Jun

Overcoming a Bad Case of Food Fatigue

Sean Sellers in News food, Food Fatigue, Food Writing, Rationing, Recipe, Wahaca Mexican Market Eating

After a month-long hiatus, InterWined.com is pleased to announce the return of ‘Blow the Bank’.

Each week, as Web editor and contributor to InterWined.com, I seek out one great wine for one great meal and publish the recipe to celebrate the end of another working week. But that’s not all…from now on, I’ll also bring you the occasional restaurant review and dinner recommendation too — all in my quest to overcome two little, but powerful words. Food Fatigue.

It might sound a bit absurd and certainly more a than a little bit privileged to say that I’d grown tired of food — considering the shortages and increased risks of famine affecting the developing nations of Africa and Asia — but like the US retailers in April of this year that decided to limit the number of 20lb bags of rice one person could purchase in a single checkout to less than five and those that saw the action as a precursor to Depression-era ‘food rationing’, food was beginning to drive me beyond food heaven and round the bend to something akin to food hell. Who knew, except for every philosopher and theologian worth his or her salt, that heaven and hell lived so close to each other they could probably pick up each other’s WiFi signal and carpool to work?

Like the Barking Road in East London where the street numbers mysteriously repeat for no discernable reason once you pass a certain junction (True Story!), it’s all quite enough to drive you…well, barking. And, after writing about food at InterWined for the better part of the last year, that’s where I’d found myself — at the wrong end of Barking Road. While it’s not particularly important or terribly interesting to explain what led me to that strange street in East London, what my venture into Bizarro World proved was that somewhere along the line I’d got lost on the road to food heaven and ended staring the door to food hell right in the face. But, rather than open the door, I stood outside for a bit and prepared to make my way back to the crossroads where it all went wrong.

The challenge of food writing is one shared with almost everyone that ever put pen to paper and spelled out a word. It’s been said, and it’s all been said by someone else. It doesn’t even matter if it’s been said any better or any worse than you. This is especially true when one considers the task confronting food & wine writing. There are only so many ways to describe the taste of a grape or how to prepare meat, fish, and vegetables, without sounding like the most pretentious of critics and connoisseurs or making it up. (I’m talking to you ‘gooseberry’ scribes! How many gooseberries do have to eat exactly before you can begin to smell it in Sauvignon Blanc?)

So, feeling stale and with little inclination to fake it and go through the motions, I took a month-long hiatus in which to re-establish my relationship with food and find inspiration in the kitchens and markets of London and Rome. In Rome, I enjoyed an Aperativo — a kind of free-with-a-drink Milanese tapas — of suppli and all manner crostini at the popular Fluid in Campo del Fiori and a Kosher Italian feast of Pate di Fegato (essentially chopped liver) and poached veal tongue at a small trattoria near the city’s main synagogue. While back in the Big Smoke that is London, I made sure not to miss a couple of helpings of tacos and quesadillas at what must certainly London’s best Mexican restaurant, Wahaca Mexican Market — oh, how I’ve longed for you — in between gorging on several bags of Wasabi peanuts and chocolate-coated sunflower seeds from Cranberry in London Bridge and Bond Street underground stations.

Now, I’m back, feeling rested, with some new ideas and new recipes. See you Friday for a chance to ‘Blow the Bank’.

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