Extreme Cuisine: When it comes to accepting or making recommendations about what and where to eat, Haydn Shaughnessy urges a little more self-confidence
A couple of days back on a trip to London, I sat in the garden restaurant of the new Rockwell Hotel in Earl's Court. Normally I avoid this part of London. I fear the ostracism and isolation that comes from the wall of cars heading in, heading out, on the ceaseless London commute.
But I'd been invited to try The Rockwell and the food was better than good, the atmosphere a little over jovial for my taste, and the lavender ice cream, well, a true signature piece.
My son, normally silenced by the early onset of teenage knowingness, was still talking about it on the plane home, like a kid.
Why, I was thinking, would I recommend this restaurant to other people? Why would I recommend any restaurant?
We ate also at the Ravi Shankhar in Drummond Street, close to Euston Station. The same question applies.
People recommend restaurants all the time. Every newspaper has a restaurant recommender, as do the magazines. Recommending is part of life. But when you recommend food, what is actually happening?
Restaurants are recommended on the strength of an ambience, the service and, of course, the quality of the food. I take issue with all the criteria food recommenders use because they omit the most important aspects of eating. The first is who you are with.
The late MFK Fisher was one writer for whom the only point of writing about food was the who. She wrapped food, restaurants, cuisine, in the shirt tails and napkins of the people who attempted, through their cooking, to inform her. She dressed her articles with the emotions that passed between those at the table with her.
The knowledge she sought, or at least found, was principally that owned by the provincial French chef, which brings me to the second and perhaps most important part of food recommending: Is it good for you?
Whether a meal or menu is actually good for the people we recommend to is the most complex food issue, perhaps a reason why it is routinely avoided.
The issue can be bypassed by sticking to the old mantra: Fresh, local, organic? then yes, it's good for you. Or it can be dismissed, jovially: In the end if a meal makes you happy, then it can't be all bad.
The answer, of course, is, sadly, frequently what makes us happy in culinary matters might well be all bad. But don't let's get pedantic. On the other hand, I like detail, so let's continue.
We now know that the gut is a vast tract of brain-like communications with the ability to manufacture the same enabling chemicals that the brain produces, chief among them serotonin, implicated in depression, anxiety, sexual appetite, or responsible for pleasure, depending on your point of view.
Knowing how to eat is, therefore, literally, a component of our personalities and by extension our relationships. We have as much responsibility to know the effect of food and company, as we do to speak well, converse intelligently and to have a sense of humour.
The knowledge of how food affects us is both more and less than knowing the vitamin, mineral and fibre content. It helps to know that food is depleted of selenium and that if you don't eat Brazil nuts you might want a selenium supplement. But this is chemistry and not at all the point. Food intelligence has to work at the level of your personality.
In my own case, for example, I know I need to eat foods that are hard to break down in the mouth. I eat eagerly and need to be forced by the recalcitrance of the food to chew thoroughly. If not, I simply swallow and regret it later when the slippery pastas and melting breads congeal in my stomach. I avoid Italian restaurants for that reason.
If I'm choosing a dessert I'm mindful of needing to eat more nuts so I look out for Greek and Indian desserts that make use of pistachios. For the same reason I'm attracted to main courses where fruit has been added.
As I'm the type who forever wants other people to be enjoying themselves, there are few people with whom I can eat in a peaceful frame of mind. Hence, I rarely take a three course meal when dining out. I just wouldn't digest it.
So would I recommend either the Rockwell or Ravi Shankhar for your next trip to London? Let me say I had an excellent meal at the Rockwell and an equally good one at Ravi Shankhars.
The company was relaxing which allowed me to eat properly, without rushing; the experience of introducing my son to adult dining will stay with me for some time; and I was able to enjoy a little indulgence, exciting tastes and a good balance of foods over the two meals.
The answer though is this: What I'd recommend more than anything is a break from recommendations and a course in eating with self-confidence. The part of our bodies that deals with food has a life independent from the one we think we are living. The digestion may be as intelligent as our brain but it's not necessarily in tune with it.
To be able to be true to ourselves we need to get back to the very basics. What we're hoping to do over the next few weeks is to look at how to set up a kitchen and a pantry that allows us to explore the core of what is good.
Shopping list
The Irish Nutrition and Dietetic Institute claims the majority of Irish people now eat four portions of fresh fruit and veg a day, one short of the magic five. I simply don't believe it.
My own shopping basket, for four children and two adults, would include:
6kg of apples, 2kg of tangerine or Clementine, 3kg potatoes, 2kg carrots, 1kg sweet potatoes, 1 cabbage, 1 cauliflower, Packs of green beans, mange touts, baby corn, beetroot. Two heads of broccoli. A bunch of spring onion, 1kg onions. A pack of salad leaves. Three tins of tomatoes. A pack of tomatoes. One aubergine. A cucumber. Garlic. A mango, pineapple or melon.
We also supplement this with shopping through the week. I doubt we ever go a week where we each eat five a day and every week we have the problem of throwing out rotted food (some of which is only a day or two out of the supermarket).
What can be done: shopping more frequently, diversifying the family dinner menu, snacking on fruit and raw vegetables, adding one raw ingredient per meal, and eating more vegetarian meals.