The internet, that great democratic buffet of voices, has instead become a gaudy food fight where neutrality is not merely frowned upon but treated as a kind of moral indigestion. Once upon a time, you could idly chew over an opinion, let it rest, perhaps even change your mind without public consequence. Now, every thought is expected to arrive with allegiance. Platforms don’t reward nuance; they punish it with invisibility. You are either for or against. Saint or heretic.
What’s remarkable is how this binary fever has been dressed up as virtue. To take a side is to signal one’s existence, to plant a flag and declare: I am here, and I am correct. The tragedy, if one can call it that without being accused of insufficient outrage, is that the middle ground; the fertile, complicated, human bit, has been paved over by ‘hot takes’. The internet hasn’t just encouraged division; it has aestheticised it, turned it into a performance where the loudest voices win, and the rest are left applauding or jeering on cue, as if subtlety were an embarrassing relic best forgotten.
Take Iran, and good lord the Yanks are trying. It is of course possible to believe that both sides are ran by baddies. That innocent Iranians are stuck in a war zone between a government who shoots dead innocent protestors who want change, and a perma-tanned despot who is prepared to kill innocent bystanders for a few barrels of oil and a distraction from the Epstein files. Never mind that civilian lives have become footnotes, infrastructure becomes collateral, and the aftermath to be treated as an administrative inconvenience rather than a moral reckoning. The internet wants to make you pick a side and I don’t want to. I happen to think that both the Iranian government and American government are both ran by the very worst in humans (this was originally the C bomb but Sophie doesn’t like me using it).
Anyhow, welcome to my head and what was going on inside it whilst eating at Berenjak, a Persian restaurant, so really an Iranian restaurant without the moral outrage. I’d tried to get walk-ins at lunch for the last two months but it’s always heaving and then, bam!, one day they do for just me but it’s in the worst seat in the house, right by the door, on the low seats that make me look like a child on a potty compared to the adults on the counter. £35 for the set lunch; a bread, starter, main, and either rice or salad. No booze because I’m behaving, £40 with service if the machine worked properly.
What I love about this style of cooking is that at first glance it all seems terribly well mannered, but then you start to notice the subversion. This is not food that bullies you with heat or swagger; it insinuates and gestures. The first course of panir sabzi is less about the feta-like cheese, but more about the verdant olive oil, walnuts, radish and herb salad that conspire around it. The whole thing is licked and kissed in throngs of dill and tarragon, turning something potentially bland into something narcotic. Unsure of how to eat it properly, I tear at the sourdough flatbread that has billowed like Tom Hanks next dessert island best friend and fill each pocket with a bit of everything.
The kebab is everything I hoped it would be and more. An amalgamation of fat, smoke, and fat that borders on indecent, the lamb shoulder had been less minced and more blitzed; blended with herbs so its interior wears a muddy green. It is the most tender, tasty kebab I’ve ever eaten, basted in lamb fat and lifted by a squeeze of lemon. I pile more on to the remaining flatbread with the charred pepper, the tomato that’s struggling to retain integrity, the onion, and more of the starters herbs. This is my idea of heaven, reserving the last of the meat to be folded up in the square of lamb drenched bread the kebab sits on top of.
There is rice which is more ritual than requirement, perfect rice that largely goes untouched. In and out in 36 minutes, a bit more rushed than ideal and maybe a product of the guy who walks in and orders the cheapest lunch deal with tap water. It won’t put me off. Berenjak is invigorating, full of life and vitality. A place to eat and to almost forget the shit show of life that exists on the outside.
9/10
Sign up to the newsletter here
https://blog.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=08c98db0e9d6eb9e5b54695a1&id=eda85ee6f4
