As twenty or so years of social media has taught us, we will argue about anything so long as there is breath in our body and accommodating bandwidth. Our predilection for debating even the most trivial topics borders on a kink; we’re intent on dying on insignificant molehills, while far more serious and worthy subjects go unremarked. It’s not hard to see why – it’s much easier to argue passionately for the reinstatement of the Cadbury’s Spira than advocate for peace, political change or the end of persecution. A bitter catfight over whether Quavers are ‘god tier’ on some imaginary hierarchy of crisps is unlikely to be mistaken for your personality or relieve you of your job, or friends. However, these low-stakes opinions somehow have the half-life of plutonium. Who would have believed, a full twenty-five years after receiving that very first typo-ridden [Fw: fw: (FW): FW] joke email, that untold gigabytes of Beyoncé’s internet would be focused on rowing over whether anyone says ‘barm’ further east than Chorley?
Ostensibly lighthearted food wars are more than viral meme opportunities, they’re the rugged scars of centuries of class war, centralised government, the feudal system and insecurity. To you, spreading jam on a scone before cream is just a personal preference but to a telephone engineer in Redruth or a vitamin supplement salesperson in Okehampton it’s their cultural birthright/a bitter bone of contention, depending on whose side you’re on. And there must always be sides. So, before someone tells me I’m eating my eggs too runny, I present the most ridiculous food battles that bored Tuesdays on the internet have told us are a matter of life and death.
Scone or scone?
Do you pronounce it scone, or scone? A joke older than Lily Savage’s tights there, but are there many other five-letter words whose pronunciation causes such ire? Your pronunciation of scone is like a secret password. You can imagine dictionary-wielding territorial thugs roaming the streets stopping unfamiliar faces and asking them how they say it. It’s not necessarily regional, and you may even meet someone who pronounces it differently twice in the same day. It usually depends who’s watching. So, does it rhyme with ‘bone’ or ‘gone’?
Spoiler: who f•cking cares?
(Data collectors: I rhyme it with ‘gone’.)
Jam or cream first?
Staying with scones, Satan’s favoured patisserie item, do you prefer the Devon method or the Cornish way? On previous enquiries, it seems even people living in these counties can’t decide, and I always need a quick google to remind me which is which. It rather depends, I suppose, on how much cream and jam you’re using. You could present it scientifically, working out whether your tastebuds prefer to hit sweetness before the tart, or vice versa, but seriously, for the microseconds it takes your teeth to smash through these layers, I doubt your tongue is much in the mood for forensic examinination. If it makes any difference to you, the Queen preferred jam first with clotted cream on top. But she’s dead now, so you can do what you want. How about you snap your scone (or scone) in half, spread jam on one side, cream on the other, smoosh them together, and then have a long think about how one day the earth is going to crash into the sun, so this doesn’t matter at all?
Steak
A weird concept, steak. Any large slab of meat is, really, when forced into more concentrated contemplation. Here is a bit of animal, seasoned – would you rather have it served bleeding all over your plate, or as a lump of coal’s sexier twin, or somewhere in between? The strangest thing about steak is the assumed pressure to eat it how you think it should be eaten rather than the way you want it – a common problem among anxious diners of more exotic foods wishing not to be culturally insensitive, which perhaps has a degree of logic but is no less batshit. Steak, however, is so simple, despite numerous attempts to gentrify and luxurify to nudge up the price point, and we should be allowed to have it served how we like. But people (men) get so funny about this. Weird how the way you eat your steak has any impact on them whatsoever, really. Are they psycho-kinetically linked to your steak so can taste it as they chew their own? Who knows.
Having had the misfortune to work as a waiter-who-hates-you while I was at university, I remember the apologetic grimace of diners asking for their steak well done, or even medium, and the strange smug smirk of those ordering it ‘bloody’. Having watched the chef heave the remains of these stricken beasts onto the skillet from a plastic crate sitting on an unmopped floor, I always felt the urge to advise hygienic cremation, but it was none of my business, so I did as I was told. To reiterate: how you eat your steak is up to you. If your fellow diners don’t like it, or wish to steaksplain you into submission, tell them they are welcome to adjourn to a separate table. No matter how it comes, it will probably be served on a fungus-ridden wooden board.
(I order medium. It always arrives medium rare.)
Bread rolls
Even the heading of ‘bread rolls’ will provoke regional bakery enthusiasts into reaching for their toasting forks and rolling pins to match upon my front door. I remember back when this was all fields, and experiencing an extreme facial discomfort – which I later discovered was a slight, wry smile – on receiving the aforementioned chain email containing a list of what ‘other’ people called bread rolls, depending on where they were from. That’s right, bitch, not even a crudely drawn or repurposed map, but a crappy bullet list, with terrible formatting and extra spacing thanks to being the 117th forwarded version. People get very angry about this list of pet names nowadays, but maybe my potential rage was calmed by having to scroll down past myriad
——————
‘From: Some Asshole in an office
To: A very long list of email addresses that are right here for anyone to see, including two or three famous people, no bcc or anything
Subject: FW: FW: FW: fw: FW: (FW) (FW:) Re: FUNNY – when is a bread role not a bread role? (sic)’
before I got to the ‘good stuff’.
Barms, stotties, baps, teacakes, bread cakes, cobs, morning rolls, baked tits, oven balls, circular bakes, fluff munchers – I didn't care then and I don’t care now.
Crisps in a sandwich
My Irish nana used to give me crisp sandwiches – which she pronounced ‘crisssandwich’ because she was efficient and there was no time for extra consonants at mealtimes – consisting of cheese and onion Seabrook or Walkers between two slices of buttered bread. When I moved down south I discovered this was viewed, by all the middle class southerners I’d just met for the first time, as disgusting. Somehow, I survived. I didn't realise, however, until fairly recently, that some people added crisps to an existing sandwich that already had a filling situation in progress. It had never occurred to me until Twitter went to war over it. What was interesting (by which I mean depressing) was how partisan and aggressive the nonsensical debate became. There was no room for nuance at all.
Obviously, it wasn’t that deep, but perhaps it was indicative of the trend for the adversarial that in 2022 the PR team at Walkers – bored to death after two years of lockdown and desperate to stave off redundancy – held a referendum of sorts. Focused on the Kent town of Sandwich, the vote mimicked other stupid votes of yore, spearheaded by culinary luminaries Gemma Collins (in) and Fred Sirieix (out) with Nigella Lawson, Ed Balls, and Gordon Ramsey drafted in to make their case. The result was, apparently, two thirds in favour of adding crisps to a sandwich rather than eating them on the side. To which I can only say: get hobbies.
Champagne
Did you know there is a right way and a wrong way to drink champagne? Of course there is. Ever since Ug the caveman’s precocious teenage brats announced that eating woolly mammoth steaks was now unchic, we’ve been adjusting our tastes, sometimes at the expense of comfort or convenience, for fear of being ostracised by the rest of the pack. Champagne flutes, for so long the shapely symbol of what Tales in the City’s Michael Tolliver would call ‘piss-elegance’, and always a welcome sight when perched on a wobbling tray held by a hungover waiter at a corporate event, are over. O-v-a-h. Nobody who’s anybody would be seen dead drinking out of those tall and dainty boys. The previously derided coupe has been enjoying a renaissance among people harking back to the ‘good’ bits of the Twenties (being Gatsby-rich without all the hangups and general bigotry). The wide-brimmed coupe doesn’t deserve its revival. They look elegant until you pick them up and champagne spills everywhere and, if it’s been sitting out longer than 30 seconds, it’s probably flat (the wide surface area helps bubbles escape, you see, which is why the ribbon-necked flute was revered for so long).
No matter, anyway, because the coupe is again OUT and the tulip glass is IN. Why? It could be aesthetic, it might be scientific, but it is definitely pointless. Unless it genuinely enhances your experience, there should be no such thing as the ‘wrong’ glass to drink anything out of. I remember a friend once REELING because I gave them a glass of white wine in a red wine glass. I was about 20 and had two (2) wine glasses, purchased from Spoils Kitchen Reject Shop; I was not expecting Jilly sodding Goolden round for a glass of Safeway (RIP) chardonnay.
White pepper vs black pepper
Please, I beg of you, stay off TikTok. Who cares?
MORE FROM ME:
– I reviewed the Guardian Blind Date and one of the (lovely) daters was annoyed they’d been sent on a lunchtime date because they fancied getting wasted (my interpretation). READ NOW
– Did I mention?! That I have a book?!? Coming out on 9 May?!?! No? Oh. Good. PRE-ORDER ‘LEADING MAN’ NOW
– I appeared on the wonderful FlopCulture podcast discussing the ups and downs of Brooklyn Beckham’s career(s) and nepo babies in general. LISTEN NOW
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I love you Justin for brightening another Wednesday with people’s pointless food wars. I eat and drink how I like and feck those who say it’s the wrong way 😄
Okay let me settle this one...It's a plain tea-cake, Steak should always be Rib-eye or Wagyu, slightly over medium. Crisp sandwich on buttered Warburtons finest white or indeed a plain the-cake, always cheese and onion too. I'll swig champagne from the bottle, black pepper for cooking, white pepper on Branston Baked Beans and Bob may well be your uncle... Great thought provoking article BTW...