SHARP PALETTE

Who can turn a phrase as eloquently as Theodore D I ask with tears in my eyes? And in doing so simultaneously capturing and puncturing the pretensions of our new (mostly young) 'elites'.

The food is very good in Sydney in a way in which I am sure it would not have been in, say, 1950. I am also almost certain that when people speak of the glories of multiculturalism they are mostly thinking of a lot of different restaurants, rather than Pali epigraphy or Somali tribal structure. As in all major cities nowadays, waiters prance around in Sydney telling the diners that the kale or quinoa was picked by vestal virgins on the first full moon after the equinox. I like good food as much as the next man, and am all in favour of not taking the pleasures of life for granted; but this new food paganism, the reverence for ingredients and the way in which they are produced (or ‘sourced’… always responsibly of course), irritates me slightly. It seems to imply that one is supposed to do more with the food on one’s plate than merely to eat it. When the explanations are too elaborate, one begins to feel unworthy of what one is about to eat, because one is not absolutely sure that one can tell the difference between sea salt, say, and rock salt.