THE AESTHETIC SANDWICH

Maybe I already told you that when I was, briefly, the relief chef at a fairly dismal steak restaurant in Cambridge, my boss — an unhappy man who hated his job and his customers even more than he hated me — dispensed a piece of what he thought was profound wisdom: ‘If it looks good and they’ve got a full plate, you can get away with murder.’ Even at the time I knew he was wrong, but there’s certainly no reason why food can’t look good, even a sandwich.

I bought the above ham and cheese ciabatta at the Dulwich Picture Gallery Café. It looked rather sad (and unappetizing) in its paper plate but it tasted absolutely great. I accept that I am not the world’s greets food photographer but that really is what it looked like. Compare and contrast with pictures on the café website:

And then a day or two later I was seduced, I think that’s the word by, this sandwich from the Station Buffet in Manningtree: How could I resist a label with a picture of a steam train? Yes, I am very easily seduced.

The last mainline passenger train to be hauled by a steam locomotive was the 'Fifteen Guinea Special' which ran on August 11 1968, and this sandwich certainly had something historic about it. I remember when all British sandwiches looked like this. This one tasted exactly the way it looked.

Looks are never everything, but they’re usually something.