food. part i.

Last week, I ate half a turkey sandwich before I realized it wasn't a thick slice of cheese on rye.

Now, I'm not a food snob, per se. It wasn't that long ago that someone had to teach me my Roquefort from my Gorgonzola, and my feta from my chevre. However, I do know that turkey should under no circumstances be mistaken for cheese. I consider this one of those little truisms commonly accepted as steadfast rules in the food world. Just as I know one should never order steak “well done” at a restaurant of any repute, I know that large cooked foul and milk that has been persuaded to curdle into a solid state should not have interchangeable tastes and textures.

Lately I’ve found myself thinking more than usual about food, eating habits, and national cuisines as I’ve been travelling and meeting new people and feebly trying to assimilate to various cultures by adopting the eating behaviours of the locals. It’s been a somewhat horrifying journey, with a full portion of complaining, a side order of sceptically poking at concoctions with forks, and maybe even a smattering or two of lying miserably in bed rubbing one’s tummy.

Upon arriving in New York City last summer, on one of my first weekends out on the town, I was told that I stood out a mile away as an out-of-towner. Before I had a chance to offer my feisty defence of my pronunciation of “about”, my unwillingness to do a little catwalk strut for a bouncer to get into a club, and the continual absence of a cigarette from one hand and a Blackberry from the other, I was told it was my plans to have dinner sometime between the hours of 5pm on Friday and 6am on Monday that marked me as if with a neon flashing sign as a non-Manhattanite. As it turns out, only tourists eat on the weekends in the Big Apple. On a weekday, dinner in Manhattan is a good steak. On the weekend, it’s a three-course affair: a cocktail at happy hour, a cigarette, and a sugar-free Altoid for dessert.

As our posse of locals returned to their on-upping each others threesome stories, my fellow out of towners and I had a quick discussion about this weekend-fasting revelation, the short synopsis reading something along the lines of, “Fuck that shit. Where was the falafel stand we passed ten minutes ago?” Apparently, as we soon discovered, if you’re comfortable being labelled an outsider, pariah, or social leper and choose to flagrantly disregard this unwritten uneating rule while the rest of the locals are out partying, the variety of food choices available is almost unlimited. The city truly never sleeps and one feels mildly obligated to stray from the conventional slice of pizza on the drunken walk home from whichever trendy area of the city you’ve been frequenting to whichever, most likely less trendy, area of the city in which you live.

After being pushed out of the comfortable borders of my conventional midnight pizza-eating, and finding a new ethnic cuisine each night to offer a climax to a night of drunken revelry, I suddenly fell on hard times upon relocating to London. Whereas New York is the city that never sleeps, London slathers on the cold cream, firmly pulls down its slumber mask and demands its beauty sleep, and considerable amounts of it at that. I’ve learned to eat while the sun is still up if I plan on eating at all. While Londoners most certainly eat just as regularly on the weekends as throughout the business week, they seem quite happy to shut down the entire city at approximately 6pm each day. Grocery stores, restaurants, cafes: all closed. Shopkeepers, restauranteurs, and waiters slam their doors and run for cover as soon as the sun dips out of view.

These early-closures have come as a harsh adjustment for me, mainly in terms of finding something to satiate me on inebriated journeys home in the early hours of the morning. Unfortunately, being rather domestically inept, I don’t really keep my flat stocked with food, of the snack variety or otherwise. Thus, one night last week, a late-night phone call to a darling friend went something like this:

Friend: “Have you been drinking?”
Me: “Maybe. Why do you ask?”
Friend: “Your voice shoots up an octave and a half after a few glasses of wine. And you’re jolly. Eerily jolly. What’s that noise in the background? Are you banging pots and jars together?”
Me: “I’m cooking whole wheat spaghettini, but I used the fridge socket for my hair straightener yesterday morning and forgot to plug the fridge back in and now my pesto looks off. Thoughts?”
Friend: “It’s 2 am.”
Me: “About the pesto.”
Friend: “If it smells manky, don’t eat it. Also, it’s 2am.”

I suppose the moral of that story is if you’re new to London, consider investing in some low-preparation snack foods to store around the house for late night cravings. Also, a power bar to maximize your useable electrical sockets so your hair and beauty aids don’t continually sabotage whatever work your major kitchen appliances are no doubt up to. Alternately, if you’re headed to New York and aren’t hell bent on blending in with the locals, I can direct you to the best all night sandwich café in Union Square that does things with capers that still make me wake up salivating.

To be continued.