I was recently invited out for a meal with some people I hadn’t met before. On learning that I was a food writer, the first thing my neighbour at the table declared to me was, “For me, food is just fuel.” I replied, instantly, “Oh, for me it really isn’t.”
Food for me is freighted with meaning. It brings with it emotions and memories. One of the truths about food is that it has a connective, transporting power – a special capacity through taste, texture and smell to evoke places and memories. I appreciate this in a visceral way from my own childhood. Born in London to an English father and a Singaporean mother, I spent four years from the age of four to eight living in Singapore and then three years from the age of thirteen to sixteen living in Florence, Italy. Both places each have strong food cultures, but in different ways. Singapore - with its mixed population including Chinese, Malay, Indian, Peranakan and Eurasian communities and four national languages, -has a fascinating, diverse, complex, multi-cultural food scene. In Italy food is intensely regional, so living as I did in Tuscany I ate Tuscan food rooted in the area and the changing seasons: castagnaccio (chestnut cake), schiacciata all’uva (focaccia with grapes), pappardelle con cinghiale (wild boar). Underlying both Singaporean and Italian food cultures, however, is a widespread, democratic interest in good food. In these places it is both taken for granted and relished as a pleasure.
Back living in London, in my early twenties I found myself trying to recreate dishes that I was nostalgic for. In those days, English supermarkets didn’t stock the wide range of foods they do now. If I wanted ricotta or pancetta, I had to go to an Italian deli in Soho. Similarly, if I needed lemon grass or tofu for a recipe, I made my way to Chinatown. My interest in finding ingredients, meant that the first book I ever wrote, Food Lovers’ London (1991), was a guide to London’s cosmopolitan food shops arranged by cuisine, reflecting London’s diverse communities. In a pre-Internet age, researching it involved travelling all over London – north, south, east, west. It was fascinating seeing what London contained: Japanese supermarkets with immaculate displays - slices of fish and meat as dainty as petals – huge Gujurati greengrocers in Ealing Road with piles of produce, from tindori (ivy gourd) to bunches of fresh methi (fenugreek), Jewish bakeries doing brisk business in glossy bagels and plump cholla loaves, vibrant Brixton Market stalls heaped with yams, plantain, Scotch bonnet chillies, bunches of thyme, Lebanese food shops with specialist nut counters and mouthwatering trays of baklava. I was fascinated by the way these food shops and markets were so expressive of cuisines; how vital they were to the communities they catered for. Food is an important source of identity for ex-patriates; the flavours and textures of familiar, much-loved ingredients and dishes have an anchoring quality.
Food Lovers’ London, as I conceived it, was aimed both at people who were nostalgic for foods they knew and wanted to find and at adventurous cooks, keen to explore cuisines. Thinking back, I realise, that I was both of these. I was nostalgic for tastes of Singapore and Italy, but also enjoyed learning about cuisines I was unfamiliar with – African and Caribbean, Polish, Japanese to name but a few –and trying ingredients that were new to me like sumac, red snapper, breadfruit, Polish sausages . . .
Over the decades since I first wrote Food Lovers’ London, I’ve watched so many food shops I was fond of disappear. High rents are a recurring factor. Soho when I first charted its food shops was home to a number of Italian delis and a tiny, friendly, family-run Italian coffee shop called Angelucci ‘s, where during World War II General de Galle had bought his coffee beans (dark roast Brazilian) and which supplied Bar Italia with its signature espresso blend. There was a vintage Anglo-French grocers called Randall & Aubin, complete with a butchers’ counter offering a seasonal display of furred and feathered game. I was a regular at I Camisa, the small, old-fashioned Italian delicatessen on Old Compton Street. My mother used to take me there when I was a child, which is how I first knew it, and, in turn, I took our son there when he was a boy. Invariably when I took him, either Gaby, its genial owner and manager, or one of his staff would reach up and cut off a little plastic bag containing 3 sugared almonds and give it to him as a present – a human touch which was typical of how it was run. When you entered the shop it had a particular savoury smell, so tangible you could almost slice and taste it. The scent of salamis, Parma hams, cheeses, including Parmesan, dried mushrooms, salt cod, garlic bulbs, fresh bread rolls. Local chefs, including the late, great Alastair Little, bought supplies from I Camisa. I remember seeing a young girl in kitchen gear standing in the queue nervously clutching a list; she’d obviously been sent out on an errand. When she reached the counter, she was too shy to even look at Gaby. He said kindly “You have a list for me? Give me the list. Now, I’m going to make you a sandwich – do you want mortadella or Parma ham?” It was from I Camisa that I would buy fennel salsicce, studded with pieces of fat, little Parma ham cappelletti for quick easy supper or a made-to-order mortadella panino for a tasty lunch if I was in the vicinity. Gaby retired some years ago and I Camisa - which he ran with an eagle-eye on the quality of his stock - was never the same. Sadly, its owners, a wholesale Italian food importers, recently declared the shop was no longer profitable and closed it down. When I walk down Old Compton Street, it hurts me to see I Camisa boarded up and desolate. It feels like such a loss – the shop was a living link to the area’s Italian historian, an unpretentious, homely presence in what was once a little village community in London’s West End.
London, however, is an ever-changing city, forever in flux. I draw comfort from the fact that the Chinatown supermarkets, which I have also long shopped at, are still there, despite the tourist throngs swamping Gerrard Street. While I can no longer buy fresh pappardelle from I Camisa, I can buy fresh rice noodles, garlic shoots and lap cheong (Chinese sausage) from Xing Long Meng on Gerrard Street. A trip to Walthamstow with a fellow food-loving friend of mine, a chef from Sardinia who has long made London his home, was a tonic. We spent a companionable time visiting a diverse array of food shops, including a tiny Bulgarian bakery selling excellent sweet and savoury buns, a newly opened Ghanian shop scented with aromatic spices, a Turkish nut shop and a greengrocer selling Caribbean produce. Lunch was stuffed cabbage leaves at a large East European food shop cum cafe, followed by coffee at an Iranian bakery. The experience reminded to my research trips all over London, travelling to visit shops which were new to me. It was a happy reminder of just how rich London’s food scene is. While I enjoy eating out in restaurants, what I love about good food shops and markets is the special role they play in our lives. We have to eat to stay alive. The act of choosing and buying ingredients, taking them home, carefully transforming them through the alchemy of cooking and then eating what is, hopefully, a delicious meal is a concrete and satisfying process which continues to give me great pleasure.
