Good morning, and welcome to Vittles Restaurants. In today’s special dispatch from Issue 1 of our magazine, Aaron Timms reports on the invasion of America by a new wave of British food influencers — Topjaw, Eating with Tod, Jolly and Thomas Straker — and asks ‘what is it about privately-educated Englishmen that has such a hold over American society?’

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The British Influencer Invasion!

Topjaw, Eating with Tod, Jolly and Thomas Straker in America, by Aaron Timms

Ever since John, Paul, George and Ringo touched down at JFK airport in 1964, the British have been masters at feeding America back to itself. Today that metaphor works increasingly literally, as a fresh generation of British food influencers crosses the Atlantic with the aim of cracking – and eating – America. Topjaw, Eating with Tod and Jolly are among the leaders of this wave; more recently, they’ve been joined by chef Thomas Straker, a kitchen ‘bad boy’ so wild and unpredictable he is planning to capitalise on his online fame by doing the unthinkable and opening a restaurant in New York. These social media gourmands share a background (private school), a dress sense (gap-year casual) and a skin colour (white); their success in ingratiating themselves to the locals offers proof of the enduring hold that posh-sounding English blokes with floppy hair have over the American psyche. 

All of these influencers are creatures of video, existing in a permanent state of reel-packaged wow. But they each bring unique stylistic inflections and gimmicks to the earnest work of staying maximally amazed. Topjaw are a classic dom–sub duo in which one slightly better-looking friend (Jesse Burgess) commands the screen, while the other (Will Warr) is relegated to camera duties, rarely appearing in videos unless it’s to squint from a small gimp box tucked into a corner and say something like, ‘Er, what’s that mate?’ Jolly are another pair of ‘best friends’ who mostly operate on YouTube (‘We’re Josh and Ollie, and we’re very Jolly :D’ announces their bio, which gives a sense of the irrepressible smileyness of their online output); they strike me as the type of guys who put ‘haha’ at the end of every text to make sure it’s clear that they’re in a good mood.

Toby Inskip, the man behind Eating with Tod, has a sheer, hand-rubbing enthusiasm for the business of tucking in; indeed, the hand rub is his visual signature, usually performed with mouth agape and eyes bulging, a Soyjak-lite expression Inskip maintains through bone pulls, cheese spills, crumb displays and taco squeezes. Then there’s Straker, who’s notable in this universe not so much for the food he eats (though his mouth is a site of regular violence) as for what he makes: wood-fire cookery, seasonal small plates, and spunked-up British classics (pies, pasties, mashes and roasts) that follow contemporary dining trends so militantly they often seem like they’ve been generated by an algorithm. (Straker’s father was second in command of the SAS, so perhaps there’s a genetic explanation for this martial discipline.) 

Over the past year and a half or so, each influencer has feverishly filmed and posted videos of their eating exploits across America. Around New York, where I live, the interest in these characters is as palpable as it is mystifying: with the possible exception of Straker, who at least knows his way around a mallard, none of them has any great talent, charisma, or wit. But their cross-state jaunts and rising popularity are more than a mere testament to how far a modicum of confidence and a punctuating ‘Yeah?’ can still take you on these shores.

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Good morning and welcome to Vittles. Each Monday we publish a different piece of writing related to food, whether it’s an essay, a dispatch, a polemic, a review, or even poetry. This week, Simran Hans goes deep on the bizarrely compelling Ruthie’s Table 4, the star-studded River Café podcast which feels like a throwback to another era of celebrity.

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What the Fuck is the River Café Podcast?

As we reach peak celebrity food podcast, Simran Hans explores how Ruthie’s Table 4 uses the great leveller of food to consolidate an elite brand. Artwork by Dan Biddulph.

Here is a small selection of text messages I have either sent or received about Ruthie’s Table 4, a podcast I am quite simply obsessed with:

‘Rag and Bone man on River Cafe pod’

‘SJP talking about Genes on river cafe podcast’

‘The Austin Butler episode of the River Cafe podcast. He is the perfect himbo’

‘salman rushdie today! “Salman Rushdie, my friend”’

‘NOT RUTHIE AND WYCLEF RAPPING TODAY’S RECIPE?’

For more than a hundred episodes, its host, legendary restaurateur Ruth ‘Ruthie’ Rogers, chef-patron of the River Café, has gently bullied her celebrity customers (‘Who have become friends,’ she insists) into being interviewed about food and memory. A-listers like Ridley Scott, Will Ferrell, and Laura Dern are grilled about what they ate as children, whether they cook now, and, more importantly, how much they love the River Café (the fact that many of them probably work with nutritionists and employ private chefs is ignored). Guests are also made to read out a recipe – specifically one of Rogers’ own – from one of the River Café’s twelve published cookbooks, most of which were co-written with the late Rose Gray. On a recent episode, Rogers and Wyclef Jean rap the method for making her chargrilled peppers with anchovy and capers. ‘Fifty salt capers, soak soak soak! Let’s go y’all!’ he ad libs as Rogers reads the ingredients out with a stilted, staccato rhythm. ‘Hold up! 100 salted anchovies! Wyclef that refugee, c’mon!’ This somehow continues for a full three minutes.

As this suggests, listening to Ruthie’s Table 4 is a bizarre, surreal, and often unintentionally hilarious experience. Each week, I marvel at the calibre of the show’s guests – who, unlike most celebrities who appear on the interview circuit, are rarely there to promote anything specific. Which begs the questions: What the fuck is the River Café podcast? And: Why on earth does it exist?

Ruthie’s Table 4 is named after the best seat in the house at the River Café, which is in earshot of the bustling, bright yellow pass. It is a wry nod to the restaurant’s lore – which, if you’re listening to the podcast, you’ve probably already bought into. You’ll be at least somewhat familiar with the sleek chrome bar and plush blue carpet (which evoke the feeling of a modernist spaceship permanently parked in the 1990s), the famed ‘Chocolate Nemesis’ dessert, the fact that its alumni include April Bloomfield, Sam and Sam Clark, and Jamie Oliver. You’ll be aware of its lingering association with New Labour politicians, as well as numerous artists, actors, and musicians. I certainly was, the one and only time I ate at the River Café, in 2022, on my thirtieth birthday. The atmosphere was undeniably glamorous: I spotted Bryan Ferry dining a few tables away.

The podcast has a similar feel of a particular, timeless scene. ‘Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen are just some of the people who love to call the River Café home’ declares the iTunes description, a line-up that reflects the odd specificity of the restaurant’s starry milieu. Guests tend to be old-school famous, but usually that fame has peaked. Since it opened in 1987, the image the restaurant has cultivated is of a bohemian artists’ salon, but perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as a saloon for the bohemian-posh, for people who are left-ish in their politics but all firmly members of the establishment. Former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi is an archetypal guest: powerful, wealthy, and ‘liberal’, with immaculately coiffed hair. Rogers doesn’t book influencers or TikTokers on Ruthie’s Table 4, and neither has she interviewed a grime or reality TV star (or at least not yet), emphasising the River Café’s singular aspirational tastes. And although the podcast has welcomed a number of guests of colour, almost all of them move in elite creative circles: filmmaker Savanah Leaf, painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, architect David Adjaye, former British Vogue editor Edward Enninful.

Nearly every episode is recorded at the River Café, a strategy that appears to remove a layer of formality from the proceedings (either that, or Rogers’ guests are simply very comfortable in chic, expensive restaurants). Faux-relatable questions like ‘Have you ever worked in a restaurant?’ become comical when asked in such a rarefied setting, surrounded by dainty plates of primi and £450 bottles of Bianco Breg. Sometimes guests reflect on their class origins, but never on how class shapes their food choices today – any of the guests who came from more humble beginnings have surely transcended them now. The podcast tends to stick to safely apolitical territory, with food positioned as a great equaliser, but hearing Sarah Jessica Parker talk about going to the supermarket to buy Burford Browns, or Linda Evangelista reminisce about eggplant parmigiana, feels recherché rather than relatable. The world of the podcast is dramatically divorced from the realities of most listeners – it may even be divorced from the realities of the guests’ actual eating habits. But it doesn’t matter: it’s all part of the fantasy.

The universe of Ruthie’s Table 4 is a cosy one, full of delicious food and soothing anecdotes. ‘What’s your comfort food?’ Rogers asks at the end of every show (she, of course, has made her name by elevating Italian comfort cooking). The answers are alternately playful – a packet of salt and vinegar Discos (David Beckham) – and nostalgic – mashed potato and onion gravy (Judi Dench); basic – cold cereal and milk, medium soggy (Jeff Goldblum) and indulgent – coffee ice cream and Oreos (Glenn Close). Sometimes they are obviously made up – ‘One of your thin vegan pizzas’ (Al Gore). Such softball questions mean the podcast stays firmly within the bounds of publicist-approved conversation, producing positive – if bland – coverage for Rogers’ guests. After Victoria Beckham’s episode, outlets including Vogue ran stories about her highly specific diet, as if Posh Spice being a fussy eater is some kind of revelation.

If the podcast is meant to be an advert for the River Café, it’s something of a gamble. The recipe reading is particularly baffling. Having some of the most well-known voices in the world read out your work is undoubtedly a flex, but has just as much potential to sound awkward as it does charming. While it’s delightful to listen to Wes Anderson narrate the recipe for roast pigeon stuffed with cotechino with a cadence straight out of one of his films, or to Jude Law reading the method for pear and almond tart as if it were an erotic poem, Pete Davidson rattles through the recipe for zucchini and cannellini bean soup with considerably less conviction. By the end, he sounds relieved the ordeal is over. ‘My first time reading a recipe,’ he admits, later joking that he often makes instant noodles with hot water from his coffee machine.

Bemusement and occasional mild horror – the feelings that this segment evokes (in this listener, at least) – generally do not translate into cookbook sales or table reservations. What the podcast is more successful at selling, however, is a narrative; Ruthie’s Table 4 is the natural extension of an already-media-savvy brand. After all, Rogers and Gray were pioneers of the now-obligatory restaurant cookbook, and fronted several TV cookery shows in the mid-nineties. It was former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter who told Rogers she should start a podcast: a consolidation of her media empire as well as her social scene.

Rogers’ personal address book has allowed her to secure significantly higher-profile guests than many of her competitors. The celebrities on Ruthie’s Table 4 are already likely to be found at the River Café, unlike those dining at Jessie Ware’s mum’s house on Table Manners, or at James Acaster and Ed Gamble’s fantasy restaurant on Off Menu. Importantly, the interviews rely on her relationships, not her research. Rogers is a chef, not a journalist, and certainly not a podcaster: there is no expectation that she will deliver something polished, so stumbles, pauses, and crosstalk are rarely edited out. The seventy-five-year-old is a warm host, charming, convivial and flirtatious (if not exactly slick), her soft mid-Atlantic drawl conveying a mix of charisma and authority. It means she can get away with interrupting her guests’ anecdotes with near-constant ‘Mmhmms’ and ‘Yeahs’ (as she does with Nigella Lawson).

It’s telling that the podcast was rebranded as Ruthie’s Table 4 after initially debuting as River Café Table 4. For Rogers herself, the benefits of the podcast are self-evident: each episode showcases her seemingly authentic personal relationships with the A-list, and positions her as utterly central to London’s food scene. These celebrity endorsements are more subtle than sponcon, wiped clean of the déclassé #AD and #PaidPartnership declarations required by social media. In the show’s inaugural episode, a self-conscious Jake Gyllenhaal frets about having to follow Ralph Fiennes and Michael Caine (Rogers had sent him rough cuts of their recipe readings). ‘I should give up now,’ he says with a nervous chuckle, concerned he can’t compete with their refined English charm. Gathering himself, he smoothly improvises an intro: ‘I’m Jake Gyllenhaal, and there is truly nothing like Ruthie’s slow-cooked tomato sauce.’ Guests are not obliged to wax lyrical about the River Café, but given that the interviews take place at the restaurant, more often than not, they do. Being on home turf further consolidates this odd imbalance, with Rogers seemingly holding all the power.

In many ways, Ruthie’s Table 4 feels like a throwback to the TV chat shows of the nineties. The energy is loose, the stories are ridiculous, and it’s impossible to guess who Rogers will host from week to week. Crucially, listening to the podcast is actually fun, and every Tuesday I find myself excitedly refreshing my podcast app. Where else could you hear Keira Knightley’s husband (formerly of the Klaxons) bragging about spending £100 on imported citrus at Leila’s Shop and eating so much of it that he vomited, or Austin Butler recounting a bleary-eyed breakfast at Baz Luhrmann’s after a post-Elvis bacchanal. (‘Austin is a brilliant actor, a beautiful singer, a poet, and a true friend. And Austin is my family,’ says Rogers, without a flicker of irony.) Ruthie’s Table 4 is smug and delicious, appealing to listeners’ nosiness about how the other half shop, cook, and eat. Against my better judgement, I can’t help but pull up a chair. 

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Credits

Simran Hans is a writer in London. Her work has been published in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Observer, the Financial Times, GQ, VICE, and many others.

The artwork is by Dan Biddulph.

The full Vittles masthead can be found here.

Good morning and welcome to Vittles. Each Monday we publish a different piece of writing related to food, whether it’s an essay, a dispatch, a polemic, a review, or even poetry. This week’s newsletter — on the best London pubs to find the beer on everyone’s lips right now — is by Jimmy McIntosh.

If you wish to receive Vittles Recipes on Wednesday and Vittles Restaurants on Friday for £5 a month or £45 a year, then please subscribe below – each subscription helps us pay writers fairly and gives you access to our entire back catalogue.

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Where To Find The Best Pints Of John Smith's In London

The perfect pint is out there — if you know where to look. Words by Jimmy McIntosh.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you won’t have failed to notice that one beer is having more than a bit of a moment right now: John Smith’s. The beloved creamy bitter from Tadcaster has gone from fusty old-man’s drink to fad beer almost overnight, thanks in no small part to northerners in London, perfectionist landlords and an army of online influencers who can be seen rating pints in the capital’s best pubs. The hype is inescapable. You see it in the pub gardens, where rumbustious boys with football scarves tied around their heads compare cream-topped glasses, endlessly angling them to confirm that they have, indeed, got the perfect pint. You see it in the effusive puff pieces from privately educated journalists who’d never drunk a drop of the brown stuff until 2023. You see it on social media, in the hyper-local London meme accounts which have made the consumption of John Smith’s a conscientious lifestyle choice, along with Perelló olives and wild garlic. All of this, coupled with the drink’s strong branding (those award-winning Jack Dee adverts, its iconic Magnet logo that adorns the walls of pubs throughout the country) has seen John Smith’s slowly take over Britain, to the point where it is now the UK’s number-one keg ale brand.

However, not every pint of John Smith’s is poured equal. Booze expert @millionbevs, tells me that ‘I’ve never known such a wildly varied pint – it could be piss and vinegar and old boots, or it could be the nicest pint ever.’ This is because, despite being produced in industrial quantities, micro-adjustments by the bartender can affect the final quality of the beer. First of all, John Smith’s needs to be kept at the optimum 6–7°C. Secondly, unlike other beers, which can be served from an unwashed receptacle covered in grease marks, the John Smith’s glass must always be clean and embossed with the Magnet logo – no drinking Extra Smooth from a Stella Artois goblet (despite the drink tasting more or less exactly the same no matter what vessel it’s in). Finally, it needs to be made with a patented one-part pour at forty-five degrees. 

But there is one other crucial element: the people. A pint of John Smith’s cannot be purposefully poured by just anyone. It is a skill, a science – perhaps even an art form. Quality Wines chef and Yorkshireman Nick Bramham tells me that part of the appeal of John Smith’s is in observing the craft and ritual that goes into making it. ‘It’s the studied nonchalance of the barmaid’s pour,’ he tells me. ‘The gleaming amber hue, the bulging froth, the bittersweet taste of ancestral knowledge in every sip.’

Still, there are some aficionados who claim that even if the conditions are otherwise perfect, John Smith’s in London just doesn’t taste the same as it does up in Tadcaster, where the equivalent of a whopping 228 million pints of the chestnut stuff are produced each year. Pellicle Editor-in-Chief and prominent pint savant Matthew Curtis tells me that ‘beer always tastes better where it’s made’, which is why so many John Smith’s acolytes insist on making the pilgrimage north to taste it at source. ‘To be in Tadcaster – the town that so effortlessly walks the tightrope that is the A64 between Leeds and York – and experience a pint of Smooth is to taste a beer as it should be: purest brown.’ 

That’s all well and good, but what should those of us who suffer cluster headaches every time we venture outside the M25 be looking for? To make things easier, we’ve put together a handy guide on where to find the perfect pint of John Smith’s in London this summer.

What to look for in a pint of John Smith’s 

• It should withstand the all-important ‘tilt test’ – if you tip your glass slightly and the head starts dripping suggestively down the side, it’s all a bit no-no. If the texture is similar to watered-down Devonshire custard, then you’re good. 
  

• The pipes have to be spotless, which will give you a beer that is caramel clean with a dry, malty sweetness. Together with the creamy, clean body, it should make for a supremely refreshing, easy-to-drink pint – ‘Pure silk in a glass’, as the slogan used to go. 
  

• A good pint of Smooth needs a head that’s 382mm creamier than a can of Campbell’s. Why? A little thing called ‘balance’. What do you mean ‘What does that mean?’ If you have to ask, you’ll never understand.

The Pubs

The Cock Tavern, Euston

The Cock Tavern in Euston is a true bitter-lover’s paradise and is widely regarded as serving the best John Smith’s in the whole of London. The quality of the Smooth here is so famous that you often catch the melodic strains of a thick North Yorkshire accent at the bar, desperate for a taste of home. For Bramham there’s nothing like the ‘Proustian rush of a pint of Smooth’ at pubs like The Cock. ‘One sip and I’m immediately jolted back to God’s Own Country: Batley Labour Club,’ he tells me.

Set on a crossroads in Somers Town – a curiously gentrification-resistant locale just north of the Euston Road – you’d be hard-pressed to find a more perfect patch of pavement on which to feel the fading glow of the 5 o’clock sun than the one outside The Cock. At night, the generously sized pub jolts to life in a chorus of trad music and raucous bar chat. Landlady Sheila Gavigan has created one of the most welcoming third spaces in all of London, and entire evenings can pass by there in a blitz of banter and bitter. ‘Loads’, she tells me, when I ask her how much John Smith’s she sells on any given night. ‘It goes down a lot more smoothly than a heavier drink like Guinness, so you get all sorts of people drinking it.’

The Queen Elizabeth, Walworth

Amid the boom in continental lagers with confected back-stories, one of the things that has attracted young drinkers to John Smith’s is its authenticity and sense of history. In the mid-nineteenth century, when John Smith started brewing his own beer, Tadcaster’s hard, magnesian limestone water proved ideal for making bright bitters, which were gradually replacing darker porters as the working man’s drink du jour. However, it was in 1993, with the introduction to the market of Extra Smooth – the nitrogenated version of their original ale – that the seeds of the current John Smith’s explosion were sown. 

At The Queen Elizabeth (or The Lizzy, as it’s affectionately known), you can be sure that you will always receive a flawless drop of Extra Smooth. This two-roomed battle cruiser is located just north of Burgess Park, and was rebuilt in 1955 by Watneys. Today, it retains its post-war bar and splendid mirrored back-fittings – it’s a bit like stepping into a time portal, back to when the Walworth regulars would crowd around a piano singing until the early hours. The soundtrack might now be provided by a digital jukebox, but it’s just as welcoming and vibrant in 2024.

The Park Tavern, Finsbury Park

Nestled in the strange betweenland twixt Finsbury Park and Crouch Hill lies The Park Tavern. One of North London’s very best sporting pubs, this is home to a delightful little beer garden that’s as well-kept as a septuagenarian’s allotment. While the Premier League is almost always roaring away in the banquetted back bar, it’s in the front of the pub where horse-racing fanatics and Smooth lovers find their creamy solace. On a recent visit, I asked one punter – who gave his name as John – what he liked about the Extra Smooth at The Park Tavern. ‘It’s cheap’, he responded, before turning back to the 3.15pm at Punchestown. 

With the recent surge of Smith’s has come publican pioneers pushing its form, taking advantage of the drink’s bitter toffee notes to create daring new cocktails. It was at The Park Tavern that I was first introduced to one of the strangest but most refreshing combinations I’ve ever tried: half John Smith’s and half ginger ale, by the writer Oscar Rickett. ‘The bitter ginger-beer shandy is a concoction of my dad’s,’ he tells me. ‘It goes down well in all contexts and in all seasons – for when you need a little less booze in your system but you don’t want the brain-frying buzz of the lager lemonade shandy.’ A must-try.

George IV, Woolwich

Woolwich is home to some exceptional John Smith’s pubs – so much so that it’s known in some ale-aficionado circles as ‘Tadcaster-on-Thames’. There’s the market charm of the Elephant & Castle, where punters queue from 8am for an ambrosial drop of bitter bliss. Or the cosy, carpeted Rose’s (Prince Albert), where you’ll go for the Smooth but stay for the meat raffle. But The George IV, set deep in the town’s residential heart, on a sleepy backstreet not far from Woolwich Dockyard station, may just be the pick of the bunch. Going since the 1830s (but with its current iteration dating back to the 1960s), the pub is an exceptional example of a post-war estate boozer. All the hallmarks are there: the unassuming exterior; the low ceilings; the lengthy, mahogany bar, long since painted over in a Dulux navy. 

But what sets the pub apart is the people inside – a cordial coterie of locals who are as welcoming if you’re a stranger as they are if you’ve got your own glass behind the bar. This isn’t the archetypal flat-roof boozer so maligned by the bourgeois media – it’s a full-on entertainment hub, with karaoke, quiz, and comedy nights throughout the week, as well as an exceptional jerk pop-up in the summer months. The perfect accompaniment to 8–10 pints of delicious 3.4% ABV Yorkshire ale.

The Scotsman, Southall

Back in 2003, comedian Peter Kay starred for John Smith’s in one of the most famous beer adverts of all time. Created by advertising agency TBWA\London, the spot saw Kay in a curry house on the phone to his young daughter, trying to assuage her fears about boogeymen in the closet. ‘There’s no such thing as wardrobe monsters,’ Kay calmly assured as he sat around the table with his wife and two friends. ‘It’s the burglars that break in through the window that you want to be worried about.’ 

While it’s probably not advisable to follow in Kay’s footsteps and give a child a lifelong fear of open windows at night, you can recreate the experience of ‘two more lamb bhunas’ over a pint of John Smith’s at The Scotsman in Southall, which doubles as an excellent Punjabi restaurant. Walk into this backstreet boozer and you’ll notice virtually everyone supping a pint of Smooth. ‘In places like this, people drink these pints as they’re cheap, and their family and friends drink them,’ David Jesudason, author of Desi Pubs tells me, with John Smith’s ‘ideal to calm a fiery dish with chilli’. The desi pub is a much-loved fixture of this part of West London, and The Scotsman does it exceptionally well.

Streeties, Canning Town

Canning Town is an area of London undergoing great change. Travelling the A1011 – once a barren thoroughfare towards the sugar factories and shrubbery of Silvertown – now has the feel of flicking through a particularly nightmarish neutral colour swatch, as great hulking juts of monotonous high-rise line the carriageway in differing shades of beige. The once-villainous district has softened its noir edges – since the turn of the millennium, ten different Canning Town pubs have closed or been demolished. But lurking in the shadows of the student housing, one boozer still clings valiantly on in the face of the future: Streeties, a gorgeous backstreet spot that’s home to a delightful drop of John Smith’s, plus added bonuses in the form of a pool table and a parrot. 

Due to the pub’s proximity to nightclubs FOLD and The Cause, it’s often frequented by a younger generation loading up on Extra Smooth before their big night out. ‘I think it’s brilliant to see more young people drinking bitter, which as you know is Britain’s national drink,’ Curtis tells me. ‘For too long the Irish have dominated the nitro pint market. My hope is that this resurgence will see younger drinkers try other brown nitrogenated delights, such as Boddingtons or Worthington’s Creamflow. Once you’re in, the world is your oyster.’ Cheers to that. 

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Credits

Jimmy McIntosh is a writer and musician from London. He runs the Instagram account @londondeadpubs dedicated to pubs that are no more, and the TikTok @deadpubs dedicated to ones that are.

All photos by Jimmy McIntosh

Good morning and welcome to the new era of Vittles. Each Monday we will send you a different piece of writing related to food, whether it’s an essay, a dispatch, a polemic, a review, or even poetry. Today’s newsletter by Jenny Lau is part of our running column The Hater.

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Hospitality is not conditional, by Sharanya Deepak

In September this year, after the earthquake in Morocco, a photo by a British reporter appeared on my Twitter feed. In it, the journalist is being served tea and bread by displaced Moroccans. The tweet, and comments underneath the video praised Moroccan hospitality, lauding their resilience and generosity despite all odds. The video was commented on with enthusiasm by both Westerners and Moroccans. Even though these comments were well-intentioned and heartfelt, the video irked me because it played on the idea that ‘hospitality’ is necessary in order to humanise Moroccans and Arabs to European and American audiences. It sometimes feels like the only way to cajole people into caring is to celebrate these communities’ ‘bravery’ and ‘generosity of spirit’ in times of crisis. Moroccan hospitality is legendary, no doubt, but these were the people that needed care – so why was the focus on their performance of it instead? 

Hospitality is so often used as a tool to humanise certain cultures, which is then reflected in global food media. The glowing generosity of South Asian homes, the resilience of displaced refugees, the kindness of immigrant-owned businesses; all are summoned to neutralise the more ingrained fear and resentment of these communities in public thought. I have noticed India’s ‘heritage’ and Nepal’s ‘spirituality’ are often mentioned when their cuisines are documented, since nations with Hindu majorities have increasingly assimilated (even if within reductive stereotypes) into the Western imagination. Simultaneously, I have seen how Pakistani and Bangladeshi colleagues must brandish hospitality to battle biases of ‘terrorism’ and other prejudices towards Muslim communities, spending their time and lives decoding the bizarre geopolitical biases in the minds of people everywhere.

I first properly noticed this when I lived in Brussels between 2013 and 2017. These were the years Belgium witnessed what Europe referred to as the ‘refugee crisis’ – a vague term coined by the West to wash its hands of wars it had created – and the 2015 Bataclan shootings in Paris. Several of the strategists behind the shootings were found to be residents of Brussels, from a neighbourhood called Molenbeek, where I also lived. Molenbeek was made up, mostly, of people of Arab and African descent. It lay across a canal, less than four kilometres from the city’s centre, but was distanced from Brussels’ consciousness, constantly invisibilised and discriminated against. 

After the shootings, Molenbeek and Schaerbeek (Brussels’ Turkish enclave) were shrivelled by surveillance; their black and brown residents – especially young men – were bullied and rounded up by the police. Walking around, I would hear reporters from Western media outlets term Molenbeek Europe’s ‘neighbourhood of jee-had’, creating grounds for further dehumanisation and ghettoisation of anyone that looked and spoke a certain way. For Belgian Arabs, new asylum seekers, Pakistani restaurant-owners, there was now a new burden to bear. They had to convince Belgians that there was nothing to worry about; convince them – even though the economic and social odds were stacked against them – that the city was safe from threat. A Syrian tea-shop owner near my flat asked me to help him decide if he should serve beer in his shop, which was otherwise halal. ‘Europeans think we are all dangerous,’ he said, joking that I could be a sort-of intermediary between collegiate white people and his Arab and South Asian clientele. ‘So, with some beer,’ he continued, evidently unconvinced, ‘they may think we are not.’

In the years that followed, efforts to make Molenbeek safer (read: whiter) began. Among the various efforts at rehabilitation was a performance of hospitality: immigrant-owned businesses (the ones that survived) had to smile and perform, despite the surveillance they were subjected to. At the same time, many of the white Europeans I knew communicated that they felt betrayed by Molenbeek. For the few that lived in or near the neighbourhood, they could not comprehend that the notion of ‘multiculturalism’ they nurtured had failed; that their visiting Syrian restaurants and drinking the occasional mint tea in a Moroccan cafe had not been adequate to solve the inequalities and violence borne by history, and prevent them from happening again. 

In the wake of all this, my own naïve visions of European liberty collapsed, and the scrutiny that brown and black people in the continent were subjected to became clear. I hated the decontextualisation of imperial massacres that create and perpetuate these cycles of violence, the historical revisionism and constant absolution of all European blame. One day, I sat in the kitchen of my flat, upset by a recent conversation with dinner guests that drew narrow, racialised histories out of recent events. ‘Don’t let them get to you, yaar’, my flatmate, who is Pakistani–Belgian, said to me as I spat curses at the dishwasher. ‘Don’t worry so much’, he said. ‘Just throw them a naan’.  This made us laugh on that day, and after as well. ‘Throw a naan at a racist’ became a common refrain, an inside joke when we found ourselves lost or stuck in presumptuous, incriminating conversation. It also cleverly played on the expectation that this continent had of people like us: that even as our food was quickly welcomed on their tables, for our thoughts, our tempers, and especially our criticisms, there was simply no space.  

Earlier this summer in London, I spent time at a Chinese restaurant in Lewisham for hours on some days. The food was always excellent, but one day, in the face of a family crisis, the staff served up cold soups and wrong orders. I ate, not caring; I loved this restaurant. I overheard a duo of diners nearby who were dissatisfied. ‘We should go to a Japanese restaurant. They take hospitality more seriously’, they concluded. Even though it is natural that diners make such evaluations, the comparison bothered me because of its willingness to pit immigrants against one another, to place cultures that may not otherwise have any etiquette in common into a heirarchical capitalist ‘meritocracy’ . The necessary performance of cuisines towards a mainstream often leaves little space to breathe. A Tibetan chef in the UK recently told me about how he sometimes cooks to tell people about Tibet, but ‘not always’; ‘Some days, I also don’t want to explain myself, and I don’t want to keep saying “This is not Chinese food”. Some days, like someone French or Italian or something, I just want to cook’, he said. 

In India and South Asia, similar power-addled standards of hospitality exist. This summer, I reported on housing conditions for Indian street-food vendors, often migrants into Delhi and other big cities. I thought about how street food in India is such a singular triumph of hospitality; it is no small feat to serve up delicious food and constant care on the sides of rattling highways and busy marketplaces in some of the densest, paciest cities in the world. But even as their hospitality is used to decorate India’s image in foreign publications and visiting foreign envoys, little consideration and care is given to the lives of the vendors themselves. Street-food vendors work in the brunt of South Asia’s endless decaying summers; they live on daily wage cycles, in the face of little sanitation and precarious housing (which is almost never addressed). India’s poor form the bedrock of its eating cultures, but their hospitality is erased of context. Consider the ‘migrant exodus’ that occurred in India during the Covid pandemic: of the tens of millions that were displaced, many were street-food vendors. Or when ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ministers in cabinet utilise the hospitality of oppressed-caste citizens for political gain  by being seen eating at their homes. 

Meanwhile, Indian Muslims are similarly summoned for their culinary cultures (often by the country’s panicked liberal imagination) to serve up biryani and other images of India’s diminishing syncretism. But as with others, the material and social conditions that Indian Muslims live in, and the routine threats to their livelihoods are ignored. With Kashmir, this becomes all the more insidious. Even as Kashmiris remain dispossessed by Indian rule, their self-determination dismantled and lands constantly under threat, Kashmiri hospitality and cuisine is demanded with entitlement by the scores of Indian tourists that travel to the region. Something similar happens in Pakistan, too – when white YouTubers travel the country and are amazed by its hospitality, they do little to decode why they are so taken aback, never thinking to question the origins of their surprise about Pakistanis, the ‘fear’ they have been fed. Like much else, hospitality can uphold structures of colonialism, occupation, and patriarchal entitlement. It can often be akin to servitude itself. 

As the annihilation of Palestinians by Israel continues, I worry about how amidst and after all this, food may be used for fleeting repair in an atmosphere of rampant dehumanisation. Though conducted with a lot of goodwill, efforts at rehabilitation of Palestinians (as well as Syrian, Afghan, Iraqi and Kurdish refugees) have often involved hospitality, asking the region’s food to vouch for its people’s humanity. Meanwhile in the West, critiques of Israel’s culinary and agricultural hegemony on Palestinian land and its cultures are infrequent and inadequate. To writer and historian N.A. Mansour, these ‘food conquers all’ narratives are hollow efforts: ‘In other words, hummus will make everyone feel less angry about ethnic cleansing’, she writes in her essay, ‘The rise and folly of the refugee cookbook’. Like Mansour, I am cynical about how besieged communities are asked to earn their humanity through food again and again; how despite different communities being forced into these cycles, they continue so relentlessly. Where rude French chefs and shouting white men are celebrated to no end in food media, racialised people are only perceived positively if they constantly provide relief through generosity, often against unforgiving odds and at their own expense. 

In the end, no one should have to throw a naan at a racist – hospitality, after all, is a rare joy. Just as I couldn’t stop the Kurdish baker in Molenbeek from handing out free bread, and I can’t stop my father from buying bananas that ripen at perfect speed for guests, I cannot suggest that people stop taking care of customers that visit their establishments. I also cannot stop taking care of people myself. But I yearn for a more elastic, reciprocal version of all this, one in which hospitality is circular and unconditional, a system of care not just built on the backs of those who cook and feed us, but one which requires care from those receiving the food as well. More than anything, hospitality should not have to bear the burden of ‘changing minds’, of neutralising hate and hierarchies through service with a smile. Perhaps everyone should do their own work – to change their own minds, and dismantle their own biases – before they go to these restaurants at all. 

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Credits

Today’s newsletter was the last edition of The Hater. To read all the past columns, please see below:

The TV Food Man, by Ruby Tandoh
Everybody Hates Norman’s, by Tom Usher
Rich People Peasantcore, by Sheena Patel
Gatekeeping Pubs, by Jimmy McIntosh
The Gallery Dinner, by Phoebe Cripps
STREETFOODZ and other atrocities, by Katie Mulkowski
Why I hate Americans talking about tacos in London, by Chloe-Rose Crabtree
Against Curation, by Jonathan Nunn
What is the point of the recipe box?, by Thea Everett
Against Culinary Cuckooism, by Luke Dunne
McLondon, by Robbie Armstrong
The biweekly British vs American food debate, by Niloufar Haidari
What is wrong with the London restaurant scene
Gut Feelings, by James Greig
Ultra Processed Foods, by Laura Thomas
The SEO-ification of food, by Mina Miller

We have also finished our column Cooking from Life.

Urgent Tender Care, by Anuradha Roy
A prodigious attitude to cream, by Rosanna Mclaughlin
Why is the thought of cooking so dreadful?, by Shon Faye
Finding my way to bannan fri, by Edna Bonhomme
Maintaining a private cult, by Sam Dolbear
A preservation of summer pulled into winter, by Séan Hewitt
A map of her mouth: offerings to my daughter, by Jessica J. Lee
The glamour of having crepes on hand, by Marlowe Granados
How to eat an orange, by Vijeta Kumar
Soaking up the juicy morsels of our lives, by Claire-Louise Bennett
People of the Salt, by Gabrielle de la Puente
Salad, Schnitzel and Fake Meat, by Molly Pepper Steemson
Cooking against the theft of time, by Uzma Falak
Sex, HRT and lots of meat, by Sam Dolbear
Empanada Mutiny, by Kevin Vaughn
Cooking in Crip Time, by Hannah Turner
Vulnerability, Death and Dinner, by Nyla Ahmad
Eat, Play, Protest: A life with prawns, by Rajkamal M
Three Generations of French Home Cooking, by Orphée You

We will take a short break and return later this month with Season 7, a new publishing schedule, and an exciting announcement!

Vittles is edited by Rebecca May Johnson, Sharanya Deepak and Jonathan Nunn, and proofed and subedited by Sophie Whitehead.

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The Hater is a column dedicated to the art of hating. Each week, a different writer examines something they hate, or observes a trend of hating in the food world.

The SEO-ification of food, by Mina Miller

How are desires and appetites formed? They’re born of our environment, our culture and class. They’re born of encounters: in our family homes, at the cafeteria, at church gatherings. They’re influenced by what we pass on the street: restaurants and takeaway counters in our neighbourhoods, the places we intersect on our trajectories through the city. They emerge, as well, from glossy magazine spreads and series like MasterChef, from conscious and subconscious desires, from our fears and emotive associations, from aspiration and nostalgia. Increasingly, too, our desires are formed by what we see online – which, increasingly, is determined by search engines and, by extension, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). 

At its core, SEO refers to a series of practices people enact to make sure their business or website appears at the top of search results. As a freelance copywriter, I have frequently been tasked with writing pointless 2000-word articles for businesses (including recipe-box companies and restaurants), stuffing my text with keywords without providing the reader with any meaningful information, then plugging my copy into an SEO checker to make sure it scores well enough before publishing it. Lots of this work is directed at Google, but other platforms call for the use of SEO: Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all use a blend of algorithms and machine learning to sift through data, including abstracted content, keywords and user patterns, to decide what to display at the top of their results page. Similarly, restaurant delivery apps utilise machine learning to prioritise certain restaurants over others, whether that’s ranking by popular menu items, customer scores or perceived desirability (the actual mechanics are a black box). 

All of this is fundamentally changing the way we eat. When we order or go out for food, we tend first to search: to read reviews, to see what’s open, to check prices. Google is undeniably helpful in that respect, but its maps and reviews aren’t merely tools; they change how we interact with the urban environment around us. What businesses come up, what we think is available, how good we think it is – all of this is mediated by the search engine, which elevates outlets deemed to have more ‘authority’: generally, established players who are SEO-savvy and can either pay for ranking or are good at keywords. The search ‘Best restaurants Sheffield’, for instance, is topped by listicles by the likes of Time Out, who have no presence in the city.

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Good morning and welcome to Vittles!

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