Piece by Kate Antoni, FG Central Correspondent
It’s More Than Food
As I lean over my side of the bed and plug the laptop charger into the socket, I’m greeted with a mound of wires. Jumbled up. unintelligible. A random selection of bits and pieces that I have seemingly acquired over time, they live there now along with a hair dryer I seldom use. Together. Making no sense. My other half doesn’t really understand it, he won’t ever truly appreciate the feeling of ‘otherness’ that comes with hoarding electrical items and small boxes. Often old, broken or empty. Maybe, if you didn’t have grandparents that sneaked snails in a shoebox through Heathrow airport, neither will you.
Fresh Fish
My grandfather was a little over four and a half feet tall or as he’d like to put it – a little under five feet. He had hair, but not much and really liked cardigans. When I was four or six, he made me red leather shoes, in his workshop, which by this point may have been the garage. A different workshop than he’d made Ava Gardner’s shoes, but the same set of hands weathered by time. He smoked and drank whiskey and grew courgettes and tomatoes, though the potatoes weren’t ever very successful.
Every day at 5pm we’d watch Greek news and eat mezze. I still can’t follow the news, but I like mezze. It was always a selection: kohlrabi, radishes, cucumber and celery, sometimes stale carrot. There was lightly toasted bread with sesame on the crust and sometimes we’d have snails, boiled in salty water and served cold with a toothpick. They sound disgusting and for all intents and purposes, they probably tasted just as bad. Other times, we’d have pan fried red mullet and he’d skin and bone my portion and save me the crunchy tails.
Food Must Have Heart
The memories have stayed with me. When I obsessed after the meal, at Jinli, that my photos were bad, chef Thuy from the Little Viet Kitchen told me not to worry. She told me that food should make you feel something in your heart. That words and feelings were enough. How did the food make me feel? In truth, it made me feel like I’d come home. The taste was obviously different than anything I’d eaten growing up eating but the atmosphere, the buzz, the hustle and bustle. That felt like home.
The Ugly Sweater
I arrived early, fearing I’d be late and made my way up a short flight of stairs. I was wearing a pink mohair sweater that made sweat profusely. I took it off to reveal a vest, that Marie Kondo would refer to as an “indoor top” and the rest of the world would call “ugly.” As the bloggers arrived, I drank fizzy sweet sake and chatted politely, staving off the hunger pangs. The table was set on the first floor, which overlooked the tables beneath, prime people watching.
Then we ordered, Gok did most of the ordering and he reminded me of my grandparents. Telling me what I needed to eat and filling up my plate with fish. The food was plentiful and displayed with sharing in mind, so that the entire scene looked like a grand banquet. I ate the chicken Szechuan style, inelegantly with my chopsticks, biting through the deep-fried exterior and loading up on dried chili and peanut. I satiated my seafood craving with heaps of sweet and salty, umami mixed seafood fried noodles. The type of dish that, made me salivate just a little as I sit thinking about it. I slurped it all up in the hope, no one noticed my saucy stained chin.
The specials really were special – whole seas bass with chili sauce, topped with lotus root. Dishes that evoke a sense of pride in their construction. Dishes that are laden with sentiment and nostalgia. I still cannot portion a whole fish because I stopped eating whole fish when my grandfather died and there was no one to pick out the bones. I still eat the prawn head and tail. I still eat snails (most recently at Benoit in Paris). (I also smoke and drink whiskey, though I think he’d be less proud of that!)
As I sat amongst a group of relative strangers, the overwhelming sense of warmth and kindness radiated. We shared dumplings and mapo tofu. I passed the fried rice but kept hold of the pork belly. I thought about moments passed and moments shared and wondered how quickly I could return without seeming weird and how much Szechuan chicken I could possibly eat without causing myself injury. The food at Jinli is exceptionally good and the service is marvelous but the reason I’d return is far simpler. I felt as though everything was going to be ok, because finally, I could order a whole seabass and someone else, who cared as much about pan fried fresh fish as my grandfather had done, would portion it for me. Finally, for the first time in decades, I felt like I was home and that’s something you can’t buy.
Jinli Chinatown Flagship Branch, Unit 15, Central Cross, 16-18 Newport Place, London WC2H 7PR
