Julie Bindel

If I were offered the option of eating just one country’s cuisine forevermore, it would have to be Greek. Even on a rainy day in north London, just one bite of souvlaki is enough to conjure sun-drenched landscapes, fresh olive oil and vibrant Mediterranean flavours.  Clearly plenty of others agree. Greek restaurants seem to be popping up all over London – with at least five opening in the past two months. There’s more to come with the much-anticipated opening of Zylia in Covent Garden next month, from Greek chef Nick Molyviatis (formerly of Borough Market hotspots Oma and Agora) and Cypriot restaurateur Barry Karacostas. No wonder lifestyle platform SheerLuxe was cooing about ‘London’s love affair with Greek food’ earlier this month.

The Eagle in Farringdon used to be next door to the old Guardian offices. I remember eating there back in the early 1990s, when it was offering something of a new approach to dining. A Portuguese-influenced menu was scrawled on a blackboard, and it was exciting and fresh. Placing your order was always a bit of a pain – you had to jostle your way to the front of the always crowded bar, then struggle to make your order heard over the noise endemic to pubs with no soft furnishings – and the many people intent on prioritising drinking over eating. But The Eagle became an institution and (although I'm not sure this is the case) it is reputed to have been the UK’s very first gastropub.

It’s a funny thing, being a feminist surrounded by women on weight-loss drugs. As someone who recognises the health risks of being clinically obese, I’ve never been a fat liberationist – but pretty much all of us used to be against prescribed beauty standards. In practice this meant we would critique the harmful impacts of the ‘size zero’ or ‘heroin chic’ trends rather than obsess over having gained a few pounds over Christmas. Yet, with the rise of weight-loss jabs, skinniness has become a norm rather than a feminist discussion. And twee ideas about ‘being good’ or ‘cheating’ have been replaced by – well – feeling too nauseous to cheat at all.  Which is why Easter is a fascinating holiday in this era of weight-loss jabs.

When we describe something – or someone – as an ‘acquired taste’, it is rarely a compliment. If we say it of Sharon, for example, it means that she is a bit of a pain in the neck. It's the same with food: olives, anchovies and oysters are some of the finest foodstuffs on God's earth but sometimes, in order to truly enjoy them, you have to first quiet your inner doubts by tuning out all the reasons why other people don’t like them.  Those of us who like to devote time to thinking about matching food and booze get called snobs – but we all do it all the time. You would probably choose to have a mug of tea rather than a cup of coffee with fish and chips – and fair play to you if you do.

The daffodils are out, and so, therefore, are the optimistic diners. A couple of rickety tables and wonky chairs are dragged out from their storage and plonked on a bit of uneven concrete on what passes as pavement in London. They are a strange breed, this first flush of outdoor diners who think a tiny ray of weak sunlight breaking through the two-degree cold heralds the start of summer. I’m not talking about the people braving the elements under a leaky conservatory roof, crowded around outdoor heaters and wrapped in blankets, who are best known as smokers or vapers. No, I mean the hardy, ‘freezing fresh air is better than indoor air’ lot we are about to see shivering through their fake smiles as they push aside a bowl of freezing cold soup that can’t quite pass as gazpacho.

Bradford, West Yorkshire, is not known as the curry capital of Britain for nothing. The city is home to more than 200 Asian restaurants. In the main, these are Kashmiri and Pakistani – driven by the city’s Pakistani-Muslim population which is one of the most concentrated in the country – and much of the local economy relies on them for jobs and income. My memories of Bradford curry houses go back to the late 1990s when I worked at the university. Commuting from London and therefore living in student digs meant I would eat out more often than not. That meant curry almost every night I was in the city as it cost little more than a sandwich.  Bradford’s curry houses are known for their homestyle cooking, rather than fancy, westernised, Instagram-aesthetic grub.

When I recently mentioned to a friend that I clean my fridge every week, she said I was a bit weird. I get what she means. Most fridges get cleaned less frequently or when something spills down from the shelf above. But I do like to keep on top of my sell-by dates. I live with someone less vigilant about such matters, who would not necessarily turn her nose up at something a day or so out of date. As a rule, we rub along very nicely, with me going through the fridge, chucking everything out, and her occasionally rummaging around, muttering: ‘Where is that leftover spring roll?’  When it comes to fridge etiquette, though, I am very precise – and very squeamish. Dirtiness is the cardinal sin, closely followed by ‘small bowling’.

I’m in Mexico City and spoilt for choice as to where to go for a lunchtime taco. Taquerias are everywhere, each entrance best described as a hole in the wall: you step in from the street into a dark, cavernous stone vault and go past the bar, stocked with dozens of bottles of spirits and a fridge full of beer. I honestly feel like I’ve never had Mexican food before, except once in San Francisco. On that occasion, I went to a canteen close to the border with a friend, where we were the only two non-Mexican people eating. The salsas were bright as traffic lights and there was charred corn doused with chilli and lime salt, fresh white cheese and lime butter. The tortillas were the soft corn ones, unlike any I’ve seen in UK outlets, with hard, U-shaped shells made of wheat.

At the end of the 1970s, when I had my first taste of wine, the choice was limited. It was either cloyingly sweet German Liebfraumilch, or something from the Don Cortez or Hirondelle types, both of which were sour and brash. That, younger readers, was how bad things were, and why many of us during that time stuck to lager and lime. When Le Piat D’Or came on the market, it was, frankly, a relief. But things have changed, including my palate. Sweet or semi-sweet wines can be delicious, and bear no resemblance to the cheap German variety of my youth. Many moons ago, invited to my first posh dinner party, I was bowled over when served a lightly sweet Riesling with a fruit crumble. Riesling is a key component in Liebfraumilch, but not all Liebfraumilch is Riesling.

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.

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.