Their name makes them sound nefarious, and kitchen work at the best of times can be brutal – which makes me keen to know more
In my neighbourhood, there’s a “dark kitchen” – a warehouse run by a major takeaway platform, housing cooks for eight or nine restaurants. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it, were it not for the dog. He has the tenacity and skills of a truffle hunting pig – but for chicken. He could sniff out a wing buried under a rock encased in nuclear waste. Nine different cuisines, involving new and exciting ways to fancy up poultry, is like a siren going off in his head – complete sensory overload.
The delivery guys, waiting outside in a snaking line with their electric bikes, like a scene from John Steinbeck with extra garlic, all say hello to him, and he enters a battle between his primal appetite and, to give him his due, his friendly manners. The appetite always wins. “Must get in the building,” say his straining neck muscles and the eyeballs nearly popping clean out of his head. “No time to lose!”
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
