The Blackberry Walk

Last Saturday, I woke up with a sore tummy. The reason for this will be quite clear when I tell you that on the Friday prior I was dining at an all you can eat steak restaurant. "All you can eat steak," I hear you cry, "what on earth!" Indeed. I too struggled to believe such a restaurant could stay in business serving all you can eat steak, and yet somehow this restaurant does. 'Steak Frites' is the name of said restaurant, and as the name suggests, they serve one thing: steak served on french fries, all you can eat, for the cheap price of twenty quid. Finding the West Bridgford restaurant on Google maps was easy enough, but finding the door proved a little harder. Looking up, we could see 'Steak Frites' written across the first floor wall, right there in sight, yet below was an Irish pub. Where was the entrance? After peering around, we came to the conclusion the entrance was likely through the Irish pub. Now, I have a bit of an aversion to Irish pubs. I just don't trust them. In Nottingham, there's the Irish pub where there was a murder, for one; and for two, they're just.. fake? There's always a played up fake Irish culture which has the stench of Yanks, and those who want to pretend to not be English. They have Guinness signs everywhere; everything's coloured green, or themed with leprechauns - something I fail to see as anything other than a racial stereotype of the Irish they allege to laud; and then you can go buy a bag of tasteless Tayto crisps. You find these Irish pubs worldwide, for heaven knows what reason, since they're just English pubs but worse. Worldwide, that is, save for Japan which abounds with English pubs: Japan, that is, who are the last lovers of Albion. But I shall digress. I held my breath as we walked through the Irish pub, and found the route upstairs to the first floor. There, we were greeted by a pretty waitress, who led us to a table. The place wasn't too busy despite being around seven o'clock on a Friday night, which was fortunate, since they don't do reservations. Someone from the bar downstairs came over first, and asked us for drinks. Had to get a lemonade since I drove. Then another waitress came and asked us what we wanted to order... or rather told us what we were to order: it was steak frites, twenty quid, the only item on the menu. All she asked of us was how we wanted our steaks cooked, and what sauce we wanted. The choices of sauce were peppercorn sauce and 'green sauce'. "What's green sauce?" I asked. Just herb-y butter, it turns out. I had my steak rare with green sauce. A little later, the steak arrived with green sauce, sitting on a big bed of chips. Quite a decent steak for the price. And each time I finished a steak, I found the waitress' eyes and ordered another. In the end, I managed three steak frites. I am a big eater without much self-control when it comes to buffets - they turn me into a food-insecure hamster, stuffing my cheeks - so despite having made the mistake of eating lunch, and even a small snack when I returned from work as I'm wont to do, I managed three steak frites. RiceIsNice put in a solid effort too at two-and-a-half steak frites. It's the rich sauce which gets you; that, and the carbs in the chips which fill you up. You come out of there waddling a little, banging your belly like a sumo wrestler before a bout. You feel light-headed and heavy-bellied; slightly pained yet slightly numbed. It's a good feeling. As I was ordering one of my steak frites, I had asked the waitress how many steak frites the average customer eats. Only one-and-a-half she said. Pitiful. I then asked what's the greatest number of steak frites she'd ever heard of someone eating, and she said four. Only four: truly pitiful. It fills you up, the rich sauce, the chips - sure - but only four? On a good day, one where I forgo my lunch, I reckon I could beat that record. Those records had been set, she told me, by what sounded like some proper middle-aged pub geezers coming back after a game. There, they downed pints of Guinness and ate steak frites. The addition of the Guinness, essentially liquid bread, to the chips seems brutal, and surely hampered their consumption. The economics of such a place was an interesting point of discussion over dinner. Steak isn't cheap. I bought some beef short-rib this morning from the butcher, and it was nearly £14 a kilo: and that isn't even steak. Nothing beef-related is cheap anymore, not even the historically cheaper cuts like oxtail, which like so many other cheaper cuts have been gentrified, making fancy what needn't be. How then do they do it? For one, they have only one thing on the menu, steak and chips, so for as long as they have customers, all they need is a chef - maybe even a single chef - frying chips and cooking steaks to order. Having such a narrow menu means all the food the restaurant buys is used up. I can't imagine how many ingredients in a kitchen go to waste, ingredients which are only needed for a few unpopular dishes on the menu's periphery. They travel from the back of the fridge/freezer off to composting. Then with a big killer of restaurants, rent, they have an upstairs space over a pub - a pub which deals with drinks serving and the licensing of booze - which, depending on how good a deal they have with the pub, cuts yet more overhead. And the final reason why such an establishment can exist is that most people aren't quite as gluttonous as me. Back in June I spent some time in France. The sun was high, blisteringly high, with most days sitting at forty centigrade. But whilst we were there, on two occasions I had steak frites, once in a train station, and the other time as part of a bistrot set menu - that one was in fact veal. What shocked me, and tinged me with envy, was that both of these meals were cheap. By cheap, I mean to say under fifteen euros cheap. I just can't comprehend getting a good steak in England for such a price. In France, steak is just cheaper: it's that simple. And you know what, this is a disgrace. I'm reminded of a favourite painting of mine, one I've referenced on this blog before, that being Hogarth's The Gate of Calais. Here, Hogarth depicts starving Frenchmen, yearning and salivating before a butcher of Albion carrying a huge hunk of good British beef. The richness of our diet, which meant that even those who weren't the rich upper crust could afford a good, hearty steak and ale pie, has since time immemorial been held up as a Great British value - if not the greatest; yet now, it is not us Britons, but the Frenchman carrying the beef, as we Englishmen salivate for their steak frites. This decline, I believe, is one part of a greater decline in Britain. Because, as I would like to argue today, steak and the affordability of steak are pivotal features of European man's prosperity. To investigate, we're going to have to travel far back into the past, to events which occurred in the murky twilight of pre-history. Let's look back to the Aryans of the steppe, people who would've been cattle-herding nomads much like how historical Mongols were with yaks. These cattle herders would've wandered the Eurasian steppe with their cattle, and, much like the Mongols, would've taken and sacked and occupied longhouse settlements, ruling them as aristocrats (Aryan, Ares, and Aristocrat have the same root word). There, they would've transmuted their skills as cattle herdsmen into new skills as people herdsmen: the same transition made by the Mongol overlords after the conquests of Genghis Khan. Such a culture would be built around cattle herding. From cattle, all their food in the form of beef, cheese, yogurt, and milk could be had. Cattle would understandably be highly prized. Perhaps even worshipped. We turn our sights to India, where the Rig Veda, which is by some accounts the oldest written document around, details the invasion of the steppe Aryans into the Subcontinent. This is the ancient origin of India's caste system. Caste in India is defined ultimately by how much Aryan steppe ancestry you have. The higher the caste, the more steppe ancestry; and it is by strict intermarriage within castes that the Brahmins, those with the highest steppe ancestry, retain their Aryan heritage. And with this invasion from the steppe came language, culture, and religion. Much can be written on language and culture, but today we'll focus on religion. Hinduism is a religion which for the most part originated in Aryan traditions, though likely one which syncretised with the local customs of those who lived in the Subcontinent before the invasion. There were other accretions to their faith too, such as reincarnation, which was folded into Hinduism as part of a kind of counter-reformation against the rising force of Buddhism. The fascination with cattle, however, has always been there; this I believe to be related to the cattle ranching of the Aryans. In modern Hinduism, there is the Panchagavya, or the five sacred products of the cow. The first three are as you'd expect, milk, yogurt, and butter; the last two, urine and dung, are less expected to appear on a sacred list. Unfortunately - though I'm not sure the extent of this - cow urine is drunk and dung eaten for their healing properties. I've even seen one post selling haute and holy cow dung on Indian Amazon. Quite bizarre. Cows are also seen as the highest state of life, above even man in the karmic hierarchy; though, as previously described, reincarnation is a later accretion. Beef isn't eaten in Hinduism, it is true, because they're worshipped with an odd semi-divine status - a strange twist on 'Three Acres and a Cow' of which I suspect Chesterton would disapprove. This modern cattle worship isn't found in early Hinduism, but in what some researchers refer instead to as 'Brahminism'. In the Rig Veda - a holy Hindu text, bear in mind - there is mention of cow sacrifice, particularly to Indra, the Zeus-like king of the gods; a god whose cult, though paramount in millennia past, has declined dramatically in modern times. I'd wager it to be likely that this move has paralleled the Hindu relationship with cattle. From then to now, the connection from the Aryan heritage has been garbled by the telephone of time. The Aryans also, of course, invaded their way into Europe. European pagans have never to my knowledge worshipped cows, but they did sacrifice them en masse. Europe's oldest text, Homer's Iliad, has characters - every other page, it felt reading it - sacrificing to the gods hecatombs of cattle - hundreds of cattle - for various reasons, good fortune in war, and so forth. From where the Achaeans procured such centuries of oxen, the reader is left much in the dark; though I suspect such digressions from Homer would've made the story quite dry. Nevertheless, these hecatombs of oxen would've been roasted, their aroma rising to the heavens, certain bones, fats, and offal burnt to a crisp for the gods, leaving the cooked meat to be shared amongst the troops. Seeing as they were sacrificing so much cattle regularly, I'd propose the Greek army marched on rosbif. To my mind, this Bronze Age Greek tradition is a continuation of the practices of their their Aryan forefathers. Let's shift across time again, far closer to the present. Let's go to the Wild West, to the cowboys. Cowboys are essentially a re-emergence of ancient Aryan cattle nomads. Herding cattle across the Great Plains, once more Aryan blood has had the space to expand, conquer land, and lasso cows. It isn't my film genre of choice, I must admit, though I reckon its out-sized influence on popular culture, however accurate such depictions are, is in part due to this ancestral memory. America is now, of course, the global hegemon, a position it obtained through conquering the terra nullius of the Wild West, a kind of triumph of will, of man with cattle. I would never call cows man's best friend, but they are certainly European man's best livestock. Yanks care about beef. In the States, beef is much cheaper than in the UK, and even cheaper than it is in France. This is in part because of their poorer animal welfare, of course, making the farming of cattle more affordable. But with all that being said, I feel Americans have a deeper relationship and fondness for beef; they adore their beef burgers, their brisket, and their barbecue. Especially in the South, an area given form by reactionary Cavaliers, cattle are their culture. What would American cuisine be without beef? Just fried chicken? All that said, where does this leave us? Beef is the most important meat. Not because we eat it as a sacrifice to Apollo like Menelaus, but because of the ancestral memory and ancestral importance of beef, along with the panoply of milk-based products in our diets. It's a kind of identity. It's why we Europeans can digest milk lactose and so many other cultures cannot. There is a toughness in this relationship with cattle, one where we can literally live off a cow's milk as a baby would from a mother. And for so many who share this heritage to have it be blocked from them due to rising costs is a travesty. I want my neighbour to eat beef. I do not wish to see cattle factory farmed in the manner of the Americans - and on the other extreme, nor do I want them worshipped - but I want to go to the butchers and buy affordable beef, so that I can eat beef regularly. I remember my mother, who grew up in Rhodesia, telling me they had steak most nights a week; so much so that good cuts like oxtail and shin were thrown to the dogs. This is an ideal for which to strive. In summary then, I have a quick plan to make my dream a reality. Soon - I'm not sure when - I shall return to Steak Frites in West Bridgford on an empty stomach; and there- there I shall eat five whole steak frites, and be the wonder of the town, paying only £4 per steak, as it should be. It would be quite funny to post this as a Google Maps review, but I'll resist the urge, I reckon.