"It's lovely going out for dinner in London. It's a gastro capital with cuisines from all around the world. One night, Indian, French the next, Peruvian, Ethiopian. You can travel the globe without leaving Hackney. This time of year, I'm super busy planning the un-Royal Variety show a punk pastiche of the royal version and so I can't be bothered with meal prep and washing up, and find myself eating out an awful lot."
"Most food trends I can get behind (with the exception of truffle yuck!). But one pernicious dining trend that refuses to go away and which I detest is small plates. My heart sinks and I become inwardly furious when I sit down and the waiter asks, Have you been here before?. No, it's our first time. Well, we do small plates' and we suggest you order between three and 20 per person."
"People think I'm a hipster, being an east London drag queen, but I've got nothing on the purveyors of caulifower bites. Suddenly you're hanging out a tenner here, a tenner there, for tiny saucers of pomegranate seeds, things sprinkled in petals and a random blow-torched lettuce leaf. Just give me a bloody dinner! And then your friend inevitably says, Let's just get lots of things and share. NOOO!!! Don't make me share my dinner with you as if we're a pack of wild cats."
London offers a vast range of international cuisines across neighborhoods like Hackney, enabling frequent dining out. Meal-prep and cleanup fatigue drives reliance on restaurants. Full, plated dinners are preferred over small-plates menus that fragment meals into many expensive, tiny dishes and encourage compulsory sharing. Small plates provoke frustration when waitstaff suggest ordering several items per person and when sharing replaces individual meals. QR-code menus and contactless payment prompts are intrusive during social meals. Strong nostalgia for 1970s Kent upbringing surfaces, recalling food served directly from the pan in working-class homes and a dislike of culinary affectations.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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