Tom Hedley writes an Open Letter to fashionable eateries and hostelries at this end of town.
Dear East London, if you make me eat off a plank of wood again, I’m going to lose my proverbial shit.
We get it, you’re edgy. You’re different to every other topless burger serving, pulled pork dishing gastro tavern in the East end. But please, please stop serving me my dinner on half a cupboard door. Oak is not the new porcelain. I’m not in the market for a new dining room table, and even if I was, you’re not the carpenter for me.
Living in London, you come to realise that food is the least important thing on the menu. That’s if you get a menu, of course – nowadays it’s considered OK to list your wares with suspiciously good penmanship on a chalkboard for just desserts. No, what’s more important is how good your dish looks filtered through sepia. Instagram is a curse and the cause for this deluded generation of hoop-jumping pub landlords.
Just because you don’t sell that ‘Fosters shite’ doesn’t mean you can go and call yourself the arts and crafts of beer brewing. Oh, Time Out listed you? Reality check – Time Out lists every pub in London that isn’t a JD Wetherspoons.
If you’ve found yourself on the wrong side of these criticisms, I’ll forgive you; I’ll even still visit you from time to time. Hell, I’d recommend you to my bright eyed best friend fresh off the train from Stoke-on-Trent; just don’t serve me my food on anything but a round, ceramic plate.
It doesn’t work. There’s no way you can stack a roast chicken and a dozen roasties on a chopping board without interfering with its juicy duties. You can’t stack a toothpick skewed 100 percent steak burger on a roof tile and expect a happy ending. And you know, I’m not the first to tell you this – there’s a whole social movement dedicated to informing you, in the kindest of words, to grow a pair.
So, in honour of the plate, here are my favourite how-not-to-serve-dinner dishes. #wewantplates #longlivetheplate
Wasabi spongecake with a 'wow' factor. As in: "Wow, some tool has served my dessert on a tree."
(Pic: @MirjamvD) pic.twitter.com/U3cZJE5pCU— We Want Plates 🍽 (@WeWantPlates) February 21, 2016
Comforting, traditional, fruit crumble ordered. This arrives. @WeWantPlates pic.twitter.com/AIvc9cH2SH
— Sheila King (@SheilaMossKing) February 24, 2016
Chicken fingers in a skull and a seashell of beans, coinciding with the bottom of a barrel.
(Pic: @jonnybadclobber) pic.twitter.com/NUUQ3236Yl— We Want Plates 🍽 (@WeWantPlates) February 7, 2016
Somewhere, there's a very pissed-off pigeon looking for its nest. Unless he's in the starter.
(Pic: @MJDoroszuk) pic.twitter.com/m7OV1clFHR— We Want Plates 🍽 (@WeWantPlates) January 3, 2016
Hi yeah could I get mine served on an inexplicable bed of pine needles please pic.twitter.com/npcoafuVfa
— Adam Hess (@adamhess1) December 20, 2015
Oppiestasie in Cullinan, GP. The no plate movement has gone too far. pic.twitter.com/ZCo6VYcXFj
— Baba wakhe (@Mantshinga) November 16, 2015
Chefs: bring us camping stoves, knock a few quid off and we'll heat it up ourselves. Deal?
(Pic: @seanddotmedotuk) pic.twitter.com/l96GHBnMG5
— We Want Plates 🍽 (@WeWantPlates) October 24, 2015
Tom Hedley – a food critic with no taste