Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Eating Out

(Photo courtesy of pdphoto.org)

Most students are, of course, permanently short of money. In the late seventies we were lucky enough to be at university at a time when the student grant still existed and thus, if we supplemented that small but much-appreciated cash base by working during the holidays, it was possible to survive without racking up significant debt. I feel very sorry for today's British students, saddled with their huge loan debts for years after graduating, and I think that the abolition of the grant was one of the most abominable actions Blair's government perpetrated. As a working-class youth the grant was what made it possible for me to go to university at all. Without it I'd have been stuck because my parents simply could not have afforded the fees and expenses.

Some tried to survive on the grant alone which, while just about possible, condemned them to a fairly miserable existence of low-rent slum living, poor diet and virtually no socialising. Even before I arrived for my first term I could see this would be the case so, in the summer between A-levels and university (and during the three following summer breaks), I worked shifts at local frozen food factories. This was hard graft but it provided sufficient funds to enable me to actually enjoy my student life. It also gave me a first-hand understanding of the nature of factory work, and thus a direct experience of exactly the sort of drudgery I believed a college degree might help me avoid. Had I known then that drudgery comes dressed in a business suit as well as factory overalls I think I might have been too depressed to bother going to university at all. I don't really mean that. My desire to be a student actually had very little to do with possible future career enhancement; it had to do with probable future life enhancement, and on that score I have no complaints at all. My time working on various stations of the production line was valuable on many levels and it also left me with a fund of tales which may very well feature in a future episode of "Bad Teeth..."

Inevitably, we ate a lot of lousy food. Even those who, like me, could actually cook a little soon fell into a degree of standard student self-neglect. In my case this had a lot to do with placing rather more emphasis on the importance of beer than food, so I really only have myself to blame. I ate far too many meals consisting of toast topped with canned rubbish of several varieties (nowhere near as many as 57), or hastily-hurled-together omelettes of dubious composition. Stale egg and cress sandwiches would be grabbed from the cafeteria as I dashed between lectures. Lunchtime visits to the pub (God, we drank as though alcohol was oxygen in those carefree days) might include a reheated meat pie with overcooked chips and lukewarm baked beans. Cheap frozen food was also a staple, in spite of my exposure to the occasionally shocking realities of the way these products were prepared, processed and packaged. And sometimes we needed more. Something different. Something better. So we would allow ourselves to stop counting the pennies quite so carefully for an evening and splash out on an eat-out.

Before university I had almost never eaten in a restaurant. I'm not counting Grimsby's solitary Wimpy Bar or the Hell's Angel havens of the Cleethorpes seafront cafeterias. I vaguely recall a trip to London when I was about eight years old, and a cafe called The Oval Platter (briefly referenced here). I remember being enchanted by this place; by the pleasant feeling of being looked after and fed by strangers; by the unfamiliar crockery, cutlery and tableware and, most of all, by the exotically different food. Memory is such a strange, malleable phenomenon, isn't it? I'm pretty sure that The Oval Platter was little more than a slightly upscale greasy spoon but it was a wonder to me. I suppose we must have visited similar places on other holidays but the only other experience of dining out I remember with any certainty was when my parents took me to a cosy, chintzy old place for a celebration of my successful university application. I had never seen Indian restaurants, Italian restaurants, Greek restaurants, Mexican restaurants... I had never heard of sushi and would not do so for several years yet. I hadn't even heard of an "American-style Burger Bar" but such was the description of "Rock All", a little place just outside Leeds University's main campus which swiftly became the favourite location for these occasional eat-out treats.

"Rock All" served something like ten or twelve different types of burger, from a fairly standard cheeseburger, through reasonably uncontroversial creations like chilli burgers, to frankly bonkers ideas like the baked bean burger. You read that right. The baked bean burger. And I used to like it. After subsequent decades of experiencing genuinely good burgers it is now impossible for me to be sure that Rock All's patties were truly as divinely tasty as I remember them being, but compared to the aforementioned Wimpy Bar's shrivelled, leathery hockey pucks they were a revelation. They tasted of meat! Juicy meat! They yielded easily between the teeth! They didn't have gristle in them! It must be difficult - particularly for American readers - to fully imagine how utterly new and wonderful this was for me. And it wasn't just the burgers: Rock All served fries rather than chips! There were little pots of relish on the table! They had the kind of desserts I'd only read about in books or seen in American films: tall glasses overflowing with ice cream and chocolate sauce, topped with whipped cream and cherries and who knew what some of those other things were! They had something called Chocolate Fudge Cake which made all my prior experiences of chocolate cake seem embarrassing. Perhaps the most astonishing thing was that if you paid for one-and-a-half coffees, you got something called an "unlimited coffee" which meant THEY'D JUST KEEP FILLING YOUR CUP UNTIL YOUR CAFFEINE-ADDLED BRAIN EXPLODED! Such unheard of, incomprehensible largesse!

It's sad, isn't it? It gets sadder, so brace yourselves: at the age of eighteen I had never had a proper pizza. I'm not even sure I'd had one of those awful frozen ones which (I think) were beginning to become available at the time but even if I had, they would in no way have prepared me for how a real Italian-style pizza should be. That experience was given to me by Salvo's, a lovely little place in Headingley which, I am delighted to learn, is still there to this day. I didn't go there anything like as often as I would have liked to - mainly because it was a little out of the way during my first year and later because it was just a touch too expensive - but it gave me my first realisation that pizza should be a delicious, crisp-edged circle of joy decked with freshness and light, not a chewy disk of white doughy nothing topped with nameless red gloop and tinned sweetcorn.

During these slow early stretchings of my painfully limited culinary horizons I was usually accompanied by my girlfriend, Cathy, with whom I was madly in love. Because of that fact it became inevitable that I  should take her somewhere special for dinner. Somewhere smart. Classy. You know, with tablecloths, and waiters that didn't wear ketchup-stained Harley Davidson T-shirts. So I did. Hang the expense! I took her to a Berni. Brits of a certain age will probably be smiling now, and that short Wikipedia link will give others an idea of why. You see, Berni Inns were basically steak-n-chips grills with pretensions. I would guess that steak house chains like Angus are the nearest current equivalent. As the link says: Berni Inns were all about prawn cocktail, steak (well done, of course) chips and peas, and Black Forest Gateaux. I dimly recall that other items featured on the menu but I don't think anyone ever ordered them. Why would they? Everyone knew that prawn cocktail followed by steak and chips was the height of sophisticated dining!

I don't remember what the meal cost but I do remember wearing my hideous (and already deeply unfashionable) sixth form "smart" clothes, which consisted of a pair of those absurd, high-waisted baggy trousers and one of those eyeball-meltingly ugly check jackets with the single big button and lapels so wide you could take off and glide in a moderate wind. I have tried to find a free domain picture of one of these sartorial nightmares to share with you but strangely, I can't locate one. Perhaps this is a blessing. Perhaps some gentle-hearted, fashion-sensitive geek has devised a bot which tirelessly trawls the net, deleting such horrific images wherever they lurk. And perhaps even then my own grievously stunted fashion sense made a subconscious rebellion because, as I began sawing eagerly away at my overcooked lump of meat, I tipped the whole plateful off the edge of the table and into my lap. The full extent of the spillage was not immediately apparent - maybe because it blended so well with the garish migraine madness of my jacket - but I handled the situation with aplomb. I scraped the stuff back onto my plate, took a casual swig of my Mateus Rosé (suave, Jack, real suave) and carried on eating. Of course I did - how could I possibly waste even one precious morsel of such a quality meal?

So, in spite of - or rather, thanks to - my visit to the Berni I remained pretty clueless about steak, but by the time I left university with that precious degree under my belt I knew what a decent burger was and how a real Italian pizza should be. I'd also had some initial exposure to Indian and Mexican food (Tex-Mex, really) although I'd need significantly more education before I'd get anything approaching the real thing (and with regard to Mexican food Ann would say that I knew nothing until she set me straight!)  It wasn't much, but it was something. I was still deeply ignorant about food, but I was moving in the right direction. That direction was about to veer sharply to the south. The business suit and the lights (and restaurants) of London were waiting.

(Previously) Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Vivat Membrum Quodlibet

(Next) Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Production Lines

Comments

[Astra Libris]

What a pithy, well-written post... You transported me right there - stunningly written! Thank you for the journey!

[Cakespy]

I agree--you took the reader right there with you! And I believe that for me, my student days were as much an education in food as they were in art studies. Of course, it goes to say that I am glad you have gained a better understanding of GOOD pizza. ;-)

[Scotty Harris]

Lovely post, but at the phrase "at university" I knew it was Jack, not Ann, posting. ;-)

[Adele]

Lovely, funny post. You had me laughing at the line about bottomless cups of coffee.

[Manggy]

Beautifully written post... If slightly more than a little nauseating, heh :) I think I retasted my lunch when I read about burgers that had the possibility of gristle in them. *Shudder*
I will not rest until you scan a picture of you in the check jacket and voluminous trousers. Please please please please... I mean, if you can find a picture of you in your old band, I suppose there is at least one picture of you in "costume?" Think of the number of hits it would create for Redacted Recipes, as there must be thousands of people searching for an image of those clothes!
I'm a little disturbed that for many people, their journey in taste depressingly ends at those pubs. Can't wait to read the next BTALF.

[Lisa]

Great post Jack....and I can attest not only to your improvement in cooking and dining but to you wardrobe as well. You look awfully good in a suit and even better in a tux.....

[PaulR]

Fantastic, Jack. It would be fun to see, at some future date, all the Bad Teeth and Lousy Food posts strung together. The tipping plate incident reminded me of New Years Eve in 1955. A friend and I had driven from Stuttgart to Paris and had gotten into the New Years Eve dinner show at Moulin Rouge. While attempting to eat and watch the lovies perform, I tipped my plate into my lap. Embarrassing at the time, but a fond memory after over a half century. Keep up the good work.

[Jack]

Astra Libris -Thanks - I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Cakespy - Oh yes, I am quite the pizza snob these days. If it's done right (and I'm not talking gooey deep-pan pies or greasy New York slices here) it's one of my favourites.

Scotty - I bet there are a few other little clues that give my style away too, right? :-)

Adele - Believe it or not, even today unlimited coffee refills are still highly unusual in the UK

Manggy - Sadly I honestly don't have any pictures of me in those clown clothes. I do have some old ones of me in big flares, with one of those embarrassing seventies blow-dry-and-centre-part haircuts. If I ever lose all sense of embarrassment and shame I'll scan a couple in!

What a decade...

Lisa - Thanks for the compliment! But let's face it, after seventies fashions it's kinda hard not to improve...

Paul - Oh yes, embarrassing incidents are always fun... with sufficient time and distance!

You know, if you want to see all these posts together at once, there's a "Bad teeth..." link under 'Navigation' in the top left of the main page which will do that. The end of each individual post also features "previous" and "next" links.

[Johanna]

thanks Jack - I really enjoyed reading about your encounters with restaurants in your youth. Have you read Nigel Slater's Toast - I think you would enjoy it if you haven't!

I think my worst food at univesrity was in the residential college where I lived - I remember one meal that looked just too like cat food. But we had a great food co-op and I was fortunate to have housemates to teach me a thing or two about cooking once I moved into a house

[Eyoki]

Brilliant. I was a kid, not a student, and i marvel now at some of the stuff we ate. Vesta's rehydrated Chinese Chow Mein, "curry" as in a brown sludge full of sultanas and the endless spring cabbage and floury boiled potatoes. The only burgers we ever got were Bird's Eye beefburgers, but at least in those days we had real chips.

Btw, does anyone remember Ski strawberry yoghurt in the 70s. The pot was on a little pedestal, i think, which is why i liked it. Can't find any photos though (that's what i was looking when i came across this article. Dunno why, just suddenly wondered if i'd remembered it right).