Spectator Life

A colleague took me out to dinner recently, repaying a favour. Ben likes his steak and we ended up at some high-end joint in Mayfair. Unsure what to order, I left it to him and was served Wagyu beef, which literally translates as ‘Japanese cow’. When it came, it was pale in colour with lines of fat running all the way through. It didn’t look like steak. Nor did it cut like one – I probably could have used a spoon. Worst of all, it didn’t taste like one. It was a bit like eating solidified grease that required no chewing and left a funny kind of aftertaste. More foie gras than steak – not just in terms of flavour and texture, but also in terms of force feeding.

Fancy a slappy? It’s not what you think – unless you’re from Wigan, in which case you’ll know exactly what I’m offering. A slappy, otherwise known as a ‘Wigan Kebab’, is a whole pie served inside a sliced barm cake (not cake, but a soft, sweetish bread roll). Wiganers are known as ‘pie eaters’. I don’t mind a slice of mince and onion or chicken and leek every now and again, preferably in winter – but I certainly couldn’t imagine indulging on a regular basis. But if I am to eat pie, it should be in Wigan. Don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely no way I would travel to Wigan especially, because – and I mean no offence to its inhabitants – there isn’t an awful lot else going for it. I can say this because I’m from Darlington.

In Bradford a few weeks ago, I popped into a pub called Jacobs Well. It’s a squat old building, all but submerged behind the stultifyingly ugly road that grinds around the edges of the town centre. The Well was fairly quiet on a Monday night, but everyone there was congregated around the bar and it was immediately apparent that this was a place where long friendships are nurtured and strangers are welcomed. There were interesting cask ales, free hotpot and doorsteps of bread on a side table for anyone who fancied a meal, wonderful photos of old Bradford on the walls and a blackboard chock-full of handwritten notices advertising upcoming band nights and quizzes. The Jacobs Well probably doesn’t make huge profits.

‘What? You don’t like chocolate?’ The British Airways attendant almost shouted at me in incomprehension as she was passing out little packets of chocolate digestives. I had had the temerity to ask (in economy, of course) whether there might be any other biscuits on offer. To which she had responded with a concerned enquiry about allergies. No, I said, I am not allergic. I just don’t like chocolate. I can’t say I was surprised by the attendant’s reaction. Any suggestion that you might not share the current appetite – nay, fetish – for chocolate and you are treated as though you’re inexplicably withdrawing yourself from the cultural mainstream. This applies particularly to women. In the event that a man declines chocolate, this tends to pass without comment. So be it.

Attempting to make lunch for a friend today, I discovered I had run out of anchovies – even though I always have some in stock: tins and jars of the salted variety in oil, tubs of boquerones in vinegar, and, lurking in the back of the fridge, a tube of anchovy paste. I was bordering on hysterical as I made my way to the local supermarket, only to find they too had run out. I instantly went online and ordered a massive tray of the salted ones that last forever to ensure this never happens again – though I know it will, because I use them all the time. One of the numerous uses for anchovies is as an integral part of a dressing for Caesar salad. Without it, the entire salad is a flop.

There are many reasons to like Kyrgyzstan. It has extraordinarily lovely women: some mad collision of Persian, Turkish, Russian, Mongol and Chinese genes makes for supermodels at every bus stop. It is safe, friendly, cheap. Its cities are commonly free of rubbish and graffiti (how does Central Asia do this, yet we cannot?). Despite these charms, it has few tourists. However, I can’t say anything positive about the cheese – because the cheese is dreck. Last night I went to the Globus supermarket here in downtown Bishkek and bought a sample of the local fromage. When I got it home, it was like chewing a rubber toy: tasteless, over-firm, banal. In the end I was reduced to smothering it in Sriracha to make it vaguely flavoursome.

When did you last eat at a McDonald’s? If I’d asked this question a decade or so ago, I imagine the answer would probably have been ‘more recently than I’d care to admit’. The Golden Arches were the ultimate fast-food guilty pleasure, where, for considerably less than a tenner, the hungry, hungover or intoxicated could gorge on burgers, chips, milkshakes and chicken nuggets – served swiftly and efficiently. It was never designed to be Michelin-star standard, but everyone knew what they were getting with a Maccy D’s: comfort food that hit the spot and did so with unerring, machine-like competence. Yet now the company seems to be caught in an inexorable decline, as consumers tire of the belly-filling delights.

Are you hungry, peckish, esurient? Join me at Josie’s diner in Lexington, Kentucky, in the heart of Bluegrass country, where the horses are lean and very many people are, let me be frank, not. Josie’s is heaving at 8 a.m. as the well-upholstered clientele arrive for the morning feed. A mercifully slim student at the University of Kentucky is my waitress. ‘Hi, y’all! I’m Madeline Rose and I’ll be your server today,’ she announces, in the earnest tone of wait staff in a country where the credit card terminal offers the option of a 25 per cent tip. The menu she hands me is already expansive, but there’s more.

Lindt has opened a ‘first of its kind’ flagship store at Piccadilly Circus. Roger Federer was wheeled out to cut the ribbon. It features the UK’s largest Lindt truffle pick ’n’ mix counter (a snip at £6.50/100g), a ‘barista-style’ hot chocolate bar and an ice cream station. There’s even jars of chocolate spread for those who consider Nutella lowbrow. Lindt’s CEO for UK and Ireland, in that PR corporatese that sounds like guff to everyone except his marketing department, said: ‘With 2025 marking Lindt & Sprungli’s 180th anniversary, what better way to celebrate this journey and enduring passion for captivating chocolate lovers worldwide.’ It’s enough to make me crave Quality Street. It’s fairly obvious what’s inspired them.

While the US continues to use the price of chicken eggs as a political (American) football, closer to home our concern is with eggs of a sweeter kind. This year has seen chocolate prices rise dramatically. The price of cocoa had remained stable for decades, but in November 2023 it rocketed and has remained high ever since: it is currently almost three times what it was 18 months ago. The sudden increase came about after particularly poor harvests in West Africa, where more than 80 per cent of the world’s cocoa is grown. Extreme weather, in the form of both record-breaking high temperatures and then very heavy rains, have ravaged the cocoa plantations in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.

Having long been a man whose spirits wilted if meat was not the centre of his meal, I have become almost vegetarian. It’s routinely predictable for age to lead us astray from our youthful socialism, but I find my dietary change more difficult to explain. My younger self would view my politics with horror and my diet with incredulity. I remain partial to eating flesh, but the conviction that any plate without it must be a side dish has evaporated. For most of my life, meat and two veg was my credo – and if the two vegetables were ketchup and mustard, then all the better. But these days I often cook without remembering to include anything that once had blood – and am bemused to find myself content. The vegetable delivery company Natoora bears some of the blame.

There’s a well-known clip from daytime TV show This Morning where celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo is cooking a classic Italian pasta dish. Holly Willoughby, one of the presenters, tastes it and says: ‘Do you know, if it had, like, ham in it, it’s closer to a British carbonara?’ D’Acampo, in his Italian-accented perfect English, looks at her in horror before replying: ‘If my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike.’ This phrase goes round and round in my head as I stand agog in my supermarket’s bakery aisles. Where once there might have been one choice of hot cross bun as we hurtle towards Easter – perhaps one ‘standard’ and one ‘luxury’ in the bigger shops – our options now extend as far as the eye can see.

The drift began with the Anglicised version of tapas – a word meaning ‘to cover’, or ‘lid’, that originally described the small pieces of food used to cover and protect drinks. But ‘small plates’, now a mainstay of those fashionable, overpriced restaurants that pride themselves on being the antidote to stuffy and formal, have dominated the restaurant world for more than two decades. In Venice once, in the early 1990s, I ended up in a backstreet bacari, which is a booze and snack joint, as I couldn’t afford the restaurants in the centre. It was full of working men, and cheap as chips. Huge platters of cold mussels, cured ham, anchovies and crispy gnocchi sat behind a glass counter. Perched above the bar were a barrel of red, and one of white.