I seem to spend much of my time in this blog defining what I'm not and what I don't do. Well here I go again: I am definitely not a food blogger.
There are a number of reasons for this, but most of them come back to my general laziness. This does not mean I am not in to food. On the contrary, when discussing my plans for the weekend with a colleague, he pointed out that my spare time revolves around the acquisition and consumption of food. My response was that one's spare time should revolve around food and light entertainment, what else is there?
I guess if I take last weekend as an example, there was quite a lot of food. After the gym on Friday night I went for steak with some friends. After rising late on Saturday, MsP and I tried a new place for brunch (Nude Espresso - very good), and got some bagels from the all night bagel shop, before going to Maltby Street Market. Really we were too late for the market, but we still managed to get chopped liver from Monty's Deli and a chicken from The Butchery. This latter was quite important for me as I've been looking for a good butcher for the last six months, and The Butchery is a bloody good butcher. They were closing when I got there, but I saw enough of their meat to know I'm going back. As we'd missed most of Maltby Street, we headed over to Borough Market to get the vegetables and bread. We roasted the chicken that very night and ate it with rice and a couple of top notch salads that are MsP's specialty (salads, gravy and risotto - I don't even try). The next day after a lunch from the Ribman at the Brick Lane Sunday food market, I made stock from the chicken carcass, some of which I used in the Bolognese sauce I made for eating during the week (a Felicity Cloake/Elizabeth David hybrid since you ask). We finished the weekend off with cold chicken, more excellent salads and 30 Rock. See: food and light entertainment.
OK, so last weekend was an extreme example, but I aim for my weekends to be like that as often as possible. What I love is that I can. This is at least partly due to the fact that I live in a large city that has in recent years gone food crazy, but it is also due partly to how this food craziness manifests itself. As with everything else these days it revolves around the internet and the technologies we use on the internet. I found out about two of the places I bought food from last weekend from Twitter and a third from a food blog.
When I was waiting tables in a hotel as a student in the days before cameraphones, someone told the chef that a diner had taken a photo of his food. The chef's response was "what an idiot, why'd he do that" (I am fairly certain that he used expletives, but as I can't clearly remember how, I have omitted them). To be fair this response was largely because the chef thought the food he was serving that evening was not worth photographing and he was right. However, the fact that anyone would bother to remark upon the fact of a diner taking a photo of their food seems so alien to our current food landscape as to seem ridiculous. Indeed, I am almost surprised to get through a meal in a restaurant these days without someone photographing their food, and half the time it's someone at my table. Occasionally it's me.
Even though I engage in this form of culinary documentation from time to time, I'm not quite sure why. I guess it adds to the conversation when I see friends: "I saw you ate x at y." It could be seen as a sort of brag, as in "check what I'm eating," but it doesn't really work unless you are in some utterly unobtainable restaurant (El Bulli, or right now, Dabbous), and I simply don't know any people who get tables at such places. So I guess it's more a way of sharing joy about food. And that has to be a good thing. Good food should be joyful. I will always remember my first bite of the corn cob at the centre of my main course at Greens in San Francisco. MsP said my face lit up with a look that one only gets from wonderfully surprising food. It is only logical that given the ability, we share the peripheral details of such joy with friends, and through social networks we enable them to find the same food for themselves, even if it's not pinned down. I doubt that the current street-food bonanza would have been anywhere near as successful ten years ago, without Twitter to guide the punters in.
Really I guess that kind of casual food tweeting (instagramming, lockerzing or whatever) is a form of food blogging that requires much less of the time, effort and discernment needed to actually write a proper food blog. Not to mention money. I marvel at some of these bloggers. I mean I spend a fair portion of my disposable income on food, yet many of the serious food bloggers must spend several times what I do on food every month. They must be very well off, or make considerable sacrifices in other areas of their lives. Obviously, not all food bloggers are endlessly chasing the latest high-end restaurant week in week out, many write about the many alternative ways to avail oneself of good food, but all appear equally fanatical. I guess it's just a form of fanaticism that translates well to a blog, or perhaps it's just what I'm willing to read about.
Food can be as faddish as fashion: one day it's all cupcakes, the next it's macaroons (I'm told it's all Lameters right now) and the internet just exaggerates this by disseminating fad further and faster than was previously possible. At least it also means that we all get a chance (in theory at least) to enjoy these fads before they pass.
There are a number of reasons for this, but most of them come back to my general laziness. This does not mean I am not in to food. On the contrary, when discussing my plans for the weekend with a colleague, he pointed out that my spare time revolves around the acquisition and consumption of food. My response was that one's spare time should revolve around food and light entertainment, what else is there?
I guess if I take last weekend as an example, there was quite a lot of food. After the gym on Friday night I went for steak with some friends. After rising late on Saturday, MsP and I tried a new place for brunch (Nude Espresso - very good), and got some bagels from the all night bagel shop, before going to Maltby Street Market. Really we were too late for the market, but we still managed to get chopped liver from Monty's Deli and a chicken from The Butchery. This latter was quite important for me as I've been looking for a good butcher for the last six months, and The Butchery is a bloody good butcher. They were closing when I got there, but I saw enough of their meat to know I'm going back. As we'd missed most of Maltby Street, we headed over to Borough Market to get the vegetables and bread. We roasted the chicken that very night and ate it with rice and a couple of top notch salads that are MsP's specialty (salads, gravy and risotto - I don't even try). The next day after a lunch from the Ribman at the Brick Lane Sunday food market, I made stock from the chicken carcass, some of which I used in the Bolognese sauce I made for eating during the week (a Felicity Cloake/Elizabeth David hybrid since you ask). We finished the weekend off with cold chicken, more excellent salads and 30 Rock. See: food and light entertainment.
OK, so last weekend was an extreme example, but I aim for my weekends to be like that as often as possible. What I love is that I can. This is at least partly due to the fact that I live in a large city that has in recent years gone food crazy, but it is also due partly to how this food craziness manifests itself. As with everything else these days it revolves around the internet and the technologies we use on the internet. I found out about two of the places I bought food from last weekend from Twitter and a third from a food blog.
When I was waiting tables in a hotel as a student in the days before cameraphones, someone told the chef that a diner had taken a photo of his food. The chef's response was "what an idiot, why'd he do that" (I am fairly certain that he used expletives, but as I can't clearly remember how, I have omitted them). To be fair this response was largely because the chef thought the food he was serving that evening was not worth photographing and he was right. However, the fact that anyone would bother to remark upon the fact of a diner taking a photo of their food seems so alien to our current food landscape as to seem ridiculous. Indeed, I am almost surprised to get through a meal in a restaurant these days without someone photographing their food, and half the time it's someone at my table. Occasionally it's me.
Even though I engage in this form of culinary documentation from time to time, I'm not quite sure why. I guess it adds to the conversation when I see friends: "I saw you ate x at y." It could be seen as a sort of brag, as in "check what I'm eating," but it doesn't really work unless you are in some utterly unobtainable restaurant (El Bulli, or right now, Dabbous), and I simply don't know any people who get tables at such places. So I guess it's more a way of sharing joy about food. And that has to be a good thing. Good food should be joyful. I will always remember my first bite of the corn cob at the centre of my main course at Greens in San Francisco. MsP said my face lit up with a look that one only gets from wonderfully surprising food. It is only logical that given the ability, we share the peripheral details of such joy with friends, and through social networks we enable them to find the same food for themselves, even if it's not pinned down. I doubt that the current street-food bonanza would have been anywhere near as successful ten years ago, without Twitter to guide the punters in.
Really I guess that kind of casual food tweeting (instagramming, lockerzing or whatever) is a form of food blogging that requires much less of the time, effort and discernment needed to actually write a proper food blog. Not to mention money. I marvel at some of these bloggers. I mean I spend a fair portion of my disposable income on food, yet many of the serious food bloggers must spend several times what I do on food every month. They must be very well off, or make considerable sacrifices in other areas of their lives. Obviously, not all food bloggers are endlessly chasing the latest high-end restaurant week in week out, many write about the many alternative ways to avail oneself of good food, but all appear equally fanatical. I guess it's just a form of fanaticism that translates well to a blog, or perhaps it's just what I'm willing to read about.
Food can be as faddish as fashion: one day it's all cupcakes, the next it's macaroons (I'm told it's all Lameters right now) and the internet just exaggerates this by disseminating fad further and faster than was previously possible. At least it also means that we all get a chance (in theory at least) to enjoy these fads before they pass.
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