Sandwich on top of a grave
ONE of the first things you see when you step out of London’s airports is a coffee shop, usually a branch of Costa and a branch of M&S Food. This being 2022, the platinumth year of our lady Queen Elizabeth the Second, most visitors to the UK know exactly how to navigate a Costa Coffee. They approach the cafe gingerly, note the prices, convert the prices into their home currency, wince so severely that you can actually hear their facial muscles squeaking, before joining the line and succumbing to the global capitalist cappuccino machine. One hazelnut soya latte please.
All this is fine. Predictable, even. But then there are the truly courageous visitors who decide they will not go to Costa. Instead they will go to M&S Food. And immediately they are overcome by... sandwich. Which makes it sound like some kind of national malady that strikes unvaccinated visitors.
Which is exactly what it is. And what a sweet malady it is. They will see dozens upon dozens of sandwiches. In all kinds of combinations. I once saw an Italian family enter an M&S Food at Heathrow, look at the choices, look at each other, sigh and then walk off to Costa. The spread was so anxiety-inducing it made an Italian family voluntarily go to a Costa Coffee. Will they ever be allowed back into Italy? Sad.
When I pass through Heathrow when travelling or to receive visitors, I always drop in at M&S Food. I make sure to get a to-go pack for the flight or the train home. Maybe a bowl of fresh coconut. Or a smoothie. But most often: a sandwich. I love sandwiches. Always have. I like them in all shapes and sizes: brown, white, granary, bloomer, sourdough, panini, baguette, rye, muffin, wrap, focaccia, pita, gyro, banh mi, dabeli... really, I don’t care. If it is a sandwich, I will almost certainly eat it.
And if you are a sandwich person, there are few places in the world that truly appreciate a good sandwich quite like the UK does. Here sandwiches are everywhere. Airports, train stations, schools, churches, museums, castles, aquariums, cemeteries. If you go to the superb Cafe in the Crypt beneath St Martin-in-the-fields by Trafalgar Square, you can quite literally eat a sandwich on top of someone’s grave. It is allowed. (Also do look at the church itself. It is the model for many British-built churches across North India.)
It is not just that the sandwich is ubiquitous in the UK. It’s also the variety. And I mean that across both axes: diversity and quality. You will often find the most hideous sandwiches sitting a stone’s throw from some of the greatest expressions of “things between bread” on the planet. Such as Jeremy Lee’s Smoked Eel sandwich.
The really quite adorable Jeremy Lee owns and runs Quo Vadis, an acclaimed private club with a public restaurant on Dean Street in Soho. Many, many years ago, the location used to be a set of extremely miserable lodgings. Karl Marx lived there once. Today it is home to a very tony private club and a very aesthetically pleasing restaurant. Once I saw Gary Kasparov walk out of the restaurant. Did he know about the Karl Marx connection? Maybe I should have... checked?
Quo Vadis, the club, I have never been to. I am not the private club type. I wear socks and sandals simultaneously. But the restaurant I try to visit once a year, as a sort of guilty pleasure gift to mark notable achievements. And I always order the Smoked Eel sandwich. It is really, like the best things in life, a very uncomplicated little thing. Five ingredients. Smoked eel fillet. Sourdough bread. Horseradish cream. Dijon mustard. Butter. With a little bit of sirke waaley pyaaz on the side.
Not cheap. Eleven pounds and fifty pence. Not expensive. In moderation.
It is really a tremendous sandwich.
But see, this is the thing. You don’t have to go to Jeremy Lee’s to eat a good sandwich in the UK. They are everywhere. Away in Suffolk, in a little town called Framlingham, surely the most Tamil-sounding of all British places, there is a hotel called The Crown with a restaurant. It is a short walk from Framlingham Castle where Queen Mary discovered that she would succeed Henry VIII and become the first Queen regnant of England.
The Crown makes a Chicken Club Sandwich that is memorable not for its taste, which is superb, but for its balance. Chicken club sandwiches are hard to get right. Too much chicken and everything is dry and bland. Too much tomato and everything turns into a mess. Bread too crusty? Lacerated mouth. Bread too soft? It will collapse. If the Club Sandwich were to become an issue at the United Nations, India would 100 per cent abstain. Too complicated.
But The Crown balances it all very nicely and also serves a crackling portion of French fries on the side.
Or you could go to a nice supermarket and buy bread and little pots of sandwich fillers. Go home, make fresh sandwiches, and enjoy.
Which flavour? Coronation Chicken seems the only appropriate choice now, don’t you think? m
1. The late Ladi Kwali was a potter and something of a Nigerian icon. She shares a unique honour with the likes of Chairman Mao, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Genghis Khan, Edvard Munch, Nikola Tesla, Ingmar Bergman, and Jane Austen, among many others. Only one Indian is eligible to be on this list. What is it a list of?
2. You can find famous examples of these all over the world: Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada in the US; the UK; Finland; Norway; and Mahabalipuram in India. In Zimbabwe, they are so loved, they found pride of place on a currency note. What structures are we talking about?
3. The Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke both quote Jesus through a phrase often rendered in English as “You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” In Dungeons & Dragons, a character named Mammon is portrayed as a devil. In his book The Enchantments of Mammon: How ________ Became the Religion of Modernity, the author Eugene Mccarraher blends history, prophecy, and polemic. Fill in the blank.
4. TANSTAAFL is an expression that describes the cost of decision-making and consumption. The concept of TANSTAAFL is thought to have originated in 19th-century American saloons where customers could avail themselves of a special offer. From the basic structure of the offer, it is evident that there were strings attached. What does TANSTAAFL stand for?
5. During the Second World War, large numbers of British airmen were felled over enemy airspace and then held as prisoners behind enemy lines. Germany, in part as a nod to the Geneva Convention, allowed humanitarian groups such as the Red Cross to distribute care packages to those prisoners. One of the categories of items that could be included in those packages was “games and pastimes”. So the Allies took military advantage of this: Posing as a “charity” (the Licensed Victuallers Prisoners Relief Fund), they sent packages to their POWS that had clandestine escape kits that included tools like compasses, metal files, money, and, most importantly, maps. How did they manage to send these items across?
6. This term was first used in 1987 by Dana Dane in the rap song “Nightmares”, which featured in his debut album “Dana Dane with Fame”, and referred to the sound effect of tinkling bells that was used in cartoon shows. It was popularised by Cash Money Millionaires in 1999. What is the term?
7. Discussing the concept in a speech in 1968 titled “To Hell With Good Intentions”, Ivan Illich spoke of the sense of responsibility that drives noblesse oblige: an idea first developed by the French aristocracy as a moral duty derived from its wealth. Illich scathingly called the concept “paternalism”, an extension of power and authority over cultures around the world. In the UK, trade unions have said that on a long-term basis, it is a form of exploitation used to avoid minimum wage legislation. What concept is being talked about?
8. A 2016 report found that in Tamil
Nadu, 351 of 743 spinning mills used something called the Sumangali Scheme through which recruiters targeted poor families, promising them a lump sum in exchange for their daughters working in the mills. The women were subjected to exploitative labour practices, including restriction of movement, confiscation of mobile phones, and withholding of wages. According to the Walk Free organisation, this kind of bonded labour falls under a larger umbrella category that includes trafficking and debt bondage. Name it.
9. Two Picasso questions: i) Legend has it that at the height of his fame, Pablo
Picasso would pay for meals, and so on, with cheques rather than cash. Why? ii)
When once asked to pay for a meal with a drawing, the artist reportedly said: “I’m buying a meal, not X.” What was X?
10. Where, outside a kitchen or fridge, might one find a lobster, a few prawns, and sometimes an odd pineapple sharing a tight space with one another?