Food & drink takeaways – 12 September
A curated taster menu of every day’s food & drink associations
An ahead-of-its-time (by centuries) Japanese pop-up restaurant, lunchtime outdoors with an Impressionist painter and a satirist’s guidelines on drinking.
Just some of the food and drink delights for which we can thank 12 September.
Click on the links for extra helpings.
Food in writing
As part of the 1884 International Health Exhibition in London, the doors were opened to a Japanese ‘pop up’ restaurant above one of the smoking pavilions. Here are some extracts of the review it received in The Morning Post. of 12 September.
“The rather embarrassing custom of serving the whole menu at once is apt to confuse people accustomed to a procession of dishes following each other. . . The Japanese bring all up at once, each guest being provided with a charming lacquer tray, and each dish, moreover, being served in a pretty little lacquer saucer with appropriate cover.
The menu on Wednesday consisted of sea cucumber and raw turnip salad. Miso soup (miso, a fermented mixture of soy beans, wheat, and salt), broad beans, and aralia pinnatifida. Kuchitori, a side dish of mushrooms, radishes, and tomato mixed. Hachimono, a grilled or roast. Choku, dressed vegetables in vinegar. Han, boiled rice. Wanmori, soup of meat with vegetables. Sunomono, salad. Konomono, vegetables, salted or preserved in miso. Saké, a Japanese wine.”
It also ventures to add:
“It remains, however, to be seen whether the average Englishman will ever develop a great relish for raw turnip salad and sea-weed stew.”
Food in art
Lunchtime at the Building Site on the Van Diemenstraat in Amsterdam is a painting by Dutch Impressionist George Kendrik Breitner – born on this day in 1857. Breitner was noted especially for his depictions of street scenes and harbours in a realistic style.
"When the North Sea Canal was finished in 1876, the Amsterdam IJ became navigable for large oceanliners. New streets with warehouses – such as the Van Die-menstraat seen in this painting – were built along the banks of the canal. Breitner depicted construction workers on their lunch break, seen from the back. They are painted with the same rough, angular volumes as the planks on which they sit and the tents and sails in the background."
Food and drink quotes
– American essayist and critic, H L Mencken, born on this day in 1880.
