Finding hidden gems

Vittles continues to publish some of the best food writing you can find anywhere. The most recent article that impressed me comes from former GBBO contestant and cookbook author Ruby Tandoh. When you grow up in an area that isn’t renowned for its food – let alone many positive cultural attributes – it can be a challenge to acknowledge the hidden gems that lurk in your home region. Coming from a ‘flyover’ state, I know this all too well. If people think about food in relation to North Dakota, the association is something like ‘Jell-O salad’. Yet even in what some might deride as a culinary backwater, there are always eddies that run counter to the main current and jewels tucked away in unexplored areas. Tandoh finds these gems in her home state of Essex and explains them with a mesmerizing eloquence.

Tandoh notes that when people think of Essex they tend to view it in relation to its westerly neighbor London, and it always comes up short – especially when it comes to food. That’s a shame, she says, because “people eat well here – they haul palettes of garri from lorries; grow fields of marigold-yellow oilseed rape; fry roti; shuck oysters; stir brown shrimp with butter and nutmeg – feeding not only each other but also the city looming in the south-west.”

Describing both the physical and cultural attributes of Essex, Tandoh weaves her exploration of historical routes and roads with their modern day equivalents, bringing the foods of the region’s residents along for the ride. I have never visited Essex, but now I have an urge to visit Thurrock and dine at the Nigerian eatery Laredos Suya Grill, “tucked away in a shed in a car park behind a grocery store. Worship songs, and the smell of browning meat, ginger and smoke, will guide you there,” says Tandoh. This sounds like my kind of place, because it reminds me of the market in my hometown where a locally-renowned sausage has been produced weekly for over 75 years. Every Friday afternoon the store perfumes the tiny town with the sausage’s signature aroma. It is the smell of home, and it is divine.