Food

Food, Opinion & Thought

Vanilla

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It’s the hot chocolate that gives it away. A week or two ago, we were in a fairly average café in our local town, and I ordered one. It arrived promptly enough but turned out to be – as expected – the usual disappointing fare of over-sweet Cadbury’s powder, though in this case worsened by the fact that it was over-dilute and tasted mostly of water.

A few hot chocolates previously, I was in Lille, where chocolat chaud arrived as melted chocolate and a jug of hot milk. The same is normally the case in Italy, where hot chocolate has the consistency of double cream and almost needs to be spooned.  Inspired by this, at home we have taken to using Molinari which is at least available online in the U.K.

The trouble is, one’s palate adjusts to the flavours one consumes, which makes the insipid British offerings all the worse for us… We have the same experience with coffee; at home, we habitually drink Illy Italian coffee and make it with a Gaggia espresso machine, which delivers something like Italian strength – which is now our natural point of reference. What we mostly find in the coffee shops on British streets, despite their proliferation, is brown bathwater. Despite the coffee shop hype, and multiple gimmicky flavourings,  the baseline product repeatedly disappoints.

A couple of decades ago, I welcomed the spread of coffee shops across the U.K. It seemed like a major step forward for civilisation. In particular, I recall an early branch of Costa at Liverpool Street station, when it was still independently owned, and still felt like a proper Italian coffee bar, complete with polished granite counter, chromed high stools, proper pastries, and baristas who knew what they were doing.

Sadly, in recent years, I’ve all but given up on getting a good coffee in the U.K., at least outside a specialist restaurant. Coffee shops have become just another retail outlet clone for big business. Both Costa and Pret a Manger (hitherto my fall-backs for a half-decent cup) seem to have travelled the dumbed-down route. In lieu of decent drinks, both now offer the same buckets of dilute brown precipitate as Starbucks, to be sucked through the plastic lid of a cardboard takeaway cup. As with most things in Britain, we are only ever given a diluted version of what happens elsewhere.

My guess is that the loss of distinctiveness of such brands is not unconnected to the fact that both were bought out by large conglomerates, which broadened the reach but, in the process, completely destroyed the product. My second guess is that this trend is another import from the U.S.A, whose coffee, if the average Americano is anything to go by, is even more anaemic than ours. Once again, quantity over quality. It seems that the mass-business model is not to offer anything that might offend anyone by being too tasty. But in the process, they only end up giving even greater offence to those of us who prefer something more distinctive.

Apparently, the growth in the café sector in the U.K. at present is with independents. We do have some locally – but sadly they mostly seem to have used the chains as their template, both in terms of ambience and product.  https://www.lovetoast.co.uk/toastwitham   They talk the talk about loving coffee – but my experiences of drinking there revealed the same over dilute buckets as everywhere else.

From hot drinks to life in general.

What concerns me here, is why the British public puts up with this treatment. Which comes first: the companies diluting standards, and with it, expectations – or a public whose taste is so vanilla in the first place, that the companies know they won’t sell anything more distinctive?

I don’t have anything against genuine vanilla either – it is a very pleasant flavour used properly (which is not in gimmicky flavoured coffees…) But there’s a reason the word has also come to mean bland – and in that respect, it seems to describe British taste perfectly. In fact, those flavoured coffees tell a tale of their own: of a market that values gimmicks over good basic quality. Novelty to distract from the inferior quality of the basic offering.

One might have hoped that by now the much-vaunted British food and drink revolution of the Nineties and Noughties would have embedded itself in the national psyche of successive generations, but in actual fact, Vanilla seems to be getting worse. The end-product of that ‘revolution’ with regard to food seems to have been the gourmet burger – which ultimately is still just a burger –  and an increased range of pseudo-ethnic outlets which, from what I can see, just offer various incarnations of fast food. Packaging it as ‘street food’ doesn’t deny what it ultimately is: processed junk.

One might also have thought that increased health awareness would have had an impact, but my close professional contact with the current generation of teens suggests they eat more junk than ever before, and a lot of them don’t touch anything that isn’t Coke or ‘flavoured’ water when it comes to drinks.

One of the repeated experiences I have across the Channel is places where one’s senses are fed rather than ignored. I can’t help it: it just happens. Time and time again. As I wrote a short while ago, the experiences of different countries do strongly suggest that tastes and expectations are not the same everywhere. One can debate whether the products on offer reflect the market or dictate it – but either way, I am still bemused why British tastes are just so, well – vanilla. Anaemic. Or as one writer put it, Taste Free.

It is not only hot drinks: as I’ve bemoaned before, the same goes for standards in everything: the overriding principle is Bland. I’ve learned never to trust the reviews on Trustpilot – most people seem to have completely different benchmarks). Everything seems to need to be diluted, its teeth and claws removed, before it is acceptable to the anodyne ‘Great’ British public. Or are many other people also sitting there in their local Costa secretly disappointed at the offering? And if so, then Why?

Despite much mulling of this over the years, I still am not much closer to an answer. When presented with such an opinion, many people become indignant, as though national pride could and should not be affronted in this way. But if they are part of the problem, they are scarcely going to understand it. For them, Italian coffee will just seem unbearably strong. Maybe the climate has something to do with it, or maybe it’s what a historic Protestant ethic of self-denial does to our feelings about sensory indulgence? But then, other northern European countries, just as cold and just as Protestant, don’t seem to have the same difficulties producing decent Kaffe und Kuchen and indeed good quality other things too…

I suspect that knowing your own preference is part of it, something else where, in the taste stakes, it seems that  many Britons are still in the starting blocks. It is certainly the case that stronger tastes become – ahem! – more Marmite – you either like them or you don’t.  If you do not know your own preferences, you cannot be discerning. You will meekly, passionlessly, accept what you are given, in a way I suspect the French consumer, for example, rarely does should it be substandard. Until people boycott places that offer inferior products, those places will carry on getting away with it.

A recent YouTube watch, mulling the British mindset seemed to major on “easy going” as a British characteristic. Perhaps: so easy going as never to stand up for decent standards when they are needed.

It doesn’t give me satisfaction to have these experiences. It is a great disappointment that life on this side of the Channel sometimes seems to be lived in diffident shades of grey compared with what happens elsewhere. I can’t see any other real reason why it should be so – except that the culture itself is now so diluted that people never want to do the work to appreciate anything more distinctive. So used have they perhaps become to the bland offerings of big commerce. In other words, it is as it is simply because the majority of people are themselves now so vanilla that they are content to let everything else be, as well.

Arts, Architecture & Design, Food, Opinion & Thought

Props

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On our dusk walk back to the station during our visit to Lille, our eye was caught by a brightly-lit interiors shop. As with so many shops on the continent, it was the enticing window display that did it. Before we knew, we were inside. We had gone to Lille minus hand luggage, which is just as well, since we exited sporting two very large bags containing four nicely textural wool cushions for our sofas. It was also just as well that we had restrained our other purchases that day to a box of pâtes de fruits from Méert, since we had quite a job getting through Eurostar check-in and onto the train.

So once again, we returned from France with enticing stuff, an eventuality much more likely from there than here. And it started my mind rolling on why stuff is important; after all, I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about it…

In my head, I can hear a riposte to my frequent laments about poor quality in the U.K.: people who are secure in their identities and lives do not need emotional props to make their lives worthwhile. Maybe that is why the U.K. plays everything down: its citizens are already wholly secure in themselves….

If only the evidence supported it. Quite apart from the mental health crisis, it is not that the British eschew stuff: consumer culture has never been more dominant in the nation’s life, and shopping is apparently still a national recreation, even if now done online rather than on the high street. We have so much stuff that apparently self-storage facilities are a growth sector… But when we have so much, how can we possibly appreciate it all? 

I’m not going to decry stuff as a modern sin; people have coveted attractive objects since early human times. What has perhaps changed is the balance between quality and quantity: we are now so used to it, that stuff is as cheap psychologically as it can be monetarily.

So I am not going to apologise for, in effect, arguing for more veneration of stuff. Quite apart from purely practical necessity, personal possessions may well be props for our fragile egos, as they have been since early times. The secret lies in the appreciation: choosing more carefully in the first place, and then actively appreciating what we are lucky enough to have, rather than taking it for granted, throwing it away – and buying more. People have long had possessions – but the important bit is the treasuring – rather than taking for granted. If wool cushions can genuinely add a small amount of pleasure to one’s life, then why not? But choose carefully and don’t throw away and replace after a short period!

While writing this, my attention turned to the contents of our chocolate basket, sitting on the post-lunch table.  Even there, the issue was clear: Exhibit A (below) shows the contrast in how chocolate is presented in the U.K. and Switzerland. This is not contrived: the bar of Cadbury was given to me at Christmas by a student; the Lindt was our regular fare bought from a local supermarket, and is reasonably representative of how chocolate is packaged in Switzerland. And yet it is Cadbury’s that is the most popular chocolate in the U.K.: cheap – and almost taste-free. Once again, dumbed down ‘product’ triumphs over something altogether more rewarding.

I tried a square of the Cadbury but could eat no more. The packaging said it all: 20% cocoa solids and “contains vegetable fats other than cocoa solid”. Enough to have hitherto made the EU exclude the British product from being described as chocolate in continental markets. It tasted of nothing but sugar. The dumbed-down packaging says all one needs to know about the mindset of how such products are marketed in the U.K.: a childish candy, rather than the more complex, adult offering of the Swiss. To be fair, Hotel Chocolat and others are slowly educating the British public about the possibilities – but there is a long, long way to go….

While I’m generally a fan of mindfulness, I found the concept of appreciation journalling a bit over the top  – until it occurred to me that in part, this blog does exactly that: it makes the case for choosing and owning of stuff as something less trivial: a matter of active celebration rather than mere mindless routine. One might still have the guilt-trip about needless consumption, but one solution is to turn ‘mindless’ into ‘mindful’. Material possessions can bring real pleasure to our lives – if chosen carefully and appreciated to the full. And in terms of ‘total consumption’, I suggest that choosing better is more likely to decrease our overall consumption, since it reduces levels of boredom and the need for the constant replacement of what we own.

Purchasing may be fun, but the defining part of the process should not be that moment, so much as the ongoing process of appreciative ownership. Indeed, purchasing is more pleasurable when one has the anticipation of a meaningful relationship with what one is buying. I suspect the Saturday afternoon arms-full leisure-shoppers don’t get this: our culture shops on quantity over quality every time. Mainstream retailers probably prefer it this way – but if one does decide to patronise a more discerning supplier, one finds a rather different attitude, where fewer-but-better still makes sense…

The French, Italians and others seem to know this better. My impression is that they are not as indiscriminate in what they buy as many British. Food is a perfect example: the veneration takes on almost cult-like status with renowned foodstuffs, and the knowledgeable selection of ‘good stuff’ is the informed customer’s part in this ritual. It’s a courtesy to the producer to have a deep appreciation for, and discrimination of, what one is buying. It can apply to other things too: it’s notable that many of the world’s great brands come from these countries. But I am not suggesting that brands are essential; while they acquire their reputations for a reason, there are plenty of good products out there from unknown suppliers. It’s the quality, not the label that is important.

The word ‘prop’ has another meaning: as in the ‘properties’ that actors and artists use to express their lives and work, to make that work more intense and more effective. Every day is part of the drama of one’s own life; the careful use of props to amplify and express our experiences, even to affirm our identities, is not a crime, but an integral part of the human experience – at least if done in the spirit of genuine appreciation.  

But as with chocolate, in that respect not all stuff is equal.