For a decade, the Guardian’s How to eat column has been patiently and infuriatingly laying down the law on everything from baked beans to avocado on toast. As the series draws to a close, its creator explains what it’s taught him
You might imagine a column that ran for 10 years at the Guardian would have had some sophisticated conceptual origin. But How to eat – the series exploring the best way to enjoy Britain’s favourite dishes – was simply a hunch that stuck.
Periodically, I and Susan Smillie, then editing the Guardian’s Word of Mouth blog before becoming food editor, would get wound up by examples of pompous food writing in which someone (usually, a posh, ruddy man in salmon trousers) hectored the reader about the correct way to eat oysters, quails’ eggs or English asparagus, as if it were a matter of life and (social) death. The superiority, the seriousness, the idea people were eating langoustines for tea on Tuesday nights, struck us as ridiculous.
