Dining Out: Hello
A newsletter about enjoying yourself.
Hi MTV and welcome to my Substack!!
This is Dining Out and it is my second attempt at doing one of these. I have, with disdain, conceded this time that to have a Substack you do actually have to write the Substack. It is nice to be back with a renewed commitment. Here, I am going to be writing, weekly, about food, restaurants, and fun.
I come to you at a strange old time. I started my “career” at VICE in late 2016, and worked there for about five and a half years. It was my first job and also my longest-held job, so when the site stopped publishing a little while ago, I couldn’t help but feel pretty gutted. That was because with vice.com’s shuttering, ultimately digital media as I knew and loved it – where a day’s work could very feasibly mean just sitting there writing jokes about Mr Blobby or whatever – is basically gone.
I know there are so many reasons for that, like phones, and Reels, and Twitter having a heart attack on the toilet. But despite those factors I do remain one of these sad old bastards who genuinely believes that there is still an audience for writing that is fun to read, and which takes the pursuit of fun as its subject matter. For what it’s worth, I think the only proof you need of that is the enormous outpouring of love for this when the VICE death knell came.
So: I have decided to try to help to fill the fun gap, and I am going to do that via this newsletter, where I will talk about the sacred act of Going For Dinner, and the other sacred act of Having a Laugh. This is because eating and drinking with my friends is mostly how I have my own personal fun, but also because over the past 18 months, trying to write seriously about exactly how a particular experience evokes pleasure – learning to zero in on why something tastes amazing, or just how sexy someone looks by the candlelight of a particular room – has been one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done, intellectually speaking (to the extent that such considerations can be thought of as intellectual, anyway). I’d like there to be a place where I can keep flexing that muscle regularly, outside of my commissioned work, so here we are.
In terms of what you can expect: basically every week I’ll write you an email about somewhere I’ve eaten, and sometimes, when you have been very good, these emails will be accompanied by illustrations by my exceptionally talented friend Lucy Letherland, who also designed the Dining Out logo (I have never looked so good in my life!) and header, and whose phenomenal work you can see more of here and here. Usually the places you will hear about will be in London, but sometimes they won’t be. I will tell you what I ate and drank and who I went with and (maybe) what we talked about. For all intents and purposes it’ll be a restaurant review, only hopefully better craic, and I swear to you now with God as my witness, I will absolutely never say “pleasingly” or “unctuous” or “charming little neighbourhood spot”. You’ll also probably find in there some general observations on restaurants in general or the internet or popular culture, as well as some stuff about me and my life, and a few good recommendations.
As a reader, it has been so cool to see restaurant writing in London and across the UK become so much more all-encompassing, so I hope in all of that relatively new multiplicity, there’s a little bit of space in it for me to make some gags and try my very best to take you with me to some interesting places. I’m calling the newsletter Dining Out because that is, obviously, what I’m doing – I’m going out, to dine, and then I’m writing about it – but I do also quite like the connotations of the phrase as a metaphor. Someone who “dines out” on a story or an association is probably a bit of a chancer, but they’re also likely decent value (it sort of puts me in mind of someone in the pub who once swapped t-shirts with Robbie Williams in a kebab shop and has spoken about it every day for two decades since). It feels brassy and kind of barefaced, and I’d say you could reasonably describe me as both of those things, so “Dining Out” it is.
As far as the types of establishments I’ll write about are concerned, the answer is essentially just: wherever I happen to have been that week. I am lucky that on occasion I get to eat for free because I have managed to make eating into part of my job, so sometimes I will write about that. More often, however, I just go out to dinner or lunch or even breakfast of my own accord because I enjoy it so much, so you’ll hear about that too. The way some people are into running or crochet and so on, I am into dropping most of my disposable income on food and doing stupid shit, like standing in the 40 minute line at Pockets*, to procure it, so I think you can rely on me as a dedicated and trustworthy source.
Tomorrow (Friday 5th April) I am going to publish my first review, so if you’d like to receive that, be sure to subscribe via the little box at the bottom. After that, my reviews will be out every Thursday, and they’ll be free to read, but if you like what Lucy and I do and you want to support it, I’ll whack in a Ko-fi link at the end of each post. For now, though, all that is left to say is simply: thanks very much for joining me, and I hope you enjoy Dining Out.
* Now this is an aside but have you ever tried to eat one of them fuckers walking down Broadway Market on a Saturday? It is the closest I have ever come to experiencing the start of Saving Private Ryan. The last time I attempted it I made a woman scream by bumping into her (my sight was impaired by the largesse of the pitta, you understand), then ate a dropped falafel off the floor and generally approached the entire enterprise like a pig at a trough. In the end I was in such a state of disarray that my friend Emma had to clean me up by spitting on a paper bag and wiping my face with it outside Figs & Grain.
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