Eideard

Only breadsticks can save us, now!

Like many food-obsessed people, I collect things. In my case, I collect mostly useless things. For example, I have a drawer full of plastic chopsticks from my local Vietnamese takeaway that I am convinced will come in handy should I decide to make noodles for 40 surprise dinner guests or if I plan to fashion a representation of The Gherkin on a rainy Sunday afternoon when Bolton Wanderers v West Bromwich is the only football on the box.

I have a library of takeaway menus stretching back at least 18 years and most of which, I am sure, refer to places that have rightly long since closed. I also have a dusty pile of well over 2,000 business cards from restaurants all over the world, which I pick up as a matter of habit and almost never look at again.

However, my favourite collection of all is a rapidly growing list of overheard middle-class foodie lamentations – railings against the general unfairness of life and how it can come between a person and the eating happiness they deserve.

The catalogue was already quite a lengthy one and is growing all the time and the current incumbent at the top of the pile is my brother-in-law, Matt. He is a good northern lad and a long time supporter of Sheffield Wednesday who would definitely mark himself down as being credible on a street level, even if said street was a leafy avenue with nice detached houses. However, during a family holiday in Devon, while scouring the aisles of a sparsely stocked budget supermarket with my nephew and niece in tow he was heard to wail to my sister:

“The children are getting upset. Quick, where are the grissini?”

Fracking hilarious article if you’re a foodie. And I am. I hear remarks like these every Saturday morning on our weekly grocery shopping run.