Welcome back to The Goal is to Eat.
Stocktake delivers commentary and insight on the world of taste, delving into matters of intrigue across hospitality, design, culture and the media.
If you have something to tell me about, email panayiota@tgite.com.
Hello from Cornwall.
Mixing things up with a Saturday send as I’m Master of Ceremonies (Mic Champion) at my best friends’ wedding later today, and I plan to be incredibly hungover tomorrow.
Putting it out there: if you ever want me to present something, get in touch.
I filmed episode lucky-number-seven of TGITE’s talk show yesterday with a guest who doesn’t typically reveal too much of himself on the internet, and I can’t wait for you to learn more about him.
His episode is a bonus addition, coming soon, and will mark season one’s finale.
Drop me a line with your impressions of the show, or if there’s anyone you’d love to see on the Togo next season.
I want to say a huge thank you to the 50 people who sold out our event – where are the women restaurateurs? – in less than a day earlier this week. We’re running a waitlist, but a follow up event is already in the works.
I hope that WATWR Part II will be in July, with a panel of chef-patrons.
As part of the series, we’ve built out an ever-expanding index of women-owned hospitality businesses. Focused on London for now, there are over 200 names, including pubs, pop-ups and ice cream parlours, cafes, bars and restaurants.
Have a look through, and let us know if there are any errors to correct, or names to add. I’m learning about a lot of new places in the process, and maybe you will too.
After Adriann Ramirez – AKA Gay Nigella – came on the talk show, I received an email from Tanya Truman about a brand new musical, How to Make a Mess: A Totally Unauthorised Love Letter to Nigella Lawson.
Debuting at Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate – running from 4th-28th June – How to Make a Mess tells the story of Anna, who after the death of her estranged mother, inherits Nigella Lawson’s seminal cookbook How to Eat.
Along with the book, an imagined version of Nigella arrives to guide Anna through grief and comfort, one recipe at a time. Cooking becomes a way for Anna to reconnect with herself, while broadening her appetites, and finding joy through food.
Written and scored by Emily Rose Simons, and produced by Tanya Truman Productions and Chromulume, Tanya also plays Nigella. Emily and Tanya have been developing this project through various iterations since 2022, and in the process, their entire relationship to nourishing themselves has been transformed.
Developing new musicals is notoriously difficult – read more on the journey here – and I wanted to ask them a few questions.
What is the most interesting thing you learnt about Nigella Lawson in researching her story for both writing about her, and embodying her?
Emily Rose Simons: She worked as a chambermaid in Italy when she was 19, and this is probably what ensconced Italian food deep into her heart. I like to think that when she speaks Italian and cooks Italian food, that a small part of her is 19 again exploring the world as an adult for the very first time.
Tanya Truman: Nigella is not a formally trained chef, but a self-taught home cook. I think most people may already know this, but when I first found this out officially, I was so inspired. It’s taught me to be playful and experimental within my performance as opposed to being too rigid or formal. I love that Nigella’s book, How To Eat, is exactly that - a guide on how to eat, not a recipe book or a cookbook as some might think. This is lovingly explored within the show.
Why did you choose to make a musical over a play?
ERS: This show has to be a musical in order to fully express the ginormous extraordinary encapsulated by the delicate minutia of cooking. As someone who has failed to make mayonnaise three times, there is no way that a straight play monologue could have expressed the intense crying fit that third failure brought on, nor the awe I felt the first time my partner and I made roast chicken. I remember watching him trying to figure out how to cut into it and thinking “Woah. We could really do this. We could be a family.” Cooking is intense. Cooking operas make more sense than cooking plays.
What does it mean to you to feel full, to be fulfilled?
TT: To feel full and to be fulfilled, is the feeling when you can just let go. Let go of restriction. Let go of societal pressure. Let go of everything you think you should be doing, everything other people are doing, and truly hone in on what you want and what YOU desire. When you do that, things fall into place. I am still learning to take my own advice here, but I’m getting flavours of it throughout the process of How To Make A Mess. When you are living in true alignment, listening to yourself, letting go of external noise, you are fully free to let love, opportunity, and positivity into your life. That is the feeling of fulfilment to me.
Nourish yourselves with a ticket to see How to Make a Mess here. Thank you Emily and Tanya.
In today’s Stocktake: Ronnie’s, Le Sirenuse, Jay Rayner, Rec League, Maisie Cousins, BYOB nightclubs, Chinese cigarettes, Welsh football shirts, Diet Paratha, The French House, Casa Ideale, and more.
