Nicholas Saunders and "Alternative London" changed British food | Hacker News Reader

Nicholas Saunders and "Alternative London" changed British food

theguardian.com

107 pointsfuzztester35 comments

I always find it incredible what just a few short years of rationing during WW2 did to British cuisine for decades after. It was as extravagant and flavourful for the middle and upper classes of the 19th century and prior as any other culture. Just looking at a few menus from the period, they were decadent to the extreme and could hold a candle to the cuisines world over.

The UK started rationing in 1939 and finished in 1954. In that time, the tastes of the nations changed to the extent that we still feel that impact today, with the fondness for beans on toast and other beige foods. Think about how many times we've all heard the running joke that Brits have poor taste and don't season their food. It's sad really.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdo...

Can you give some examples of 19th century British cuisine? I imagine they would have used quite a bit of spices and stuff from all over the world.

As a semi-random-ish example, consider the first-class menu from the Titanic:

https://www.housebeautiful.com/lifestyle/news/a6039/titanic-...

Egg a la Argenteuil, "Chicken Maryland", mutton, galantine... there's a lot of items, and that's just what's available at lunch.

It's actually not heavily spiced. That was a medieval fashion which kinda drifted out once the spices became more available. That's when spices got moved mostly to desserts.

The 19th century cuisine is much more like what we think of as French cuisine today. But in fact, the French got it from the English, and the English re-imported it to give things a "gourmet" air.

The third class menu, on the other hand, basically serves slop for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Anyone up for some rice soup and boiled potatoes? If you look at the bottom left, you'll see gruel listed. Actual gruel.

I'm not sure what they're talking about here aside from dishonest snarkiness. The menu for third class isn't half bad at all, and absolutely far from slop unless breakfast items like fresh bread and butter with marmelade can be called "slop". By the standards of average general diets among those third class passengers, it's downright good.

The gruel thing is funny though, but then maybe at the time the word didn't have the same emotional connotations

Although they are somewhat older than the 19th century, check out novels by Georgette Heyer, if interested. The genre is Regency romance, sort of romantic (& some adventure) type of novels of 18th century England, and theyinclude a good amount of talk about the cuisine of that period.

Intriguing story of how one driven individual can have such impact. Reminded a bit of the story of Poilane - the Parisian baking family that has connections (e.g. founders having worked there) to most of the bread in the US I most enjoy eating:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/03/bread-winner

£7,000 for a warehouse in Covent Garden, those sure were the days.

It was definitely not an up & coming area in the early 70s, but inflation was part of it too - my parents bought their house with a half acre of garden in the green belt for £5000 at about the same time.

Wow, even adjusted for inflation that's like £40k. You'd be struggling to find a warehouse anywhere near central for £4M these days.

A prime example of how metrics of inflation are absolutely and utterly absurd, and generalises to domestic housing as well as commercial property.

Editions of this fascinating book run from USD $100 and up. Sorely tempted but wasteful for something I’ll read only once. Certainly “The Whole Earth Catalog“ opened my eyes as a wee lad to things I never knew existed and certainly couldn’t afford.

If you're interested in more whole earth catalog: https://wholeearth.info/

If you're interested in rare books libgen (is) the place to look.

I did not know about libgen! Great resource, thanks

"Hippy, capitalist, guru, grocer: the forgotten genius who changed British food"

is perhaps a slightly more alluring headline for those unfamiliar with alternative London it the whole earth catalog.

yes I realised after posting it that the headline was not quite as descriptive as it should be.

I've taken a crack at combining the two titles. Thanks!

(Submitted title was "Alternative London: A British Whole Earth Catalog")

I like this!

Perhaps it's changed since, but the one in top-level comment here is the same as what's actually in the OP, does it need to be combined with anything?

I understand not liking 'the forgotten genius' (tell me who) but personally I think 'changed British food' is more interesting (and what the article is actually mostly about) than 'Alternative London', which coming to the article I don't know what means, as a Briton who lived in London for almost ten years.

Ok I made room for changing British food by dropping the hippy guru bits. Is it better now?

(Re your first paragraph - I didn't understand, sorry. If it still matters, maybe explain a bit further and I'll take another look.)

So a wealthy anarchist and socialist who also was a dreamer and a poet while also being a capitalist who fought the system and an adventurer. Quite a lot of facets.

> Unlike many in his scene, Saunders was not a leftist. He had no time for welfarism or state ownership, which he dismissed as inefficient, yet he also rejected rampant capitalism, which he saw as fundamentally unfair.

Not sure TFA supports your assertion that he was a socialist.

Ah but he enjoyed coffee that wasn't freeze dried so that makes him a socialist according to the British media.

I agree with you that the article doesn't support that claim, but many socialists I know would also "have no time for welfarism or state ownership" - with some opposing the mere existence of a state - so it also doesn't really support the claim he wasn't "leftist" either.

The principles for Neals Yard regarding worker involvement, favouring encouraging and supporting workers expanding businesses by starting their own offshoots, and his practice of giving away businesses does smell lightly of something close-ish to socialism, though perhaps closer to the kind of Owens and Fourier, that Marx came to describe as "utopian" for their failure to provide any answers for society-wide structural change, than any more modern version.

As another comments pointed out, this article is peak Guardian - favouring small businesses and artisanal products over mass production, and countering extremes of capitalism in eccentric small scale ways, while at no point favouring anything to effect actual lasting change in any way that might threaten anyone with money.

The Guardian boosting the public school-educated son of a neoliberal economist and supporter of eugenics, whose most lasting achievements seem to be artisanal coffee, cheese, and cosmetics empires that serve very comfortable middle class people, is the most Guardian thing ever.

The only part about the father in the entire article was a touching vignette about how Saunder’s dad would go above and beyond to answer his son’s questions.

Did something in the article or Saunders’ life point to him being neoliberal or into eugenics?

Your comment is strange; I assume you would not like it if people applied the sins of your father to you. If anything, the fact that Saunders turned out the way he did despite his father should be a cause for celebration.

Your comment made me sad that you thought a clearly positive-sum person’s life story could be summed up so pithely.

I guess the point of the parent comment is that the way Saunders turned out - closing his store after a newspaper report about it, because normal customers are killing the vibe - is because of his father.

(I don't know anything about his father. If anything, he might have been more egalitarian, after all neoliberal economics is about businesses serving everyone.)

And yeah, it is a wonderful story despite that. Comments don't have to sum up the story.

Being public school educated and coming from the sort of family that implies - one of corrupt and disproportionate power - definitely makes your story much less inspiring. That's a lot of cultural capital, connections and financial support that most people can't dream of. Really undermines the whole life lesson about the power of counter culture.

I'm not sure I'd call the story inspiring, but it's certainly _interesting_. Public school or no public school, it is very unusual for someone to change a country's culture so dramatically, seemingly largely by accident (or at least you don't get the impression from the article that he _set out_ to change the mainstream culture).

> undermines the whole life lesson about the power of counter culture

The big 'life lesson' you learn if you study counterculture is that pretty much every big counterculture figure was a 'trustafarian' or from - at the very least - a tidy upper-ish middle class family.

No one talks about money more than English socialists

Sounds an interesting guy but it's one of these torturously long articles that won't just get to the point

It's an exploration of a man's life and impact on the world. The length was fitting. Personally I didn't find it tortuous at all.

Artisanal bootstrapping, pretty good sustainable ecoomic model described here.

In short: self-fund, do good, be cool.

This is the Neal behind Neal's Yard & Monmouth Coffee

A few Unicorns set-up by this man such as Neal's Yard Remedies bought by Doring-Kindersly: £220,000,000 per annum

Also :-D the origin of The famous Monty Python Cheese Shop Sketch was inspired by John Cleese trying to buy cheese from Neal's Yard Dairy.

And he wrote the UK's 'Whole Earth Catalogue', quite a guy.

This is the _Nicholas_ behind Neal’s Yard Dairy, there’s no Neal (it’s named for Neal’s Yard which is off Neal Street in London, named for Thomas Neale, a 17th century property developer).

Quite a guy indeed, and a great read, it's a little tangential though good enough excuse to mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation a co-op since 1955 and with an equally inspiring story of what can success can look like.

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