Well, let me confirm — and just for the absence of doubt (as the legal sharks are fond of saying) — that I’m not planning on consuming food off the actual train line, no, that’d be dangerous and dirty and just plain stupid. (It may be an experiment one day worth making — by someone else mind — i.e. how easy or how hard is it to grill a joint of meat on the 3rd rail and still come away alive) but no, I mean “off” as in “away from”, like “off-stage”, using the route of the short line as the jumping-off point to food destinations around the various 16 stations, ones that I’m drawn to after after I’ve debarked the train, found my way through the labyrinthine tunnels leading to the most suitable exit, swiped my iPhone Oyster payment card at the barrier and emerged, blinking (hopefully sunlit days still) into the bright light that welcomes me to each new starting point.
There’s a curious irony in the fact that London — oligarch and dark money central as it is — is also home to a mix of some of the most varied and interesting foods and cultures and people anywhere in the world. That this is particularly the case for a lot of the areas along the Victoria Line, a line remember that’s named after a ruler (a fucking Empress of India, no less) who oversaw and encouraged some of the worst excesses of British plundering and pillaging and genociding colonialism, is strangely apposite. I’m currently reading Mike Davis’ “Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World”. It’s a deeply horrendous read; recording a wide-spread use by her politicians and officials of deliberate starvation to kill off troublesome — and commercially expensive — poor people, one whose policies seem equally and disturbingly germane today it seems, but one I intend to finally complete in the carriages of ‘her’ line.
‘They got the guns, well, but we got the n̶u̶m̶b̶e̶r̶s̶ dishes” as The Doors should maybe have sung.
Here’s a reminder of the route for the non-Londoners out there…
I’m currently drawing up some ground rules and/or guidelines. I don’t really want to walk more than a mile from the station exit. Preferably less. Except that before (or after) leaving any of the light blue tube stations, I may allow for the use of another Tube line or say a short London bus or overground trip onward from there. None of the destinations I choose to eat at will be cursed with Michelin stars or other such boring stuffiness bollocks. I’m also mandating that I can’t repeat a regional cuisine on the same day. Except that I may if it’s a different meal e.g. starting with a Turkish menemen breakfast…
…is therefore allowed to be followed at some point by a Turkish lunch of goat cheese filled börek
…and lamb stuffed manti (aka Turkish ravioli)…
…with a slice of mined lamb & spices topped lahmacun perhaps?
But I then have to have — as a counter-point to all this Anatolian love — a say, dry Pakistani chapli kabab…
…or slow down the pace (and volume of intake) follow along with a simple, aromatic chicken soup, also in Pakistani style…
…or how about a vegetable based Nigerian dish, perhaps a beans and dodo…
…to be slotted in-between at some suitable point along the breakfast-lunch-dinner triumvirate axis. I’m plotting my journey on the London Underground map and not an atlas of the world after all, so I can jump around between food and areas and regions and cultures as much as I like, subject only to a suitable choice being available close to the next station on the route.
Yes, that works for me. And I can’t repeat a meal type either i.e. I can’t be Billy Two (or Three) Breakfasts. Except, maybe if it’s a completely different form of breakfast, then that’s OK. Baked eggs à la Turkey, followed by a pastry snack of baklava…
…meets that criteria, for example. Even if it’s from the same area? Well, yes. Sometimes. Of course. My ball, my game, my rules.
And I’m going to work along my route from North to South. Or maybe South to North, yet I’m currently undecided on whether I ‘have’ to follow the stations in lock step with the map or whether I can pick & choose which one and when I visit next, to then tick finally off my numbered list. And can I go back to a station after having eaten close by just the once, if I feel that there’s more to explore or eat? Green Lanes has a multiplicity of places to dive into for example. Whilst the actual distance on the train — end to end — only takes just over half an hour with no jumps off the carriage, if I agree to this change to the rules, I may actually never have enough time left — until the heat death of the universe — to venture away from the food from the light blue line ever again…
Starting off in Brixton in the south means I’m heading in the right direction to finally jump on the train at Kings X when done and head home. So, breakfast in Brixton then? Sounds like an old movie title. I’m thinking something goat for this first meal of this epic is beckoning to me. This one in the ‘photo below — whilst indeed composed of goat — is actually from Lahore, Pakistan, where it’s a traditional breakfast food. The cook, dressed in a brown, V-neck pullover, over a blue shirt stirring a large flat pan of Siri Paye (a “head and feet”) goat curry with a large spoon. Steam rises off the cooking meats & in the background, through the misted windows, you can see large crowds of people moving back & forth through what is obviously a covered market area. I can smell and taste this whole place right now.
Finest kind.
The reasons for the constraint on distance is three-fold: 1. to save my shoe-leather, feet and aching old joints, from too much abuse 2. to keep the length of this whole saga reasonably do-able in the space of 3 or 4 trips back and forth to London and 3. most importantly, and pragmatically, as I want to write a short story based around what I see, hear, smell, experience along the way to each destination, I need to be able to get them all onto the ‘phone or camera before I reach my rewards at the end. So, not too much information and detail and ideas. But equally, not too little. A Goldilocks amount. Just right. And yes, I know I can, if needed, discard ruthlessly. Indeed, the same applies to my ‘guide-rails’. But this is my game, my ball, my rules. I may of course turn this project instead from a grouping of (mercifully) short stories into a 1,400 page magnum opus novel. Consider yourself to have been duly warned.
I’ve (until) recently stalled the caff writing — as any of you who’ve been interested enough to follow along will know — but this is about to change. See you over there…