Angels & Demons | The Spectator

Dan Fox

My quest for the perfect Christmas broccoli

I adore broccoli, but I despise seeing it shrink-wrapped and kidnapped in the grocery store. The sight of those slightly compressed, yellowing florets sweating under fluorescent morgue lighting is a rude tap on the shoulder from dystopia. That’s why I was in my basement in late August, cleaning out the propagation tent while everyone else was still at the beach. My goal each year is to enjoy homegrown broccoli with Christmas dinner. In this corner of the Mediterranean, that’s about as likely as a French civil servant answering the phone after lunch. But with precision timing and bloody-mindedness you can pull it off. And after years of suffering those supermarket specimens, I’m determined to.

Charles Cornish-Dale

Is ‘carbon butter’ really good for us?

All butter is made from carbon, but not all butter is carbon butter. This is the name being given to a new environmentally friendly, 100 percent ethical lab-made food product. There’s not an udder, churn or milkmaid in sight. Carbon butter is yet another one of those foods of the future we’re told about, with wide-eyed, breathless enthusiasm, that will transform the way we eat as well as our health, save the planet and make sure there are enough calories to go round when the world hits a population of 10 billion, at some point in the next decade or two. A few years ago, it was cockroach milk – four times more nutritious than cow’s milk, said Bloomberg, excitedly – plant-based meat and “cultured oil.” Now, it’s the turn of carbon butter.

John Mountain

Why I was right to ban vegans

I remember the day I heard my culinary hero Daniel Humm had decided to make Eleven Madison Park’s menu plant-based. It was as profound as the day Princess Diana died and as pivotal as the birth of my first child, Lily Elvis. The news tore the joy from my heart as well as all the love and respect I had for Humm. The toil, tenacity and sheer stamina it took him to earn his three Michelin stars is extraordinary. Who am I to criticize one of the greatest chefs alive today? I’m a nobody. Yes, I’ve worked at three-Michelin-starred restaurants, served Queen Elizabeth II and starred in the BBC’s Great British Menu but I’m just a cook: nothing more and nothing less.

Gage Klipper

Why Eleven Madison Park had to put meat back on the menu

Eleven Madison Park, perhaps the finest of New York’s fine-dining establishments, is adding select meat dishes back to its prix fixe menu after an ill-fated foray into veganism after the pandemic. Chef Daniel Humm announced the move in the New York Times, citing all the predictable reasons for ditching a plant-based menu. First and foremost: the finances. “It’s hard to get 30 people for a corporate dinner to come to a plant-based restaurant,” Humm told the Times, noting the negative feedback from diners over the years. Still, he framed the move in moral terms, explaining how he didn’t “realize that [the vegan menu] would exclude people.” To this, I can only muster an eye roll.

Food & Drink