Extreme Food

I blame Heston. OK, that's not strictly true. I also blame Nathan Myhrvold, former smarty pants at Microsoft and principal author of food bible Modernist Cuisine. Hold on, come to think of it, über-chef and Dalí of the kitchen Ferran Adrià had a part to play in all this, too. “They're all guilty,” I conclude, as I stand in my kitchen, latex-gloved, hypodermic needle in hand, about to stick a chicken breast with salt brine. I get a flashback from Audition and pause to consider my steady descent into food mania. How did it come to this?

When I was an undergraduate in the mid 00s, before Michelin-starred chefs started cooking at festivals, the world of haute cuisine was far from the reality of Saturday Kitchen re-runs, cafeteria lunches, and chain-smoking. It was around this time that the aforementioned Blumenthal came along with his BBC series In Search of Perfection and made everyone, chefs included, feel underqualified to make even spag bol. In his quest for the ideal iteration of classic dishes, Blumenthal projected on to me and, undoubtedly, countless others his obsessive compulsion; and ushered in a new food order.

Years on, and things have spiralled out of control like a Turkey Twizzler (or some fusilli, if you’re posher than Iceland). The restaurant kitchen and its exacting standards have spilled over into the public domain. Preparing a roast chicken is now a ritual involving syringes and a three-day drying stage (for ultra crispy skin, don’t you know). And I’m not alone. The market for the food-obsessed doesn’t know where to stop either, offering blenders made from the same material as aeroplane windows, £200 kettles with five different temperature settings, and domestic sous-vide water baths for the budget-oblivious.

While wacky-sounding ideas like edible packaging and eating insects might actually have a function and just save our collective bacon, parts of the restaurant world seem to have taken surreal inspiration from Mighty Boosh territory. We've had chef Ben Spalding serving chicken liver parfait with a side of caramel-coated brick, followed by Alvin ‘nobody-can-call-me-boring’ Leung’s 'Sex on the Beach' dish replete with faux ‘used condom’; while our home-grown Simon Rogan serves a salad with more ingredients than I’ve managed to cultivate in my allotment.

So, I ask, has it gone too far? Will it all end in tears? Baby seal tears? Spherified and dyed black to look like caviar? (OK, if that happens, it's a yes, a definite.)   

But in the Northwest, the answer seems to be no. If weirdness is up ahead, then we seem to have taken a merciful detour. Sure, we’re not doing everything right: we’re still riding the beef-patty-in-a-brioche-bun-with-a-side-of-Tex-Mex tsunami; and if Red Hot World Buffet is a barometer of taste (it’s reportedly Manchester’s highest-grossing food establishment), then every restaurant should offer the choice of 300 different dishes. Nevertheless, there’s an intolerance of pretension and gimmickry up North that keeps me sane in my most ‘foodist’ of moments. Perhaps that’s why ‘fine-dining’ concepts have yet to put down significant roots here; and why, conversely, the beerhouses, cafés, and informal dining spots are booming. The region's new wave of street traders certainly seem to have a firm grip on reality, serving up cuisine that the public can both understand and achieve.

This isn't to say I don't want to see boundary-pushing cuisine in our neck of the woods. I just don't want to see it done in an attempt to make the foodie equivalent of Page Three. We all owe a debt to the fanaticism of the Blumethals and Myhrvolds of this world for changing the gastronomic landscape. Good on 'em – after all, the world of food would be a duller place without visionaries. Just don’t ask us to lick bricks.