The Food I Eat

People say that we’re a generation who want it all and we want it now.

Generally, I’m more of a pootler. But when it comes to food on my plate, I’m after instant gratification. Pavlova, for example, doesn’t muck about - it’s a straightforward kind of pudding. One second it’s in a bowl, then your spoon’s sliding through creamy meringue…and before you know it, you’ve scoffed a big old serving with consummate ease.

Other types of food are more of a tease: walnuts, too-hard ice cream, rice with chopsticks…and ribs. The ratio between faffing around and actually eating is skewed.

So hooray for the ribman who’ll change your experience of this fiddly cut of meat forever.

He rocks up at Brick Lane round 3am on Sunday mornings and lovingly wraps his Norfolk-sourced babyback ribs in foil. Then he embarks upon a lengthy process of slow cooking and tenderizing. By 9am the ribs are so succulent the meat is dropping off the bone.

It gets better. Being an accommodating kind of guy, the rib man tears the meat off the bone in advance, and rams ludicrous amounts of pork in buns and wraps, so all you have to do on a Sunday morning is hand over your £5, and start eating. No scrabbling about with platefuls of bones, scratching off meat, gnawing and clawing. Just happy mastication, which restores the balance between effort and enjoyment in the world of ribs.

If you’re salivating at the prospect of the pork alone, then if I mention the sauces it could drive you into an absolute frenzy. There’s a choice of smoky, homemade barbecue sauce, or scotch bonnet-based hot sauce (which really is tongue-tingling, sweat-trickling-down-the-ridge-of-your-nose H.O.T).

Try these, and you won’t go back. Just looking at the photos is making me wish away the rest of the week so we can zoom straight forward to next Sunday morning, where, in, the words of Nsync: “I want my baby back baby back baby back baby back baby back baby back ribs.”

If you want to read more about The Ribman then visit his site here.