You reach a bend in the road where the small industrial estate veers back onto the main road. You are not lost – you spend most of your weekends tracking down restaurant recommendations on the outskirts of your city, so Google Maps is your Ordnance Survey – but nothing in your line of vision looks quite like the spot you are looking for. For a moment, you wonder if the greasy spoon right in front of you is your destination. It wouldn’t be the first time. It bears no resemblance to the picture from that article you read, though, and it doesn’t seem like the kind of caff to have a secret second menu.
You are trying to reduce your reliance on Google Maps, and keep telling yourself that you want to develop a more ‘present’ relationship with your city. In spite of this, you resign yourself to checking your phone once again, and you realise you have overshot the restaurant you were trying to find. You remember that it has some sort of arrangement with one of the factories on the industrial estate, but you can’t remember the details. You retrace your steps, and this time you are sure to follow the blue dot to the green flag you had saved on your map.
Yes, there it is! You had worked straight past the little plastic sign. It’s not quite in the right place, you think to yourself; the signs in these sorts of spots rarely are, and perhaps that’s not by chance. You don’t recall reading anything about a doorbell, but you can’t see any other way in, and there’s nobody around to tailgate through the entrance. You give it a ring. While you wait to see if anyone answers, you open the inbox on your phone, to take a quick look at the restaurant review that led you here. You want to see if there’s anything special that the author recommends ordering. Your phone is slow; the signal around here is weak. Before the article it has chance to load, the door buzzes, and you make your way inside.
This post is an expression of my appreciation for Vittles’ new restaurant section. Here is my first entry for the new Six of One series, which recommends London restaurants that deserve to be better known. This post will make a bit more sense after reading it.
Here is my second entry for the same series. If you don’t subscribe to Vittles, this second piece might be behind a paywall. Please consider subscribing, because Vittles is among the very best in the biz. Subscriptions allow them to pay contributors properly, which they do: one of the many reasons they deserve your support.
I spent the winter sowing the seeds of some academic work, which I will share after the harvest. I am writing about food again — in a mixture of ways, as this post suggests — so I hope there is life in this old Substack yet.