Spectator Life

It’s six o'clock and you’ve fought your way on to a train at a major London terminus. The carriage is rammed – heavily pregnant women, the stricken and the young stand in the corridors like it’s A&E – and everywhere people are diving into takeaways. The pungent egg and cress sandwich from Pret is bursting at the seams next to you; on the other side of the table there’s a lout blasting music from his phone speaker and eating the smelliest katsu curry money can buy.

When we were little we used to go on holiday to the same place in Brittany, a picturesque, quiet coastal town. There wasn’t a lot to do there for children, but I always looked forward to the holidays because of the food. It was the first time I was exposed to French food, and it was a revelation. The finished galette, unlike paler, softer crèpes, is dark gold, crisp and lacy I was an adventurous eater, taking after my father. Anything he ordered, I would try. Even as a little girl, I remember a sense of pride in my fearless eating: huge pots of mussels, big shell-on prawns, strong  cheeses – I was game for anything. But there was one exception. Brittany has its own crèpe, the savoury  galette, and I could not get on with it.

Last week saw the publication of the 14th annual Estrella Damm Top 50 Gastropubs of Great Britain, a list consumed by middle-class foodies as eagerly as a £27 fish finger sandwich served on a piece of slate, washed down by a non-alcoholic cocktail in a jam jar. Couples scroll through former drinking holes transformed into Michelin-starred restaurants with ‘wacky’ names such as the Unruly Pig and the Scran and Scallie, noting the ones they have been to and others to put on a gastronomic bucket list – the bucket probably being what their sweet potato fries are served in. It’s a far cry from George Orwell’s 1946 essay ‘The Moon Under Water’.

Apple pies are synonymous with domesticity: both here and across the pond, the image of an apple pie, fresh from the oven, possibly cooling on a windowsill, speaks of family, and of homeliness. While they’re not difficult to make, they take time and care, and the making of one is an act of love. Perhaps that’s why they are such a simple and clear shorthand for comfort.

Burns Night always feels like a particularly well-timed celebration. Hot on the heels of ‘Blue Monday’ – supposedly the most miserable day of the year – it’s certainly nice to have a reason to get merry. It also happens to be the perfect refutation to those killjoys determined to make Dry January the new Lent.  ‘O thou, my muse! guid auld Scotch drink!’ So wrote Robert Burns in the winter of 1785 in his ode 'Scotch Drink'. The Scottish bard’s love of the stuff is no surprise and no Burns Night celebration is complete without a few drams.

Tomorrow evening, fans of whisky, poetry and sheep offal will come together to celebrate the birthday of the great Robert Burns. In the dog days of January there are few pleasures as great as demolishing a plate of haggis while trying to twist your tongue around Burns’s immortal verse. No Burns supper is complete without a few drams to raise in tribute. However, you need not feel constrained to drink your Scotch only neat or with plain water. These cocktails are intended to show the range and versatility of Scotch whisky. There’s also a gin number thrown in for good measure in case your guests prefer to raise a glass of Scotland’s other national drink.

If anyone knows how to do winter, it’s the Scandinavians. The concept of snuggling up with a steaming mug of something caffeinated and a buttery pastry is at the heart of their culture, from the Danish concept of hygge (cosiness – often involving sugar and carbs) to the Swedish ritual of fika (taking time for coffee and cake). Take a leaf out of their book and make a beeline for these five bakeries, which are sure to put a smile on your face this January.  Pophams Bakery, London Fields  Every Saturday, rain or shine, a jolly queue wiggles around the al fresco tables outside Pophams and into the street. London Fields is not short of places for coffee and pastries, but Pophams is a cut above the rest – and the queue shows it.

I love pasta bake more than is reasonable: I would struggle to name a dish that brings the same level of comfort even from first thought. From the moment I consider making one, I am already reassured: confident in the knowledge that it is a dish which will deliver everything that is required for culinary succour. This isn’t your average student pasta bake: slow-cooked ragu, a topping cooked at a hot temperature until blackened in places and blistering; a time investment that means delayed gratification, but for the most part can be left to its own devices, to simmer, to bubble, to bake. Saucy and deeply savoury, hot and packed with carbs: it can’t fail to please.

The Menu is a horror film about fine dining that revolves around a psychotic head chef (Ralph Fiennes) who runs a destination restaurant on an American island. The island is uninhabited apart from the chef and his staff, who pluck it for the most refined marine treats to serve the obnoxious clientele on a nightly surprise menu. As I sat in the cinema watching it recently, I felt delighted, then sick, then scared – and then enlightened. Enlightened because I finally understood that fine dining – once the summit of high living and my own former obsession as a greedy twenty-something working in lifestyle journalism – is over. It is not just that in this era of obsessive authenticity and sentimentality fine dining feels passé.

Allow me to set the scene for you. It is the coldest month of the year and also the darkest. The sun sets not long after lunch, ruling out any after-work revelry more exciting than testing your antifreeze. It’s too chilly to go for a walk; even a trip to the gym looms like an endurance test. Despite blasting the heat at all hours, you still can’t get your house warm. Your girlfriend hasn’t been seen in the four days since she took refuge under that blanket with the Friends logo on it. The Christmas season has ended, stripping the winter of its festivity: no more twinkling lights or Andy Williams. You took down your tree weeks ago, lest you become one of those freaks who still has decorations up in February, but without it your house just feels bare.

Back in 2000, not one Indian chef in the UK held a Michelin star. For many people, dinner at a curry house meant a formica table, plastic cutlery and warm salad garnishes on Brick Lane.  Two decades later, all that has changed. There are seven Michelin-starred Indian restaurants across London and haute cuisine curry houses are taking over swathes of Mayfair and other upmarket areas that were previously the domain of chic French bistros and Italian osterias.   So what’s behind the rise of the high-end Indian restaurant? And which are the dishes not to miss? We spoke to four top chefs at our favourite upmarket Indian eateries in the capital to find out.

Last time I visited Toronto, Canada, I stayed in Greektown, home to one of the largest Greek communities in North America. Several scenes from My Big Fat Greek Wedding were filmed here, and street signs are in Greek as well as English. On the day I arrived, jetlagged and disorientated, I happened upon a restaurant that was so authentically Greek I imagined I could smell the pine trees and hear the soft chirp of crickets. A couple of elderly men sat drinking ouzo at the bar, and rather than being led to a table I was taken into the kitchen where Maria (reader, that was her name, what can I do?) was stirring various pots, including a green bean and tomato dish (fasolakia giaxni) and meatballs (soutzoukakia).