WORLD EATS

You know, a lot of people say to me, “Old father, old artificer, is there one thing I should know as I travel around the world feeding my face?”

 

And I say yes, it’s this, that when you arrive in a brand new place for the first time, the first meal you eat, whether good or bad, is always going to be the least representative.

 

I’ll give you an example.  When I went to Tokyo for the first time, I emerged from the hotel in Shinkjuku, unpleasantly jet-lagged but quite pleasantly culture-shocked, I had it in my head from reasonable sources that if you wandered into any Tokyo  department  store you could always get something decent to eat.

 

But I was so off the clock and I got up so early that when I went out of the hotel, the department stores hadn’t yet opened, and the only place I could find to eat was some kind of deserted but open touristy tearoom (name and location lost in the mists of memory) and I stumbled in there and sat down and the waitress brought a menu and the only thing I liked the look of was the croque monsieur.  It looked like this (note the Japanese pickles), and it tasted very good, but it was hardly typical of Tokyo eating.

Now, I know I’ve had a few croque monsieurs over the years, and I think I must have had at least a couple of them in France but my recall is very vague.  Then last week, just a stone’s throw from Piccadilly Circus, I was in Zedel ‘a Parisian brasserie with a 1930's interior’ and that interior in itself would be reason enough to go there though in fact I sat outside at table on the pavement watching the world go by, and I ordered a croque monsieur - it looked like this and it tasted fine:

 

Was it ‘authentic’?  I suppose it must have been; Zedel has Frenchness oozing from every pore.  Was it better than the one I had in Tokyo?  Well yes, probably, but not nearly as much better as you might expect.  Maybe there’s a limit to just how good a croque monsieur can be.