Feeding the Hunger in Your Conscience
March 27, 2005
The Sunday Times
(London)
Table talk
AA Gill
I have just received a leaflet from my bank. On the back, it says: “Please contact us if you’d like this leaflet in braille.” The financial wizard who okayed that has got all my money.
Moving on, can we just get the organic thing clear? Organic does not mean additive-free; it means some additives and not others. Organic does not mean your food hasn’t been washed with chemicals, frozen or kept fresh with gas, or that it has not been flown around the world. Organic does not necessarily mean it is healthier, or will make you live longer; nor does it mean tastier, fresher, or in some way improved. Organically farmed fish is not necessarily better than wild fish. Organically reared animals didn’t necessarily live a happier life than non-organic ones — and their death is no less traumatic.
More importantly, organic does not mean that the people who picked, packed, sowed and slaughtered were treated fairly, paid properly, or were free from artificial exploitation. The Chinese workers who drowned in Morecambe Bay were picking organic cockles for a pittance. If you really want to feed the hunger in your conscience, buy Fairtrade.
So what does organic actually mean? Buggered if I know. It usually means more expensive. Whatever the original good intentions of the organic movement, their good name has been hijacked by supermarkets, bijoux delicatessens and agri-processors as a value-added designer label. Organic comes with its own basket of aspiration, snobbery, vanity and fear that retailers on tight margins can exploit. And what I mind most about it is that it has reinvigorated the old class distinction in food. There is them that has chemical-rich, force-fed battery dinner and us that has decent, healthy, caring lunch. It is the belief that you can buy not only a clear conscience, but a colon that works like the log flume at Alton Towers.
In general, I applaud and agree with many of the aims of environmentally careful producers, but it is time we all admitted that the label “organic” has been polluted with cynicism, sentiment, sloppy sharp practice and lies to the point where it is intellectually and practically bankrupt. What organic actually means is less than nothing.
And it hasn’t made anyone a better cook. I have a number of rules about living a carefree consumer life. First: never buy anything from a man in a straw boater. And second: never eat in an establishment with a pun in its name. Which brings us to Eat and Two Veg, a diner on Westbourne Grove, in Notting Hill (where else?). This is a vegetarian diner, a concept that comes on the same wish list as a crocheted condom and a Buddhist bodyguard.
At the bottom of the menu, there is a lot of small print about vegan alternatives, soya protein, sourcing the best ingredients from around the world, and the fact that they endeavour to use organic and GM-free. What they don’t mention is that, while out scouring the globe for happy buns, they haven’t managed to find an organic human who can cook worth a damn, or whose idea of service is doing much more than smiling and shrugging.
Mark this well. Because, to my mind, Eat and Two Veg is the worst restaurant in London. Not just for the food, which I thought was repellent, but because it comes with such airs and graces. It is one thing to be a crap caff, but to mitigate it with highfalutin intentions is beneath the swill bucket. The Blonde and I took CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, mother of a five-year-old, and Laura Bailey, a breast-feeding vegetarian (she is not feeding a vegetable — it is a baby). Both of them have a motherly concern for health and ethics.
So, let’s get to the food. “Crispy aromatic luck (this dish contains gluten)” — vegetable protein masquerading as Jemima Puddle-Duck — was weird and bogey-esque. A schnitzel (“crumbled protein escalope with sautéed spinach and a creamy wine and watercress sauce”) made me gasp out loud. It was histrionically vile, a tough inner sole of undead flavour coated in sticky crumble with a puddle of bin juice. It devoutly made me wish I had never used the word inedible before, so I could take it out in all its pristine goodness and whack it on this Beelzebub’s emission of the night. Worst of all was a “cheeseburger” — “our special blend of vegetable protein, herbs and spices on a sesame bun”. This would have counted as an unfair artificial stimulant in a face-pulling competition. One mouthful had me girning like a toothless pensioner getting his prostate poked.
It’s not just that this Frankenstein mushroom meat was vomitous, it’s that it was cooked as if by Serbian dinner ladies working in an Albanian orphanage. What is the point of getting healthy organic whatever, only to manufacture it into chewable styrofoam and pretend it was once part of God’s creation? Do you ever see butchers carving sheep’s heads into a green salad? And when was the last time you were offered mince as pineapple, or bacon-style celery? We did all the jokes about cauliflower ears, beef tomatoes and spaghetti westerns.
You can’t even say that Eat and Two Veg is a slick, cynical exploitation of the frightened and faddish folk of Notting Hill. That has already been done by the organic supermarket Fresh & Wild. This place is just stupid. It is one of the few restaurants I have come across that doesn’t seem to know, on a basic level, what food is or what it is for. How can a “classic” niçoise be made with marinated tofu and avocado? Forget the Ent sap of tofu: you don’t put avocado in a niçoise. And “Chykn caesar salad”? It’s a genetically modified word.
This place made me as angry about the abuse of food as I’ve ever been. These are far worse abuses than battery chickens, farrowing pens, crated veal, foie gras, whale hunting or ocelot napkins. Eat and Two Veg has simply dropped its nylon kecks and laid a textured vegetable curl on the plate of everybody who has ever tried to improve the quality, preparation and accountability of the food we eat. If I hadn’t been responsibly out on your behalf, I would have refused to pay and offered them my credit card woven out of a banana. They could have spoken to my lawyer, who is two melons and a marrow.
This review is available in braille. On a cheese grater.
