My Thoughts on Sausage & Mash

Food in winter is all about comfort and familiarity. Even though I rarely have the heart to admit it those well-intentioned souls who try and maintain super-healthy diets in the depths of December, there’s something that seems a bit unnatural about grilled red mullet at this time of year. If I am going to have fish, it’s almost certainly going to be in a pie, a stew, or a curry – hold the rocket salad and the mango salsa until April, please. In place of the light, Mediterranean style of cooking many of us favour in the warmer months, we have the tried and tested favourites more commonly associated with British cuisine.

Everybody has a favourite in the comfort food stakes. Usually, it’s something that takes them back to their childhood. For me, my mum’s roast chicken dinners will always hold the top spot, with brow-mopping curries - like the lamb farcha from the superb Cinnamon in New Cross - being a close second. Also definitely in my top five is sausage and mash. I don’t expect for a moment that I’m alone in this. Unfortunately, it’s a dish that’s frequently abused, most obviously by the identikit Ye Olde Pub Grub menus that curse our country’s drinking dens. Instant mash, granulated gravy, and cheap, fatty sausages might fool a few hapless tourists, but not those of us who live life on a fork’s edge.

MEATliquor, Marylebone

If Roti Chai has enjoyed its fair share of blogospheric activity in recent weeks, it's nothing compared to that provoked by the burgers of a certain Yianni Papoutsis over the last couple of years. Now, I must admit that I'm a bit biased when it comes to Papoutsis's enterprises and, more specifically, to the food they revolve around. I was expanding my gut to the tune of his carnivorous revolution yonks before pretentious hipsters gave #Meateasy their blessing and have always found him to be an affable character - I'm still grateful for the interview he gave me for an Eastlondonlines article. But more importantly, it's the sort of food that takes me back to my misspent youth in Massachusetts. One bite of a jaw busting Dead Hippie burger or a gob-full of buffalo wings heavily doused with blue cheese sauce and I'm thirteen again, it's Friday night in West Concord, and the waitress at Pub 99 is casting disapproving glances at my table as we empty whisky-filled water bottles into refillable soda cups under the table.

It was extremely unlikely, therefore, that I was ever at risk of disliking his latest venture and first genuine bricks and mortar operation, MEATliquor. The only pertinent critical question was: how much would I like it? Al and I decided to tip up after our dinner in Marble Arch for some nightcaps - always plural in my book - and sample the vibe of the place on a Saturday night.  I'm happy to report that the new joint is as gloriously seedy as ever, though the sleaze factor is perhaps partially mitigated by the fact we were in Marylebone, not New Cross. Still, he is clearly a man who sticks to his principles, and when those principles revolve around burger-fueled debauchery, it's fairly certain to garner approval from the Scavenger Gourmet.