Spectator Life

When Columbus brought chilli back from the New World, the British were indifferent. Strange, really, when our taste for horseradish and mustard was keen, and when we later found a love for Marmite, stilton and Pickled Onion Monster Munch. A culture shaped by drizzle should have been an early adopter. Instead, that part of our culinary soul which prizes macaroni cheese for its inoffensiveness prevailed. Kedgeree had been here for a century, spiced with nothing hotter than pepper, when we started developing more fiery tastes. Students showing off to each other would compete to eat a vindaloo or a phall. There are attitudes that youth and inexperience make forgivable.

‘Be not solitary; be not idle,’ wrote Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy. Now, 400 years later, one bar is taking his instruction to heart and banning solo drinkers. An Altrincham venue which goes by the gloriously 1990s nightclub name of Alibi will only allow groups in after 9 p.m. Owner Carl Peters said he introduced the policy after certain individuals had been ‘mithering other groups’ – ‘mithering’ being a northern word meaning to pester or make a fuss. Alibi also has a strict dress code: ‘No sportswear/trackies, no Stone Island, no ripped/frayed jeans, no baseball caps, no roadman vibes.’ I should point out to Spectator readers that a roadman isn't someone employed by the council to fix potholes, it's a young man with gangster pretensions.

Where else would you see anyone wandering around with a plate heaped with such incongruous ingredients as bacon, olives, blueberry waffles and a side order of yoghurt and prunes? Nowhere but at a hotel breakfast, of course. More often than not, the food is inedible, and nothing works properly. The coffee machines always seem to be faulty, although even this is preferable to being served from a silver coffee jug filled with tepid, muddy brown, tasteless water that leaves you hankering after service-station machine coffee. Then there is the room: inevitably, it is dark and windowless, usually in a basement that smells vaguely of damp underneath the stench of cheap cooking oil. Beware the hotel that serves dinner and then drags out the leftovers for breakfast.

Let me introduce you to the performative chef. The performative chef is a man. He is between 23 and 29 years of age. Both of his arms are covered in fine-line tattoos. His favourite tattoo is a quote from Philip Larkin that reads: ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.’ His parents are in fact lovely people, but he’ll never tell you that. He sports a mullet (or buzzcut depending on the season). He rides a fixed-gear bike to work. He exclusively wears oversized clothes. He talks to every stranger that will listen about getting an eyebrow piercing. He studied classics at a Russell Group university, not that it matters; he did the degree just because it was something to do.

There are few culinary experiences like the first bite of a Domino’s pizza. The finest N25 caviar or a perfectly seared lobe of foie gras surely can’t compare to the ecstasy that comes from that mouth-cutting cornmeal that they sprinkle all over the base, or that sweet, cloying ‘cheese’, or those tart, dancing cups of pepperoni. In these moments, resistance is futile. It’s not a question of whether this is the best takeaway pizza there is, or even the best food there is. It’s a question of whether this is the best thing there is. Of course, we know how it ends. Fifteen minutes later, caked in sweat, parched, filling yourself up like a swimming pool. And then, if you’re unlucky, an awakening in the middle of the night. You wheeze against the table.

No matter how much the cost of convenience food rises, the idea that it’s still cheaper than cooking fresh food at home somehow refuses to go away. People can fool themselves as much as they like. But it’s (overpriced) pie in the sky.  To be economical, choose chicken thighs over breast; lamb shoulder over leg. Veg offcuts such as broccoli stalk (for soups) and ginger peel (to flavour Asian stock). Leftovers for egg fried rice. Stale bread for croutons. The freezer is your friend: not just for peas and berries, but spinach and an ice cube tray of leftover wine for cooking too. Oxo over refrigerated supermarket stock; Bird’s over fresh custard; lard over butter. It's handy to also use ingredients that don’t differ wildly between basic and premium versions.

You won’t find it in any of the ‘best pub’ guides that seem to appear every other week, but our local is the best pub simply because it’s, well, our local. And that is why our village has come together to save it from permanent closure. The White Horse Inn in Westleton – one of around a dozen pubs in Suffolk with that name – was put up for sale last year by the county’s foremost brewery, Adnams, as they looked to slim down their estate. It was hoped that, as with other pubs in the area, some enterprising new owners would come and take it over, tart it up and give it a new lease of life. But the longer it failed to sell, the more it seemed that it would end up, like so many others in Britain, falling into the hands of developers.

There’s no shortage of catastrophic predictions for New York under Zohran Mamdani’s leadership. While the city probably won’t see breadlines, the wildly expensive, exhaustingly derivative restaurants that dominate its food scene are likely to become more dominant. Mamdani’s big pledge on food is to ‘make halal eight bucks again’. But it’s a ‘false promise’ of street-food affordability according to Heritage Foundation economist Nicole Huyer. She says Mamdani’s economic programme, which includes higher taxes, steeper leasing regulations and a pledge to raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030, will effectively make restaurants even more expensive.

You saw Homicide: Life on the Street, right? You know, that gritty TV police drama set in Baltimore. What? Ah, no, you’re thinking of The Wire, that other gritty TV police drama set in Baltimore, the one with Idris Elba and Dominic West. Homicide predates The Wire and was filmed largely around Fells Point and along Baltimore’s historic waterfront. The former City Recreation Pier, which stood in for the police department, is now a swanky hotel, the Sagamore Pendry Baltimore, in whose comfortable embrace I have just wallowed. Baltimore doesn’t have a great reputation. Whenever I tell American friends I’ve been there they affect horror and ask what on earth I was thinking. Couldn’t I have gone to Boston, New Orleans, New York, Washington D.C.

I was recently in a café that promoted its salads as being served with ‘low-fat dressing’. I couldn’t possibly imagine what that might be: no olive oil? That stuff you spray on the pan when on some god-awful calorie-controlled diet? It turned out to be bottled – bought in from a supermarket – and contained lots of yoghurt, vegetable oil and dried herbs. I ordered a ham sandwich. The very basis of any salad dressing is a good-quality, fruity, preferably first-press or at least virgin olive oil. All the other ingredients are up for grabs, and can even be the subject of fairly robust arguments – at least in my house. My partner Harriet was first taught how to dress a salad by her father, during a holiday in Italy.