up with nurbs until I realised the need to insert isoparms to make some detailing work properly.)

Thanks
:bow: