With the importance of ‘brand’, of storytelling and the prolific use of social media to attract customers, it seems appropriate to me that restaurants can be judged through the prism of Instagram and the fleeting tool of Stories. It is after all, a curated space for the business to tell their story. This is a piece of writing that was difficult to write because it hit emotional points that are sometimes hard to articulate, so this is a string of thoughts. Food is the focal point of a restaurant, to be examined and appraised. It is often thought. In communities which have a robust food culture the dissection of dishes is an act of bonding, of creating memory and building connection to space and time and place. “We eat to remember place” anthropologist David Sutton writes, in his work reflecting the Greek island of Kalymnos. Restaurants have a history and an anchor in the idea of being spaces of restorative-ness, of gathering and of being with people, of nourishment. In ...
This is a project about the conversations and thoughts that food, drink and the location of London brings.