The Joy Of Eating, Living & Breathing Food
And how it's both always and never been this way
In between part one of our breakfast and part two of our snacky lunch (it feels important to mention that these two meals were consumed in the same establishment, within 15 minutes of each other), I scribbled down the menu of what might never become Kettle Kitchen, an imaginary space where I’d serve up food in a white wooden shed in an unknown bucolic (but semi-urban) location:
Tortilla oozing with orange juice-hued yolks and soft, falling-apart potatoes, and mere traces of onions that will have melted into the mixture; just as good as the one at Tranga in Newington Green. Rice, naturally, cooked in stock and kimchi juice then fried with whatever root veg has been dug up from the garden, topped with a golden fried egg. Miyaguk soup: salty, garlicky, brothy and studded with seaweed. A good old fashioned ham or cheese (or both) sandwich. Chicken caesar salad dripping with anchovies. Kimchijeon pancakes made by my mum on special occasions.
It takes me the time that Lucy queues at Lille Bakery for our sausage and mushroom rolls, and a bowl of tart, yielding beetroot slices nestled into red kale and pickled shallots, to write this menu fever dream down. She arrives with another filter coffee and before she sits down I say, “you’ll never guess what I’ve done,” and she says, “what?” with a little glimmer in her eye, and I tell her I’ve written an imaginary menu and she laughs but looks at me very seriously afterwards and says: “go on then, what are we serving up?” We daydream together.
We’ve spent the past 48 hours eating our way through Copenhagen, dissecting every bite and asking each other unhinged questions about which dishes are our favourites from each restaurant; where in London to eat a cheap but delicious lunch; and where we’d compromise on the food for a good vibe. There is no end to these kind of conversations; simply small ellipses when whipped butter (Atelier September), cold fried chicken (Pompette), drinkable tahini (Apollo Bar) or hot-sauced oysters (Bottega Barlie) enter our mouths and prevent us from speaking - if only for a few seconds.
I don’t stop thinking about my imaginary cafe, where we’d only be open Tuesday to Saturday from 10am-3pm. The rest of the time I’d be digging up and planting things in the allotment, gathering a glut of vegetables to make up next week’s menu. The colour scheme would be whipped butter yellow, the brown of mapo tofu sauce and the green of wild garlic.
When Lucy leaves on Sunday night, I realise that I have no one to talk to about the unexpected pearl barley in the mushroom roll, or how good cold fried chicken tastes with whipped goat’s cheese and a drizzle of honey. We find new adjectives to express our joy. Good no longer feels adequate. Ting. Really, really, really great. Yep. Emphatic nods. Even more emphatic pointing at the dish. Often, just a little curl of the lip, next a meeting of the eyes, silence, then a lengthy dissection of all the sum of its parts.
In the past forty eight hours, I’ve dedicated almost every morsel of conversation to the minutae of each bite we’ve taken. It takes a certain kind of friend who is able to do this with me. Luckily I have quite a few of them; good and patient and willing participants who don’t tire of my constant delight and examination of even the most prosaic of foods. In fact, these are the foods that are most exciting to me. Right now I’m distracted by the smell of lemon zest and olive oil and basil and how astoundingly simple and clever it is to use these three ingredients – humble, everyday, familiar – to dress a bowl of porridge.
It has both always been this way, and also not been this way at least for a few difficult years.
I grew up in a household that was subtly (but utterly) obsessed with food. School lunches were usually thermoses filled with my mum’s famous fried rice, celebrated in the playground, packed in tight, still steaming hot, friends crowding around me, begging for a bite. I don’t actively remember every exciting, joyful, food-filled moment of my childhood; perhaps because it was so brimming with them, that I can’t pick out one from another. But we still talk about the meals we’ve had over various holidays with wild excitement at the dinner table. The fresh Maine lobster dripping with butter in Bar Harbour. The many McMuffins we’ve eaten in hotel rooms and how American McDonald's just do hash browns better. The view from the restaurant that look out onto Table Mountain. The best steak of anyone’s life in San Sebastian.
This excitement over food began to wane in the middle of university, turning my obsession sour. It wasn’t years of being at an all girls school that had given me an eating disorder; in fact it was my entry into normal society, full of boys and sex and parties and drinking and a different kind of comparison that did. For years, I would think about food every single second of the day. But not in the way that I had before, or that I do now. Instead, these were darker thoughts that blamed food for what I saw in the mirror. I was obsessed with the impact of food, acutely aware of how it changed my body, even if it was unnoticeable to anyone else.
These were not joyful days.
I tell Lucy, and people, and myself, that this mindset has morphed but that it never truly disappears. Instead, I have to make active choices to find joy in food. The biggest difference is the way that I approach the subject of food in my mind. It is rarely about what it does to my body (although, admittedly, sometimes it can be); instead it’s about the steps that it takes to get to me. Which is incredible in and of itself. The sown seeds. The way farmers nurture their crops. The millions of varietals that offer up myriad colours and shapes and sizes and forms. The way they’re displayed in shops, that they’re bought by us and turned into something unexpected, or completely expected, but for the pure purpose of making someone happy, satisfied and nourished. Call me a hippie, but I think that’s a reason to celebrate every bite that we take.
In many ways, I think it’s why I write about food every week. Not to further a career. Not even to figure out life (although it certainly is a helpful lens), but to continue thinking about food as something joyful. I’ve noticed that even when I am negative about the outcome of food (i.e. what I look like), I very rarely blame the food itself anymore. That is something I have grown out of. Of course, I try not to blame anyone, especially not myself (or ‘Western beauty standards’, which has always been my alternative scapegoat). I simply accept that there will be bad days and embarrassing tears in front of wonderful, kind, patient friends. And that the next day, I’ll probably make a smoothie, or fry an egg, or eat some rice and life will be full of joy again.
I see taking up space with conversations about food as an act of defiance. Less to society – who I truly don’t think particularly cares about my eating habits or issues or bodyweight – but to myself. To indulge and luxuriate in the very thing that feels like the Achilles heel to my insecurity, is a bit of a fuck you to my inner demon that tries to expel the joy of food from my body.
I can resonate with this so much Cat!! Hope you're loving CPH - stop by Studio X Kitchen if you get the chance and Fabro Pasta if you get anther chance x