G.B.K; Byron; Burger & Lobster; Haché; MEATliqor; Patty & Bun; Bukowski; Honest; Burger King.
Franco Manca; Rossopomodoro; Pizza East; Pizza Express; Pizza Hut.
Bone Daddies; Koya; Tonkotsu; Shoryu; Ramen Seto; Ittenbari; Pot Noodle.
Gaucho; Goodmans; Black & Blue; Hawksmoor; Flat Iron; Aberdeen Angus Steak House.
Easy, I know, but, I like to have a fiddle with your grey matter.
That there are rampant and surging trends in food and restaurants is not, to me, at all surprising. We eat what we want to eat, or what we ‘feel’ like eating. And what we ‘feel’ like eating is a manifestation of what we ‘feel’ like. And what we ‘feel’ like is a manifestation of, at least a part of, our character. And our character is different from any one else’s character (if it isn’t, I feel sad for you.)
So, just like we go through phases with music, art, clothes, colours, cars, drinks, hair-styles, books, ambitions, enjoyments, and anything else subjective, so too shall we travel through phases and fads with food.
Once upon a time, I used to love nothing more than “an egg in a shelf”. Being the gifted child that I was, I didn’t hear that it was actually “egg in a shell”. No, I ate eggs in shelves. And what more joy could there be for the 5-year old me than a shelf-dwelling egg and soldiers to dunk. Memories from such a young age, I think, are more sensory than visual, and I can still feel, very deeply, the toe-curling pleasure said repast gave me.
Nowadays I am much more of a poached egg lady. Poached egg on sourdough toast spread with an impudent amount of anchovy paste. An abundance of black pepper on top; a coy layer of rocket underneath; perhaps a shaving of parmesan too. Whatever. If there’s poached egg, anchovy and toasted sourdough, the toes start curling again. Whilst it’s not a huge jump from a boiled egg and soldiers, I can honestly say that boiled eggs and soldiers hold no great attraction for me now. And, right there, you have a fad.
Just a short walk around Soho, one of London’s zeitgeist-hubs, one is struck by the repetition of it all. Boutique hair salons done out to look like brothels. Vintage clothes shops with price tags that would make Berlusconi blush. “Experimental” cocktails bars. Burger “joints”, pizza “places” and steak “houses”. All seemingly edgier than the last; all promising to offer a better, more satisfying product. Burger “joints” are one of the most prevalent amongst the restaurant scene, at this moment, ranging from the rudimentary G.B.K, to the gourmet Burger & Lobster, and right back down again to the inadmissible Burger King.
What exactly separates these purveyors? Intelligent marketing. Prices (not necessarily fairly attributed). Interior design. Employees. Abundance of branches. Ingredients. That last one is the sticky one. The menu might reveal a myriad of tarty extras such as ‘artisan buns’ ‘thrice cut and fired chips’ or ‘hand-made local cheese’, but it would be foolish to believe that the ingredients used by Burger King are a million miles away. They all stem from the same beast (literally and metaphorically).
So, if burgers and burger “joints” are so common nowadays, at every level of the market, what is the allure?
For burgers in particular, there is the popular and cultural reference to America, that attractively exaggerated nation where everything is super-sized and out of the world we, as British people, really know. Even the most discerning of my food-loving friends came back from America and commented first and foremost on how incredible the burger they ate was. ‘Incredible’ to mean ‘good’, but also ‘unimaginable’ (for non-Americans).
To eschew the endless fine-dining options or more run-of-the-mill stalwart restaurants such as Bella Italia, in favour of a cutlery-free meal, eaten out of plastic ‘wicker’ baskets, whilst slurping down a real ice-cream milkshake in a cushioned booth is, for a very small moment, to disappear into America. It is to abandon the British culture and restraint; it is to abandon British food; and it is to abandon restaurant-etiquette as we know it. And if this abandonment can take place in a room tiled to a ceiling complete with steel girders, even better.
Each to their own.
The other aspect of this revolution is the speciality restaurant. If you want to eat a burger, one would assume that a burger in a restaurant that only or largely serves burgers will be better than one in a restaurant that has a whole range of other dishes on offer too. Ditto steak – when you want to eat a steak, you don’t want to be endlessly masticating through poor-quality meat at any old restaurant. Nope, just go straight in for the Real Deal, at a restaurant that knows exactly how to handle that slab of fleshy wonder. A restaurant that explicitly states in their name, or through their menu and marketing, that they specialise in a particular dish should be a good place to eat said dish.
Should be.
(This is the reason I will not eat in Pizza Express. They regularly burn pizzas. They regularly ignore diners. They regularly ignore manners. And they regularly ignore reasonable prices for the tosh that they serve.)
Anyway, speciality restaurants. Aside from the perfectly natural assumption that they will serve their speciality dish better than other non-speciality restaurants, there is the attraction of simplicity. The menu is focussed on one (or only a few) dishes. No trawling through endless pages of dishes, each deceptively and superficially like another before it, but on closer inspection it is the garnish that differs. You know what you want to eat. You choose your restaurant accordingly. You arrive, peruse briefly, order and eat. It leaves the mind more available to conversation and engagement with your dining companion(s), or more available to wander in its own realms if dining alone.
There has been a definite shift towards simplified eating – whether it be simplified, pared down menus, or simplified tastes, there has been a marked interest in and clamour for anti-restaurants. Just walk past Princi in Soho and watch the hordes of people all through the day, especially at dinner, there to eat with friends in a completely informal environment. It is, essentially, a shiny, souped up, cafeteria. You point and they dish. Simple but very effective.
The specifically focussed restaurants offer the same ease of access. And actually, when you think about it, many of them don’t market themselves as ‘restaurants’. Thus this rash of new terminology for describing a place where one eats: joints, houses, places, canteens, stands, outlets, diners, delis, cafés, counters and grills. Anything to avoid the ‘r’ word and the realm of napkins, silver-service, hushed tones and high priced bills.
But, as with any fad, the down-side is the hype. And the hype is what apparently blinds people to being objective, or even subjective about what they are experiencing. If it says it in the name, surely it must be good. If they have the guts to only serve this dish, surely they must serve it well. If you can’t order anything but that thing, then surely that thing will be the best example of the thing you’ve ever eaten.
Theoretically.
All over the continent, speciality restaurants are the norm. It is, in fact, the abnorm to find a restaurant that offers a variety of dishes or cuisines. Just like their shops (butchers, bakers, patisseries, green-grocers, fishmongers, wine merchants), so too their restaurants are focussed on one or a few dishes, without fuss and without clamour. It just makes sense to them. Focus on one thing and that thing will be done better. It takes only a brief sojourn with our European neighbours to see who, out of us and them, does it better.
But, here in the UK some do their ‘thing’ very well. In London, Hawksmoor springs to mind. Franco Manca. Shoryu. Others do it mediocrely. And others should be hung, drawn and quartered. But then it is partly our faults as diners who encourage gimmick over reality that these pirate ‘joints’ continue.
Vive la France, viva l’Italia, viva Espana.
Off with their heads. Walk the plank. Don’t toe the line.
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