Early last week I attended the annual dinner of the Cambridge University Commonwealth Society. I had helped to organise it, and was obviously concerned that it should go well. It did. The venue — Hughes Hall, one of the newer and less famous Cambridge colleges — was excellent. The food, chosen to ensure a variety of Commonwealth specialities, was widely praised. Those attending included people from over a dozen different countries. Before dinner, we heard a stimulating and wide-ranging talk given by Mr. Amitav Banerji, Director of the Political Affairs Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat. His topic was “The Commonwealth — a Force for Democracy”.
Although for me as organiser this success was welcome, it was not a surprise. There is a large number of international students in Cambridge, which is indeed one of the most international universities in the world.
Three days later, my wife and I decided to have a meal at a recently opened Indian restaurant in our village, which lies about 15 kilometres from Cambridge. We had not booked, and were quite lucky to get a table. This was a surprise. We simply had not realised how popular the new restaurant had become in the few weeks since its opening.
As it happens, a short distance along the road from this restaurant is another, equally up-market, Chinese one. That has been open for longer, and it, too, has become popular.
A major change
For people of my generation the existence of two such restaurants in a village — albeit quite a large one — marks a major change in UK society. It is a change at several levels.
First of all is the fact that eating out, which was rare, and usually occurred only on a journey, or to mark some special occasion, when I was young, is now commonplace. On one side of one quite short street in Cambridge, for example, there are 15 restaurants — and that in a city where there are 31 colleges which serve meals to their members.
Then there is the fact that eating habits have changed dramatically. When I was working as a journalist in London in the 1950s, my colleagues and I quite often lunched at a café which served “roast meat and two veg” on a kind of conveyor belt system. You went in, chose your food, ate it quickly, and left. It was cheap because of economies of scale: many people were served every hour. The working lunch today is more likely to be a sandwich, or, if you do go to a café or restaurant, something less basic than a choice of three different kinds of roast meat.
The really big change is in the variety of types of food that people in the UK now take for granted. Italian, French and Spanish menus are widely available. Japanese and Chinese restaurants are not unusual. Greater opportunities to travel to other countries have obviously had a big effect. Food which used to be thought exotic is now very much the norm.
Beneficial effect
These changes have also had an effect on indigenous cuisine. Not so many years ago, “good English food” was an oxymoron. That is no longer true. The availability of greater choice and variety has raised expectations, and pushed quality up. That applies not merely to “good” restaurants, but also to the food that is now available in many pubs.
This brings me to a final change. Not only do more people go out for meals, and not only do they expect good quality. They are also looking for variety. The typical village pub may well serve food — and more sophisticated food than would once have been the case — but it will not be the only thing that residents want. In a Cambridge Letter (September 27, 2009), on the subject of pub names, I mentioned that in our village, where there used to be many pubs, there were then — as I put it — only two and a half, the half being one that had recently closed and might not reopen.
Well, it has reopened, but not as a pub. It is indeed the Indian restaurant. The two remaining pubs serve food, but the high-profile eating places are the Indian and the Chinese restaurant. When we came to the village 40 years ago, I do not think anyone would have predicted such a change. We certainly would not. The food people want is different, and for the social historian there is much food for thought.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, UK. Email him at: bill.kirkman@gmail.com
