I'm a little bit of a foodie.
I love to eat. I hoard recipes and cookbooks like a culinary klepto, although I don't cook much. I get to eat at some lovely restaurants in London at times and I realise how lucky I am as I know that some of these meals equate to the cost of a weekly shop for some people.
My first real food memory though, is a weird one.
When I was a child, the big department store in my hometown didn't open on a Monday and so by extension, none of the other shops did either. I suppose this is a sensible business decision as the majority of shoppers will want to go into said department store and would wait until it was open before going into town.
On Tuesdays in the years before I went to nursery, my mum used to go into town to get various bits of shopping. These were in the days before the town had a shopping centre and a McDonald's. These were the days where there was a Woolworths that was a profitable business, before the over-diversification that destroyed it. The days when a new outfit for Barbie cost £1.95 Every Tuesday as part of this little trip into town we'd go and have breakfast in a little cafe called Toby's.
It isn't there anymore. It must have closed 10 years ago, I suppose at the advent of the Starbucks/Costa influx. I think there is either a chinese or an indian restaurant in its place now. One of many in the town centre, none of which are much cop.
As a child, we didn't eat out a lot but this was a weekly treat. A ritual. I don't remember what mum ordered, but I always had the same: a coke and toast.
To my 28 year old self, who has been fortunate enough to have things like lobster and foie gras and lovely bubbly champagne or cocktails, it sounds so simple. When I think about it, my memory of the coke and toast ritual is more vivid than any other meal I've had. Here's why:
During my childhood, we only ever had brown bread in the house. We also only had margarine. Butter was a Christmas treat. At Toby's, I was allowed white toast with real butter.
There were even more novelties for me in that the toast came out on a toast rack and the butter was little golden packets of Anchor.
Having had cold toast with breakfast in a number of hotels in recent years, I'm amazed that the people at Toby's managed to get to get the toast to your table while it was still hot enough to melt the butter so that it dripped over your fingers (that actually sounds a bit pervy doesn't it?).
Toby's was one of those very old fashioned sort of places where all the fittings were dark wood and the furnishings were chintz. My memories of the place are a bit hazy but I do remember it being quite dark inside and using "normal" knives for butter, rather than specific spreaders like we had at home. I liked how the serration on the knife made patterns in the butter that slowly disappeared as the butter melted. The spreaders at home didn't do that as they had a straight edge.
I realise this is a bit of an odd post but it dawned on me recently that to this day, if I'm given the choice of brown toast over white toast I'll take the white. If white isn't an option, I'll go without. Brown bread doesn't toast the same way - although is much better than white bread when its fresh, in my opinion.
White toast is fairly high up on my list of comfort foods. I probably put things on it that I wouldn't have eaten as a child - lemon curd or pate - but it still takes me back to being a kid in that restaurant.
Funny how food does that isn't it?
