Busman's Holiday

 A perk of my job is that I get to take my days off in the week.  Of course, this is something younger chefs find difficult. The demands of the industry are such that we are forced to work weekends, bank holidays and such. While the rest of the world is enjoying a long weekend or going out for after work drinks, service industry at its most pressed. No doubt it is the shock of long hours and curtailed social life that leads so many new recruits to the realisation that this is not something they want to stick at.  On the other hand, I very much enjoy the opportunity to get out and about while the ordinary world is at work. The streets are not thronged with tourists, the queues at the bar are short or non existent, and best of all, I can always get a table in a restaurant.

I'm quite happy to eat alone. Now that so many people can be seen sharing a table, yet ignoring each other whilst staring at their electronic devices, I think the stigma of eating by oneself can be well and truly put to rest. Anyhow, this is far from being my point. What I am driving at is that at least one day a week, I try and get out of Sheffield, and ideally visit somewhere I have never been before. I recently ended up in Hull on a whim, after a points failure and subsequent delay made me despair of seeing out the rest of the journey to Beverley. Thankfully, I was able to call on the advice of a friend who directed me to Princess Avenue, where I found a coctail bar that served fish and chips. The girl behind the bar wanted me to have a fruity strawberry and vodka number, because it was a new recipe shed just learned. The guy up a ladder doing the sign writing asked me what I'd ordered, and was genuinely interested if I liked it. Just as he was finishing his work on the new restaurant, his mates turned up in their white van. A couple of them asked if I liked the food, and said they'd just been for a calzone at a place down the road, but that they'd eaten here before and really liked it. 

 Every city, every large grouping together of peoples is bound to throw up plenty of good places to eat, but for the ignorant traveller, they can be hard to find. This is probably more so the case for a visitor to Sheffield, than it is to a city of comparable size. Sheffield is more centrifugal than most cities for loads of reasons I won't go into here, but imagine being a first time visitor, fresh off the train and deposited by a skillfully wrought, but heavy handed, urban planning scheme, via the Millenium Garries, to the Peace Gardens. What are the chances that you're going to discover the joys of London Road, the boutique gastronomy of  Rafters or Peppercorn, or top notch burger and pizza at Kelham Island, not to mention decent pubs? So I thought I should do a quick rundown of places where the gastronomically sentient traveller on a tight budget should visit.

Gusto on Chapel Walk. Quite pricey, but to my mind the only actual 'restaurant' in Central Sheffield. Run by a fantastic couple (she cooks, he manages the floor),  properly Italian.

Noodle Inn Centro on Westfield Terrace. One of my favourite places to eat in the world. The food is never outstanding, it doesn't take your breath away. Once or twice, it's made mistakes. David Chan's Noodle Inn places are almost a chain, and every time they open a new place, the staff change and the food at each of his kitchens might experience a wobble. I'm more than willing to forgive these teething troubles, because when on point, as they usually are, his chefs turn out the nuts and bolts of some fantastic classical Sichuanese dishes and dim sum.

Other places in town (other than me) are Eten, down by the cathedral, run by my first head chef, the astonishingly capable Lee Vintin, and various other places I haven't eaten in enough to judge, Lucky Fox (decent down home Americana) and Seafayre. You can do a lot worse than wander round the back of John Lewis and get some Fish and Chips, but if not, you're in the right place to go down the road and get a burrito from Street Food Chef or an edible falafel from Fanoush. 

If you're willing to travel the short distance into the burbs, then all sorts of joy waits you in the form of Urban Choola, Two Steps - for mystical reasons our best chippy, and Made by Jonty. Resident of Sharrow Vale, not content with the best kebabs (Elif) and a world class chip shop, have a competent bakery in the form of Seven Hills, independent butchers and fishmongers, people making their own pasta, and soon, an Urban Quarter burger restaurant, I'm the last person in the world to get excited about meat disks, but these people have got it right.

Like so many things about our city, you have to get out of the middle to properly appreciate it. I only hope that this is of some use to visitors, and maybe to natives also. 

Why do 'We Want Plates'?

If you are reading this, then I assume you are a hip and funky gastronaut, technically savvy, with your sticky donut finger in the eye of the storm of the culinary zeitgeist. It's the same finger you're currently using to swipe through this post on your iPhone whilst ignoring the person you're supposed to be having lunch with. It's ok. They are doing the same, and I doubt they're reading anything as lucid and edgy as this. Carry on. 

Now, as someone who likes to keep abreast of developments in the foodsphere, your knowledge of social media will have brought you into contact with the account 'We Want Plates'. Like its contemporary 'Get In The Sea', it exists to puncture the pretentious wankiness of the way in which much modern food is served. I've no doubt that there are a good few chefs actively trying to figure out the most preposterous way of serving a portion of chips, just so they can get their food featured on this account. I've considered buying a load of child size Wellington boots, so you can have that one for free. It's all good fun, to point and laugh, after all, it's just a bit of fun, and what's wrong with injecting levity into meal times?

We could stop there, but I think it is interesting to wonder how we ended up with this current state of affairs. Chefs have always done silly things with food. We cook when we are not hungry, or at least we cook to satisfy needs that go beyond the bounds of mere sustenance, and in an effort to get noticed, otherwise sensible and able cooks sometimes do ridiculous things, such as serve bread in a flat cap. Undoubtedly, what has fed this tidal wave of pretentious gimmickry is the ever growing dependence of the foodbiz to be visually appealing. 

We've been here before. When browsing cookbooks in Waterstones, how often do we stop to read the recipes? More likely than not, we flip through and check the pictures. Now celebrating it's silver anniversary, who can doubt that Bob Carlos Clarke's enigmatic monochrome photography is the primary selling point of White Heat? The colour studio shots of Marco Pierre White's immaculately composed dishes are still stunning however, but to modern eyes they seem oddly stiff and dated. Where is the microcress? Where are the edible flowers and and smears?

The truly ridiculous thing is that fashion controls the way chefs put food on plates as surely as it dictates the waistline of their designer denims, and it's a treadmill in which we are all complicit. The primacy placed on food's visual appeal, despite the decrease in popularity of 'fayn daynin' is now stronger than ever, and the major catalyst for this has been the growth of social media. A picture speaks a thousand words, but those words take time to read, and sometimes they are about boring things, like ingredients and technique.

I'm as guilty as the next person in relying on photography to give me an instant hit. Go to a chef or restaurant's website, or more likely Twitter feed, and the first thing you do is check the gallery, or swipe through the photos, because it's so much easier to take in at a glance. I'm also culpable in using food photography in my quest for self promotion, and more importantly, to push the public perception of what our kitchen is capable of. On the whole, I don't think food photography is a bad thing, but (I can hear the cliché counter clocking up), we've well and truly put the cart before the horse. It's this self perpetuating treadmill of presentation that is in danger of occluding what really matters.

I ate once in a restaurant which we might refer to as a serial offender. A young couple were out on a date at the table next to me. The bread came out in a flat cap. Whilst the young chap popped to the loo, she took a photo with her phone. When laddo returned, the process was repeated. Everyone smiled. The problem is, as long as gastronomic success is predicated on theatrical bullshit, we will continue to miss what really matters. Those boring things like craft, knowledge, ingredients and technique will continue to take a back seat as long as chefs and restaurants cater to the basic needs keeping up with fashion. It's time for a rethink. Yes, we want plates, but it's time we also started calling for substance over style, ability over trickery. Everything else can get in the sea.