#7 The Dining Car

All train services are catered if you DGAF 🚂

Food, inglorious food. In a perfect world, we’d all either have or be our own personal Jeremy Allen White, whipping up Michelin-quality comforts three times a day in a crisp pair of Calvins. Alas, as so often happens, life gets in the way. Or, more to the point, trains get in the way. I do understand the social contract of pretending not to perceive my fellow passengers, but if you step outside of said contract by doing something as outré as putting on your makeup, listening to music without headphones, or cramming in some calories between appointments, then I can’t help but notice you. Especially if you’re doing it weirdly, which is how the three subjects of this month’s edition found their 15 minutes of fame. Plus, enjoy a bumper crop of submissions on the joys of good ingredients and art of hospitality… sort of.

Man Eating Hummus on a Train

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. On a packed rush-hour train from London Waterloo to the deepest, darkest depths of the suburbs, I couldn’t take my eyes off one passenger in particular. In crowded a booth of four seats, this man appeared unmoved by the rotation of commuters jostling for space as we travelled further from the capital. From his stronghold by the window, he existed entirely in his own sphere as he ate – with steady determination – a tub of hummus. With a fork. I watched him devour this dip from Vauxhall to Raynes Park. The year was approximately 2009, and so many questions remain unanswered.

If the hummus had been a premeditated snack, why hadn’t he brought a more amenable eating utensil, such as bread? The intervening 16 years have obscured crucial information about the material of the fork. Jade, my travelling companion, wonders whether it was plastic (Greta Thunberg hadn’t been invented yet), which would suggest that he’d picked it up from a shop in Waterloo that had run out of disposable spoons. But would eating an entire picnic’s worth of hummus be any more acceptable if it were done with a spoon? Does a dip without anything to dip in it suddenly become a soup? It’s a real cutlery conundrum. My feeling is that the fork was metal, implying it had been carried with intention. And if so, how long had the tub been warming in his bag? And why hummus? Returning to the theory that it was a spontaneous decision at a station supermarket… again, I implore you Man on the Train, why hummus? Why not a classic on-the-go option, like crisps, or the working man’s faithful friend, a Cornish pasty?

In my mind, he is still there on the 18:42 South West train service, eternally bound for Basingstoke, shovelling forkful after forkful of mashed chickpea into his mouth, uncertain, unsatisfied.

🍴🍴🍴🍴

Rating: 4 forks out of 10

Woman Eating a Massive Cucumber Upright like a Banana on a Train

Baffling. Brilliant. You could tell she thought so, too, because she was grinning like she had a secret.

🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒

Rating: 8 cucumbers out of 10

Man Eating Sushi on a Train

It’s a shame that the Olympics had already been and gone, because this man was an athlete. A lack of available seating on the Victoria line was not going to come between him and his platter of maki rolls. The fact that he was crammed in a busy carriage, clutching his meal in one hand and an over-head support rail in the other, was also not going to stop him from eating his platter of maki rolls with chopsticks. This was an ancient and delicate Japanese cuisine, for christ’s sake. He’s no savage.

As the tube pulled in at each stop, he plucked the chopsticks from their perch in the takeaway box and rammed in as many makis as possible before the doors closed. As far as I could tell, the trick to this feat of feasting was not to waste any precious moments of dexterity on masticating. Chewing was reserved for the lengthy stretches between stations as the train careened its way through the dank and dusty underground network.

This man heroically gnashed his way through sixteen rolls of rice without once stumbling. The only adversary powerful enough to take him on would be the Very Hungry Caterpillar himself. If the world were this man’s oyster, he’d knock it straight back.

🍣🍣🍣🍣🍣🍣🍣🍣🍣🍣

Rating: 10 sushis out of 10

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Submission by Bethan Keogh

The Cheese Crank

Every time I’m in London I visit The Design Museum, and while I have seen at least 3 models of the Stark for Alessi marmite juicer contraption, and a literal jar of marmite, I have never seen a single cheese grater.

I’ve long been on the hunt for the perfect grater, and a few months ago, during a boozy dinner at a hot new pasta spot in Paris, I thought I had found the solution. Along with our pappardelle we received small lumps of Parmesan on a side plate, which confused us at first. We were then handed some kind of communal cheese crank, a device that seemed like it could answer all of my prayers. The hand-held rotary grater had, I can only assume, been inspired by someone wondering what they would get if they fused a stainless-steel speculum with a tiny washing machine drum and stuck a handle on it. It screamed innovation. Unsure of how it worked, we followed the lead of our tablemates and placed our individual portions of Parmesan not inside the barrel, but in the inobvious upper compartment, turned the handle and were greeted with perfect cheesy strands… until the wedge got too thin for the device and a hard lump of cheese plopped unceremoniously onto our pasta. Buon appetito.

🧀

Rating: 1 disappointing lump of Parmesan out of 10

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Submission by Flora Hibberd

Rummo Linguine No. 13

The perfect amount of bounce.

🍝🍝🍝🍝🍝🍝🍝🍝🍝🍝

Rating: 10 linguines out of 10

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Submission by

Andy Carter

of

The Flagging Dad

Newsletter

Getting Mugged by a Group of Lads Conspicuously Younger than Me in Leeds in 2006

I had just finished my first term at Lancaster University and was back home for Christmas. Ten weeks in a student hall of residence with peeling wallpaper and, for reasons too complex to get into here, a permanent stench of vegetable oil in my bedroom, had transformed me into a new man: I had spiky sideburns, a newfound (and ultimately short-lived) passion for drum‘n’bass music and a strong opinion on the film City of God.

Keen to evidence that I was now a cool and cultured customer, I was excited when an old school friend arranged a poker night at his. That I didn’t know the rules was not important – I’d pick it up, no problem. I watched The Sopranos now. I put on my new Carhartt T-shirt, checked the angles of my sideburns, and set off walking to my mate’s house. On the way, I stopped at (the now defunct) Safeway to buy a crate of Bier de France. As I turned a corner onto a quiet street, I saw a gang of five hooded teenagers loitering. They were all clad in tracksuit bottoms tucked into socks, one of them wearing a balaclava with only his eyes showing. Bright blue eyes. The eyes of a child. God, how old were these lot? 14, 15 maybe?

Just keep walking, they won’t say anything, I told myself. I’m a man now.

Head down, I clutched my crate tightly.

‘Oi, mister, where you going?’ said Balaclava Boy.

Just. Keep. Walking.

‘Don’t be tight,’ said a lad resembling a cherub with curly hair stuffed into a slightly too-small cap, ‘Give us a beer, Crouchy.’ (I am tall and thin.)

As they swarmed around me, I felt my heart racing.

I decided I’d give them a bottle each. That would be fine, right? They'd leave me alone after that?

‘Ok,’ I said, opening the crate with shaking hands. ‘You can have one…’

Balaclava Boy, presumably the ringleader, then snatched the crate from me and started dishing the beers out to his mates. Just in case being mugged by people considerably younger than me wasn't enough, he then ASKED FOR A BOTTLE OPENER and, in a very miserable bar shift, I opened my former beers with a novelty bike-shaped keyring opener and handed them out to my GCSE-aged tormentors.

As a final insult, when I walked off, one of the boys chucked a full bottle at my back.

‘Merry Christmas, Crouchy.’

Merry Christmas indeed.

🍺

Rating: 1 Bier de France out of 10

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Rec room

Anyone I’ve bumped into lately will know that I had an exceptional dinner at Bubala, because I won’t shut up about it. The perfect setting to enjoy hummus.

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Words by Alice Brace. Images by Flora Hibberd.