Soft, plain food
Seven upliftingly mild dishes and where to find them
Lately, I’ve been trying to look after myself better and spend more time doing things I enjoy. I’ve been running, swimming and rewatching Studio Ghibli films like Princess Mononoke. I’ve been rewatching old TV programmes too, like series eight of The Simpsons and early Simon Reeve. I’ve been listening to elemental, ambient-ish music, by artists like Yu Su, James Holden and DJ Sprinkles, sometimes on CD.
My actual diet has also consisted of nourishing, familiar things. For breakfast, I’ve felt like eating more scrambled eggs; for lunch and dinner, more cod, roasted sweet potatoes and cottage cheese. Outside of my flat, I’ve been eating even mushier foods, in shades of cream, brown and yellow, mostly at restaurants I know well.
I’ve been an open-minded eater since my teens, but I wonder if these changing desires mean that my tastes have narrowed, at least temporarily. In any case, I’ve embraced this shift to see if eating more soft, plain dishes would continue improving my mood.
By writing about this type of food, I also want to honour its complexity. Even when these dishes are gentle, they are the opposite of flavourless; they just don’t taste that strong.
Contents
Pongal
Congee
Chana dal
Pie and mash
Ackee and saltfish
Crumble and custard
Roshmalai
Pongal at Vasantha Vilas
As with Wong Kei and Scotti’s Snack Bar, I get a lot out of being a regular at Vasantha Vilas in East Ham. I first went in 2021, and have now written about it six times.
When I bring friends to this restaurant who haven’t eaten much Tamil food, I always tell them to get the mini tiffin. This platter contains a bit of everything, including something they’re likely to recognise, like a masala dosa, along with things they might not, like vada, idli and pongal. The sambar and chutneys also make it a fun, dippable meal, and I like to see if they save the lump of sweet, granulated halwa for dessert.
The food here makes me happy not just because of how it tastes, but because it consistently looks the same. It also reminds me of being with my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandma in places like Chennai, where I tried many of these dishes for the first time.
I love every component of Vasantha Vilas’s mini tiffin, but the pongal – a soothing dish of rice cooked in milk with things like cashews, cumin seeds and curry leaves – is the one I’ve felt like eating most lately. It’s a soft thing to eat, but each bite has areas of firmness and is a little different from the last.
This month has been the first time I’ve had the pongal here outside of a mini tiffin, which as a standalone dish comes as a mound rather than a scoop, with a depression filled with ghee. But I haven’t yet been able to resist ordering it as part of a two-course meal with something else. Last week, I had it with a lattice-like rava dosa, clearly a semi-liquid splatter only moments before. Then I came back a few days later to have it with an extra large and crispy dosa, as fragile as an ancient papyrus scroll.
As well as sheer drama, I’ve come to expect masterly sequencing from the food at Vasantha Vilas. Last week, the kitchen sent out my rava dosa just as I finished my last spoon of pongal, as if the person who cooked it was watching me eat. On Saturdays and Sundays, when I wake up and ask myself where in London I really want to go, it’s memories like this that make me decide to travel to East Ham once again.
206 High St N, London E6 2JA
Congee with shredded pork and century egg at Far East Chinese
Far East Chinese doesn’t seem to pop up on many lists, Reels or TikToks about Soho’s Chinatown, but I think it should, because it serves a great breakfast. I’ve written about the plain congee and salted bean curd here before; last week I returned to try its congee with shredded pork and century egg.
I had a bad stomach that morning and this bowl of savoury rice porridge brought me back to life. It was generally plain but not boring, with spikes of flavour and textural variety from the egg, pork strips, spring onion and matchsticks of raw ginger. The translucent, blackish-umber fragments of century egg, which looked to me like escargot, tasted profoundly yolky before dissolving in my mouth.