A Brixton Food Crawl

I love a day like Saturday. Spring 101.

When winter's grasp is no longer a mauling but the tenuous clasp of an aneamic kitten hold no further threat and her captives bound outdoors chasing a teasing spring. Emancipated from boots and woolen scarves, quadruple layers and down-filled duvets. We look out the window, open it and sniff the air and run outside like too long caged animals. With the imagined strains of Creedence cranked loud on our internal soundtracks we go on the prowl London village style.

Down the hill to Brixton Village. First stop. The Provincial. Breakfast of scrambled eggs hollandaise for me and mini-Full English for the lady. Really how do you have a mini-full anything? Yup small amount of baked beans, sausage, one hash brown, slice of toast, eggs. Served at a tiny table, perched on tiny Alice in Wonderland sized chairs, squeezed in beside the table full of fresh fruit with a manual juicer. Turns out the chef is our juicer is our comic relief. After the hollandaise I propose marriage. He brays an incongruous laugh which I interpret as demurring and we pay the man and head down the passage and out on Atlantic.

No longer hungry but greedy. Less for food and more for experiences we stop at Mama Lan, my chef has a serious dumpling jones. King prawn and something, pork and something, mushroom and something. All good. The market is heaving. Every stall has a queue and everyone wants to sit outside. Tip though tables for one or two are easier to come by ( and faster) than triples and quadruples, let go of the Sex & the City quartet girls, foursomes are unwieldy and the last to be seated. But hey your friends are worth all the dumplings in the world and don't you forget it I think as we pay our bill and make our way across to Etta's Seafood Kitchen.

Etta is phenomenal. Absolutely, positively amazing. She is not about dreams and thoughts. "Talk is cheap" she says, "money buys houses" as she climbs up a ladder to do some kind of D.I.Y. Cause sometimes you really do have to do it for yourself. She tells me to stop talking and get to doing or no one will take me seriously. Move over Oprah, Etta deserves a hashtag of her own. #ettawisdom

We can't leave until I take the chef down to Fish, Wings & Tings, the other West Indian joint in the Village helmed by the wonderful Brian Danclair. His is the space we inhabit the longest. And he makes the difference. He is attentive to customers, sits and has a chat and a smile and is not bad on the eyes or as a friend of mine would say "Him don't stay no way". A prawn roti, codfish balls with lime and garlic aoli, shandy for the chef and a glass of deep regret at my Lenten avoidance of alcohol take our caloric budgets way over the limit. But the music is perfect, the sun is shining just so and we are talking and feeling like if we smile hard enough we could be on a beach in Maracas or Negril. Some place where there is no thought of four seasons. Until then we will make that spring work. Better run through the jungle.

Luigi's Limoncello & Pizza Positano

While it is true that there is a wedding ( my cousin's not mine, stay with me) and a dress made from unforgiving fabric ( mine not my cousin's, don't go anywhere) in my near future I cannot be in Italy and not have more white flour than I would have in a year of London living. The perfect pizza is always the next restaurant away.

In this case the next restaurant was a 45 minute wait for a bus, which in turn climbed for 20 minutes up another of those steep Positano hills heading to Montepertuso, 10 of those same minutes were spent in a traffic jam trying not to but the time was worth it.

To get seated at a window table with a magnificent view and to be served by an unhurried, shuffling septugenarian when you yourself are in no hurry is fine. Then the yummy goodness of your pizza with anchovies pales into insignificance when your nephew's rocket, cherry tomatoes with shards of parmesan sends you deep into pizza envy and you thank the stars his parents taught him how to share.

It only gets more worth it as you get regaled with tales from Luigi the owner about the years when he lived in London with his friend, also called Luigi and then you linger long enough to see that Luigi walk in and sit down to what will be a long and very late lunch with his wife. And then he told us how to make limoncello. Hmm wonder if I can do it with white rum? Will advise.

Why Mangia 876?

As I type this post I am lying in my apartment in Clapham, London. My uncle and aunt visiting from Toronto are in the next room, sleeping late after another great vacation day last night. London on August 18th was absolutely beautiful, clear blue sky, yellow sun, happy people in shorts and flip-flops and cold fruity drinks. This was not the vision I had for my life. This was not the picture, for my imagination though vast was still limited. However reality has overwhelmed all my dreams. I would have nothing but this reality now. And I did not get here on my own. I have had women who have stepped onto the road of my life and caused a shift, opening up new pathways through their love, guidance and friendship. Mangia 876 is my way of thanking all those women by being one of those women. Mangia 876 is the next wonderful addition to my life. Fusing Italian and Jamaican cuisines and culture at a fundraising food event. All proceeds ( after expenses) will benefit the St. Andrew Parish Church Girls Home in Kingston. My involvement in the Home is no accident. It was a special interest of one of those women in my life. My friend Grace Duncan was convinced that there was a basic goodness in humanity and that what we needed was dialogue, communication, good food and action. She was a tireless volunteer and committed to nation building through service. She gently tried to encourage the generations after her to become a part of action but I was more committed to pontificating, preaching against what was clearly wrong and stridently proclaiming what was right. And besides I thought she would always be here to help us make taking action easier. She isn't. She died in September 2010 and sometimes her loss is a dull throbbing thing shrouded in disbelief.

She turned me on to cooking but never without a twist. Long before I dreamed I would ever get to Italy she had me frying up bammy soaked in milk, garlic and parsley at her annual Christmas morning breakfast, which fed upwards of fifty people each year. I saw my first set of La Creuset pots in her kitchen. When I said I was leaving Jamaica for England, she took me for lunch in Hope Gardens and over lentil stew and brown rice we spoke of the impetus which was propelling me outward and the centrifugal force which she did not doubt would eventually pull me inexorably home. But she blessed me. She knew I had to search. One seeker always knows another.

And oh what I have found. Worlds within worlds, different cultures and tongues but always common humanity. And common suffering too. The pain of loss and difference looks the same everywhere. Just as the commitment to help crosses borders and colours. For me it is time to help. I am answering her call to action. She would have loved this idea of breaking bread with a twist and sharing in our common humanity and spreading our Jamaican culture across another landscape, of knowing who we are but sharing it and becoming a part of something bigger. If the funds we raise can help one girl in her quest to be who she dreams she can be then it will be enough.