Meet Good Food’s new columnist

Each month, our new columnist Melissa Thompson shares her pick of cooks and artisans who are inspiring change in the food world

When I started working in food six years ago, I thought it was an honest industry. I’d started a supper club at home, transforming my dining and living rooms into a makeshift spot to feed Japanese comfort food to strangers.

Sure, the hours would be long and margins tight, especially when it grew into pop-ups and, later, residencies in pub kitchens that would run for months. But, I believed the food would do the talking, and that ultimately, success would boil down to one thing – whether the food being served was good.

But, it eventually dawned that food was subject to the same unspoken rules that govern all aspects of life. That the powerful few – the food media, and the top chefs and PR companies that promote them – act as gatekeepers to the food world, and decide who makes it and who does not. This is as much to do with perception as power; ideas about which foods ‘deserve’ to be celebrated and revered, and which are there only to serve a quick, cheap hunger fix, if acknowledged at all.

The mindset that the foods of western Europe (especially those of France, Italy and Spain) are superior to others still lingers. Food from African countries and the Caribbean islands are kept out of the mainstream, or viewed with trepidation, save for a few breakthrough dishes, such as jerk chicken and jollof rice.

This exclusion has long been known in black communities, but it’s only recently come to the fore as Britain grapples with complex conversations around race, and its role in inequality.

And it’s not a moment too late, because this whitewashing of food has left a lot of cooks, chefs and restaurant owners without the recognition they deserve. But it’s also left the British majority blind to a rich, beautiful world of food with a fascinating heritage, such as perfectly cooked plantain, grains of paradise, and egusi, not to mention the ingenious cooking methods that have been borne out of necessity, due to things like only having access to the cheap cuts of meat traditionally rejected by the wealthy. These methods magically transform inexpensive, inedible ingredients into dishes of unimaginable delight.

That’s how this new column came to be. In its determination to redress the imbalance,

BBC Good Food has invited me to share the people, foods and projects that you may not have heard about, but that will enrich your life and meals.

In the first of my monthly columns, I’ll be introducing the game-changers – those who are breaking boundaries in the world of food, and who deserve recognition for doing so.

Melissa runs food and recipe project Fowl Mouths ( fowlmouths.co.uk).

In 2014, she started a supper club serving Japanese comfort food that eventually grew into a successful pop-up which only ended after the birth of her daughter in 2018. She’s been a vocal advocate for the promotion of black and minority ethnic people in food, and now provides advice on all aspects of the industry. @fowlmouthsfood