The Bash

I had discovered an international food market in West Hollywood and was in heaven. Bronze-cut Italian pastas, fiery sauces from China, scorching relishes from India, foods from places I had visited, from places I had dreamed of visiting, from places I would now never visit but whose food I loved anyway, ranked aisle upon aisle in a greedy person’s Garden of Eden.

Photo by Rob Wicks on Unsplash

“I see you’re happy,” said a nice assistant catching me gleefully grabbing a jar of Dijonnaise mustard.

“This,” I informed her, brandishing the jar exultantly into her face, “is The. Best. Mustard. In the world.” If you want to know, it’s called Amora, it’s not an upscale brand, but a French friend had served it to me with a plate of charcuterie one long, light evening in Paris and I had fallen in love. “It’s absolutely delicious, it’s extraordinarily hard to find in LA, and now …”

I was required to pause for a moment as my emotions caught up with me.

“… and now,” I finished at last, “I’ve found it.”

The assistant smiled sympathetically.

“Good feeling, huh?” she agreed.

“The best,” I asserted. “And even better …”

I rummaged through my shopping cart among the Japanese wasabi crackers, Salvadoran pupusas, and Ethiopian injera bread, to produce a package of andouillette sausages.

“If I have my way,” I announced, “an andouillette with mustard will be my last meal on earth.”

Mr. Los Angeles does not care for an andouillette. You do not, in fact, want to know how Mr. Los Angeles describes an andouillette. You indubitably do not want to know to what Mr. Los Angeles compares the smell of an andouillette. Mr. Los Angeles, however, would be out that evening, at his third viewing of The Odyssey, and you can do great things with a fan in three hours.

“Aren’t there some wonderful foods in the world?” I was moved then to muse. “And aren’t you lucky to work in a place that has so many of them all under the same roof?”

The assistant nodded confidently.

“Well,” she said, then. “I know what you’re really looking for.” She turned and raised an authoritative finger. “Come,” she ordered.

Still salivating over my sausage, I followed, wondering the while exactly what it was that I was really looking for: I supposed that inner contentment and justice for all would come top of the list, but on most days I’d settle for finding my glasses. Still, the assistant seemed to know something I did not, so obediently I tracked her through the aisles of nuts and spices, honeys and oils, past Scheherazade’s food from Arabia, past Omar Khayyam’s food from Persia, past García Lorca’s food from Spain. At last, she stopped and turned back to me, her face ablaze with triumph.

“Voilà!” she cried, flinging a dramatic arm towards the bounty on offer.

Now, it’s not that I have anything against British food per se. Some of it, in fact, is excellent. A plate of tender Welsh lamb, a jammy-centered Scotch egg with maybe a Cumberland sausage coating, a bowl of Jersey Royal potatoes, still in their nutty young skins and glistening with butter, are all sights to cheer my heart. Many pre-packaged British foods are tasty, too. I always enjoy a dab of Branston pickle on a cheese sandwich. Although I don’t myself see a burning necessity to swell the coffers of the British Royal Family by buying them, I won’t turn down a Duchy Original biscuit if offered. Show me a bar of Green & Black’s Maya Gold, and I’ll show you a happy, and soon to be chocolate-smeared, woman.

This display appeared to have been concocted with the specific intent to capture a rainy Tuesday in Margate. Sawdust-like shortbread fingers rubbed glum shoulders with bilious-hued battenburg cakes and caramel wafers whose cardboard nature you could taste through the cellophane. There were baked beans in blue cans and dried gravy granules in brown boxes. Simply by looking at it, I was transported to Café Forlorn on Marine Parade, complete with cross waitresses, a stale ham sandwich, and despair fogging the window panes.

The assistant beamed at me, delighted.

“Well?” she demanded eagerly.

“Well,” I agreed, after a moment. Then, since more seemed to be called for, “That’s quite a display you have here!”

“Don’t we!” she congratulated me. “You’re lucky you came in today because it wasn’t even here yesterday. It just went up this morning.”

“Wow,” I said. “That was a stroke of luck then, wasn’t it?”

“It was meant to be,” she concluded. And extended a bounteous hand.

“Go for it,” she urged.

Now, this was awkward. Despite what Mr. Los Angeles might tell you, I do on the whole attempt to be polite; and she was a perfectly nice woman who had done me no wrong and wished me nothing but well. But the very notion of sullying the cornucopia of deliciousness inside my beautiful shopping basket with Bourbon biscuits and (oh, God) Lucozade was such as to have my heart running clear down Margate Sands and plunging into the icy North Sea, never to return.

“What are you going to start with?” the assistant asked. “Jam? Marmalade?” She raised an impressive eyebrow. “We even have Marmite.”

In the curious way that British people have of fastening their passions onto the unlikeliest of objects, they have adopted the salty yeast spread called Marmite as an intransigent social divider: people either adore it or detest it, and the Montagues and the Capulets could not be fiercer in their loyalty. While myself not about to make worms’ meat of anyone to defend its honor, I am one of the people who do, within reason and when the occasion calls for it, enjoy Marmite. With the result that every single British visitor I have ever entertained in Los Angeles has brought me on every single visit a fresh jar of the stuff, delivered with a knowing wink and the stern, and believe me unnecessary, recommendation not to eat it all at once. I sometimes wonder to whom I will leave my collection after I am gone.

The assistant was now looking concerned.

“Are we missing something?” she asked anxiously. “We can always order it if you tell us what it is.”

“Not a thing!” I assured her. “It’s a … a super spread.”

It seemed I had said the right thing: the assistant’s eyes lit up.

“Super,” she repeated happily. “I feel like I’m in Piccadilly Circus just listening to you.”

Now, here was an area where I could spread good cheer

“And so it is super,” I told her. Hastily, I riffled through my mental British lexicon. “It’s not only super, it’s smashing. It’s cracking. It’s corker. In fact, it’s downright brilliant.”

The assistant by now was beaming. As I beamed back, inspiration struck.

“Hang on half a tick,” I said then. “It would be a jolly bad show to be standing here and buying all this lovely British grub all on my sad little tod. I think I’ll pootle off and find some chums, and we’ll all come back together and have a … a bash.”

The assistant gasped in wonderment.

“A bash,” she murmured to herself.

“A bash,” I confirmed. “A knees-up. A push the boat out. A do.”

The assistant clutched a jar of pickled onions and stroked it tenderly.

“Push the boat out,” she whispered.

“Cheery-oh then,” I told her. “TTFN.”

I took my basket of the sort of food I do like, and made my way to the cash register, stopping en route for a bar of Swiss chocolate as a reward for diplomacy.