There is no more deathly phrase in the world of food than “it’s just a bit of fun”. Something being just a bit of fun is what leads from the gateway drug of a steak served on a slate so that cutting up your dinner sounds like fingernails being dragged down a blackboard, to a full English breakfast served in a dog food bowl, to a spare rib selection presented in a mini galvanised dustbin.
Just a bit of fun is the excuse for a record-breaking hamburger weighing more than a tonne which no one wants to eat; for a $169 hot dog topped with caviar and truffles which sounds disgusting; for a £130 wagyu sandwich, which really isn’t all that. It’s not fun. It’s seriously bloody annoying. What’s more it may well be a harbinger for the end of everything we hold dear. And as Christmas 2019 approaches, the volume of this nightmarish stuff is only increasing.
In 1976, the gloriously named General Sir John Glubb, a distinguished soldier and scholar, wrote a celebrated essay examining how apparently impregnable empires collapse. An age of enterprise leads in turn to an age of affluence, he said, followed inexorably by the age of decadence. In these, the death throes of once great civilisations, the chimera of happiness is pursued through conspicuous consumption, especially involving food and drink. Feasting and boozing was, for example, a particular feature of the Roman empire before it fell apart. Behold, the vomitorium.
To witness history repeating itself, visit any branch of John Lewis right now where, for the festive season, they have installed the KitKat Chocolatory. It invites you to commission your own bespoke KitKat from a bunch of fillings, toppings and chocolates giving up to 1,500 permutations. But the one they really want you to perv over is the limited-edition gold KitKat, a raspberry and pomegranate flavoured number covered with 23-carat gold leaf. It costs £25. For a KitKat. And no, I didn’t try it. I am a man of principle.
Elsewhere, a winter food festival has just announced the creation of a single pig in a blanket the height of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. It’s wrapped in enough bacon to make a wardrobe full of meat dresses for Lady Gaga. And then there’s the press release I just received breathlessly asking me whether what they had created could possibly be “the most expensive panettone in the world?”. As if that was something we’d all been waiting for. I shall not name the company responsible, in order to protect the guilty.
It costs £200, a price achieved not through the use of gorgeous ingredients, for there really is nothing worth baking into a sweet, sultana-studded enriched loaf of bread that could get it to such lofty heights. The only way they have been able to get to that price is, of course, by covering the damn thing in, yes, you guessed it, gold leaf; a precious metal which will only pass through you, and turn your bodily product into something sparkly you might briefly consider hanging on the Christmas tree.
We have a saying in journalism. One is an example. Two is a coincidence. But three? That’s a trend, and it’s very hard to ignore this one. The very least you can say is that there are a bunch of catastrophically unimaginative, dismally uncreative PR and marketing executives who think this obscene “bit of fun” is the way to make a splash. I think it’s something else. I think it’s proof that we really are all going to hell in a handcart. And it’s various people in the food world who are pulling the damn thing.
