The Oldie magazine - August 2021 issue (403)

Page 32

Why all the fuss? From smart restaurants to burger bars, they’re all at it, pouring poncy sauces on strange creations. Ray Connolly longs for meat and two veg

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hat do Robespierre, the late Duke of Westminster and I have in common? Probably not much, other than that none of us ever liked fancy food. Robespierre sent hundreds of French aristocrats to the guillotine while reportedly living on a bowl of gruel a day. The Duke of Westminster, despite his billions, never wanted much more than an omelette in the evening. And me? I was a war baby, and a war baby’s tastes were and are mine. Plain is best. But if I go out to eat, where will I find anything plain these days? The restaurant world is flooded with funny foods. There I sit, balefully studying the menu, searching for something I recognise. Yet whenever my eyes alight on a dish I fancy, I find that it comes with some kind of alien sauce. I hate sauces. Sauces are disguises created by self-aggrandising establishments to hide what they are serving and we are eating. I like to see, and know, what I’m eating. What, for instance, is ‘taïnori chocolate with hazelnut voatsiperifery pepper’? Foodies might know that taïnori chocolate comes from the Dominican Republic, and that voatsiperifery is a relative of black pepper, its berries being used in a spice, its name coming from voa, the Malagasy word for fruit. But I didn’t. And, to be honest, it doesn’t sound much like a dessert of chocolate mousse with a hazelnut on top that I could safely eat – because I hate anything peppery. If I ate it, I’d need a Gaviscon on the side. The blessed time was when I could go into a restaurant and ask for meat and two veg – and get meat and two veg. Simple and perfect. These days, we’ve elevated cooks with big hats into chefs and made them as famous as footballers. They are all superstars now, gastronomic maestros, forever outdoing each other with their condiments and seasonings until we have no idea what we’re eating. 32 The Oldie August 2021

A good meal spoiled: I blame Fanny and Johnnie Cradock

Even burger bars are at it, with their garnishings of ketchup or brown sauce, cemented together with cheese and onions and who knows what else, when all I want is a plain burger in a bun. It wouldn’t be so bad if fancy food hadn’t become a status symbol, but now it is often served in the most humble of homes. There I go, looking forward to a good natter with my old mates, when a plate of what looks like something unmentionable in polite society appears before me. What should I do? Insult my dearest friends, ruin everyone’s evening and risk killing our friendship by refusing to eat whatever it is? Or groan, rub my tummy, claim a sudden attack of diverticulitis and say, ‘I’m terribly sorry, but…’? I haven’t the nerve. So I close my eyes, open my mouth and pray to God that the meal doesn’t taste as horrible as it looks. I blame foreign holidays, Fanny Cradock and her husband, Johnnie, back in the fifties. She might only have been

I close my eyes, open my mouth and pray to God it doesn’t taste as horrible as it looks

showing us how to make an omelette, but that hand on her whisk was bewitching. If just a sprinkling of parsley or thyme could completely change the taste of egg and cheese, what could a pinch of cayenne do to a Welsh rarebit? She and Johnnie became stars, and television discovered the cheapest way to mesmerise the nation: cookery programmes. No evening on BBC1 is now complete without a hold-your-breath, anxious, phoney wait at the end of a knockout competition to find out which of the tearful, trembling contestants has baked the best pie. Baked a pie! Humans have been baking pies since they learned how to light a fire. It’s hardly a new achievement. But The Great British Bake Off now has millions of fans, some still mooning over the lovely Nadiya, while others wonder why Mary Berry left the show. Who needs soap operas when we have bake-offs? We might have thought lockdown would have returned us to old-fashioned home cooking. But what chance does tradition have when commercials bring floods of custard and orgies of eating … all available, with a few keyboard clicks, from a takeaway? There they go, night and day, food couriers on motorbikes, zipping past our house with their varied cargoes of curried, vegan, vegetarian, organic, ethically sourced pizzas, pastas and stir-fried everything. Come on, it’s only food – the stuff that every living organism shovels into itself on a daily basis in order to survive. But, in its ever more diversified forms, it’s become a national obsession. And I just don’t get it. How did funny-tasting food ever get so exalted? How did exotic eating become so fashionable? And how do restaurant critics manage to write a thousand words a week without repeating themselves? Ray Connolly is author of Being John Lennon (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)


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Articles inside

Ask Virginia Ironside

5min
pages 98-100

Crossword

3min
pages 89-90

On the Road: Roy Strong

4min
pages 86-88

Taking a Walk: Strolling by Old Father Thames

3min
page 85

The Middle Kingdom: the splendours of Meath

7min
pages 80-81

Overlooked Britain: The New House, near Tunbridge Wells,

4min
pages 82-84

Drink Bill Knott

5min
page 71

Exhibitions Huon Mallalieu

2min
pages 67-68

Golden Oldies John Stoker

4min
page 66

Music Richard Osborne

3min
page 65

Television Roger Lewis

5min
page 64

Film: Now, Voyager

3min
page 62

History

4min
page 61

The Paper Palace, by Miranda Cowley Heller Alex Clark

4min
pages 55-56

Media Matters

4min
page 57

Borges and Me: An Encounter, by Jay Parini

5min
pages 51-52

Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse, by Dave Goulson

5min
pages 49-50

Prisoners of Time: Prussians Germans and Other Humans, by Christopher Clark

3min
pages 53-54

The Making of Oliver Cromwell, by Ronald Hutton

3min
pages 45-46

The Doctor’s Surgery

10min
pages 39-41

Autograph obsessive

6min
pages 28-29

Country Mouse

4min
page 31

I hate fussy food Ray Connolly

4min
pages 32-34

Small World

4min
page 35

Bob, the gallant, Scottish

6min
pages 22-24

The genius of Alec Guinness

5min
pages 26-27

Town Mouse

4min
page 30

My gossip days are over

4min
page 19

The super Mini Cooper

4min
page 13

Gyles Brandreth’s Diary

4min
page 9

Felicity Kendal, still living the good life at 75 Simon Hemelryk

3min
page 11

Postcards from the Edge

4min
pages 20-21

Bliss on Toast Prue Leith

3min
pages 7-8

Grumpy Oldie Man

4min
page 10

The Old Un’s Notes

6min
pages 5-6
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