We can count on one hand the civilisations not founded on and powered by bread (Japan. China… Laos?). Bread is fundamental; flour is to human flourishing what steel and cement are to a cityscape. In Jordan, archaeologists recently discovered the charred, 14,000-year-old remains of a loaf – which is only 13,997 years older than whatever Pret use for their tuna baguettes.
These facts of history confer a grave responsibility on Silver Spoon. Failing to take bread seriously is failing to take the long, meandering histories of the human race seriously. In the Middle East bread is leavened – like in the Bible. In Ireland it’s heavy and brown – cheap to make for a starving population. The French brought their iteration to Vietnam for totally honourable reasons, and now the Vietnamese eat banh mi. Meanwhile, Italy’s saltless, bland, crumbly excuse is the worst thing it hath ever wrought unto the world.
A grand civilisational clash can be read through the lens of yeast, flour and water. The docile, effete, decadent West prefers its bread soft and air-bubbled, raised and pillowy, easy on tender gums acquired through a lifetime of idle hedonism. Sandwiches are a symptom of a degenerate, pampered society. In the East? It is ancient, chewy, functional, baked in practically Neolithic clay ovens. Torn, shared. Wherever you are, bread is always some kind of metaphor for divinity – and a permanent feature in the plodding frescoes of the early Renaissance. Body of Christ, five loaves and two fishes, yada yada.
Am I glossing over centuries of theology, war, evolution, weaponry, revolution, crusading, inquisitions, imperialism, invasion and irredentism in service of a rather glib point? Hell yeah, I am. But isn’t that what bread is all about? That simple, intellectually unchallenging vehicle for more interesting flavours and taste profiles. Or is it popular shorthand for all of life’s greater complexities? Hospitality, sectarian angst, hunger, diaspora… all contained within one doughy metaphor? Bangs gavel: Silver Spoon, excused!
That’s enough preamble. Today I am in Primrose Hill – which might be the nicest place in the world. Of course, everyone here is beautiful and horrible. But I am not here to talk to them, rather to investigate bagels. And where there are bagels there are opinions: one friend claims they are better in Manchester, boiled in comparatively soft, magnesium-lite water. I am a serious enough person not to be taken in by the concept of “terroir for bagels”, but I do admire the intellectual creativity.
Nevertheless, here we really do have a yarn about the history of a people baked – no, boiled and then baked – into one hyper-specific style of bread. Accounts vary on the provenance: do we owe our thanks to 13th-century Prussian Jews, or perhaps to a 15th-century Polish king? What we do know is that through Ashkenazi migration bagels arrived in New York and London, ready to be loaded with cream cheese, fish, salt beef, mustard and flung at obliging corporate workers in search of a chewy lunch.
I walk in to “It’s Bagels” and look around: yes, it is bagels! Hundreds, in fact. Perfectly named restaurant. There were some complications about the whereabouts of their “premium tomatoes” and so – by a logical necessity which they would not admit to – I walk away with a plain bagel, non-premium tomatoes, cream cheese and raw onion. I eat it on a bench – the nicest bench in the world? As for the bagel, it is too big. And, well, very chewy. But complaining about this would be like complaining about the Pope being Catholic.
The restaurant is achingly self-conscious – the decor is a facsimile of a New York diner, the floors are tiled, there is a poster of the Twin Towers (?) on the wall and a cover of the New Yorker; they are blasting hip-hop and I know I am very far away from the “beigel” shops of this city’s East End. This is an American import – the story of a civilisation from central Europe, emigrating across the Atlantic, and being bought back in north-west London by credulous English currency. American cultural hegemony, covered in cheese.
[Further reading: Eating at London Zoo: At least it’s not camel]