It’s a Saturday afternoon and I’ve just walked into The Pineapple in north London, thus becoming the 4,825th journalist to do so since Keir Starmer became Labour leader. He once described this pub as his ‘church’. What that means is unclear. Does he take his sins here for absolution? Does he feel a sense of obligation to it? Does he come here on Sunday mornings?
As the prime-ministerial handover takes place, it’s worth considering the old guy and the new guy’s approach to food and drink (this column thinks so, anyway).
Starmer didn’t have a favourite novel and he didn’t have a favourite poem. But what he did like was food. He said he enjoyed going to Rossella, an Italian restaurant in Kentish Town. The tandoori salmon he made on Sunday Brunch actually looked nice. We know of two of his breakfasts. I tried the first one last week: ‘a little bit of fish and a little bit of cheese’, which he ate from a buffet at 2021’s Labour conference in front of a disturbed journalist. I bought a tin of sardines and some cheap packet Edam and it was tasty. Fish and cheese work together, as long as (like with a tuna melt) it’s not real fish and it’s not real cheese. His other favourite breakfast was a bowl of plain baked beans. In Spain this would be called alubias con tomate and would ‘heal the sick’ or something.
A prime-ministerial love of food isn’t a given. Some of the more hapless PMs were surprisingly astute: Theresa May owned a library of good cook-books, while Liz Truss was a devotee of the peerless Bleecker Burger. More distressingly, Margaret Thatcher liked a dish of beef consommé, cream cheese and curry powder. I watched Tony Blair malfunction on a podcast recently, when he said that his family get wound up by him judging restaurants entirely on ‘what I call the bread test’ (does the place make its own bread?).
Presumably Starmer’s behaviour in restaurants is a little more sane. But I hope he comes to The Pineapple for the pints and not the food. It is a gorgeous place: lots of brass and a delightful conservatory, one that I would sit in if it wasn’t the temperature of a fertiliser plant in Burkina Faso. And it has a Thai menu. Some pubs have Thai kitchens because you can do lots of dishes from a few frozen ingredients, and others have them because the landlord brought back someone from his travels.
Burnham does have serious interests but on food and drink he’s worse than Starmer
We order Starmer-y things: he doesn’t eat meat, remember, so we have the deep-fried vegetable platter (£7.50) and stir-fried vegetables (£11.50). They are appalling, but it is like judging a dog on its juggling: this isn’t why I like you.
Back in the Spectator office, we try a taste of the new. Andy Burnham doesn’t have an explicit favourite restaurant, so instead, I head to Westminster’s Laughing Halibut, Burnham’s new nearest chippy, to pick up ‘chips and gravy’ (his answer to the question ‘What is your favourite biscuit?’). The best thing about chips is their crispiness, so of course Burnham makes them soggy. I don’t get it, and I’m not sure my colleagues did either. If you’re scared that Spectator staffers are all wet London liberals, I can’t allay your fears: only two tried them without me telling them to.
Of course, Burnham does have serious interests – he likes Larkin and Shakespeare and the Stone Roses – and that does matter. But on food and drink, he’s worse than Starmer, who, if he is destined to spend the rest of his life wondering what went wrong, at least has the good fortune to do so in a beautiful pub.
The Pineapple, 51 Leverton Street, London NW5 2NX; tel: 0207 2844631.
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