I'm in print!

Much excitement the other day when I finally took delivery of the latest issue of the prestigious, if not exactly widely available food quarterly, Fire & Knives, because I have a piece in it!  With a picture of me, and everything!

The piece is an essay on the subject of food nostalgia, which started off in life as part of the introduction to my blog post about chorizo burgers back in the summer of last year.  Ah, remember the summer of last year?  No?  Perhaps because we scarcely had one, much as we are currently scarcely having a winter.  So much for nostalgia in these days of global warming, eh?  

The main thrust of the piece was how certain foods, most obviously, perhaps, fish and chips, but in this instance burgers, will always suffer in comparison with cherished childhood memories, regardless of whether or not the actual example of that food being remembered was in any way objectively superior.  The Proustian madeleine of my article was a burger bar - or more specifically the trays of relishes therein - in Manchester, and therefore remembered only vaguely from the perspective of an under seven.  As it turns out my Dad identified the burger bar in question as the Canadian Charcoal Pit on Burton Road, and said the chances are that its burgers were indeed objectively superior to most burgers you are likely to have come across, and indeed quite possibly still are, as it is still there, having now expanded into a small chain across the Manchester area.  Rather gratifyingly, I had an e-mail from Tim Hayward, proprietor and editor of F&K, to say he'd had a text message from a reader, correctly identifying the place and for whom it was also a cherished first burger experience, describing them as 'awesome', apparently.  Which was nice.