Where there’s drink there SHOULD be food.

When it comes to food and alcohol I’ve often said the world can be divided into two groups of people: those who like to combine drinking alcohol with eating food and those who prefer just to drink. My loyalties lie with the former; I’ve never understood the temptation to simply drink and drink, for me alcohol has to be combined with food which makes it a more social and pleasurable experience. So I was happy to read a good piece by Nicholas Lander in the FT this weekend arguing for more food with drink.

As Lander notes, alcohol is absorbed into the blood stream more slowly and less dramatically whenever accompanied by food, and because we can’t physically drink and eat at the same time we reduce the speed we drink at. What gets me is that this is basic bloody common sense, yet widely ignored.

I know there are numerous cultural, historical, political and of course economic factors behind all this which I don’t want to go on and on about, blah, blah... I just long for the day when I can enjoy a night out in the UK with a choice of bars that offer food and drink and not simply have to resort to mentioning the idea of a restaurant with my comments immediately interpreted as a complaint that is met with a bag of Walkers. Fat chance of it happening…