You’re in a forest. The towering brown trees turn daytime into night. You reach up to brush away the dense branches and only to discover that the mossy leaves are bottles of Becherovka, the Czech Republic’s favorite bitter herb liquor.
First off: you’re pronouncing it wrong. It’s beck-ur-OHV-ka (emphasis on the ‘h’). Hailing from Western Bohemia, Becherovka combines 32 herbs, roots and spices with spring water from near the town of Karlovy Vary and bunch of sugar before being aged in oak barrels. The process resembles that of any digestif and the taste is similarly inscrutable—you’ll pour half the bottle into your glass as you attempt to identify their proprietary mix herbs, spices and roots. There’s a little cinnamon and a touch of cloves; a twist of mint and citrus; and, perhaps, a touch of anise (though the strength depends on how well you cleaned your glass after sampling absinthe). It’s not the precise flavors that make Becherovka stand out, but the total experience.
Some people liken the taste to cough medicine, which is unsurprising given the fact that the spirit was created in the early nineteenth century as a medicine. Josef Becher first brewed Becherovka in 1807 with the help of his friend, the British doctor Dr. Frobig. They sold the tincture in drug stores as a cure for stomach ailments (though it presumably created more problems if you drank it all at once).
Ever since, the recipe has been a well-guarded secret. It’s rumored that only two people know the ingredients. Once a week during witching hour on Wednesday, this duo slinks away to a secret chamber called the Dragikamr deep in the Becherovka laboratory. They drop the ingredients into their cauldron, stirring three times before chanting the magic words.
Unfortunately, despite its beguiling flavor and history, Becherovka is rare outside eastern and central Europe. Pernod Ricard bought the company in 2001, but the spirit has struggled to woo an international audience. In the Czech Republic, you’re more likely to drink Bechrovka as a chilled shot when visiting a friend’s house for dinner than you are at a cocktail bar. But this is slowly changing. Although the Czech have been drinking bracing Be-Ton, Bechrovka and tonic, since the late ‘60s, only recently have trendy Prague cocktail bars began playing around with other cocktails that feature the bitter digestif.
But you should drink Becherovka in more ways than just straight and with tonic. Top a shot with boiling water for a pine-y hot toddy. Shake it with ice for a bracing Martini. Those 32 herbs and spices create versatile palate for your inner mixologist.
On Babycham, wine in a can, and cyclical drinking trends
"Babycham" might call to mind pastel pink sneakers with teal accents or a My Little Pony figurine or Lady Gaga’s hair circa 2010.
But those aren’t Babycham.
Babycham is a sparkling perry, or fizzy pear cider. It was introduced in Britain in the 1950s as a Champagne alternative. Let’s say you were a Birmingham housewife throwing a Christmas cocktail party for your friends. You’d head to Tesco and pick up a carton of Carling for the men and a few four packs of Babycham for the ladies. During the party, while the guys talked football and guzz;ed, you and your friends would dissect Murder She Wrote and sip Babycham from mini-coupes emblazoned with the leaping deer mascot. Close your eyes and block out the sports talk and you could pretend to be enjoying a flute of Champagne at a café in Paris.
But how did a pseudo-wine with a mascot that resembles Bambi after one too many glasses of cider become a cultural touchstone for Brits? Because women wanted to drink like men. Until the 1960s, alcohol marketing targeted predominately males. If a female ordered beer or spirits at a bar, she seemed promiscuous or cheap. Babycham offered a solution. It was affordable, sweet, and served in controlled portions. When asking for a Babycham, women avoided seeming extravagant and demonstrated their refined palate and constitution. Drinking Babycham meant drinking femininity.
And, frankly, Babycham also meant drinking something quite good. The perry is sweet with a delicate fizz and not-too-assertive fruity flavor, like a cross between cider and bad champagne. Or a Lambrusco from a region where wine doesn’t need to foil aggressively salty prosciutto and Parmesan. It’s a shame that most Brits only remember Babycham during Christmas.
But that doesn’t mean the trends Babycham negotiated are obsolete. Contemporary drink trends emphasize how the alcohol-gender-aspiration link changes regularly. Take wine in a can. Companies such as Portland's Union Wine aim to shift wine’s perception from snobbish and sophisticated to common and cool to convince men that they can drink wine without appearing pretentious or effeminate. Whereas Babycham used branded coupes and a cute animal mascot to present alcohol as feminine, Underwood uses a minimal can to readjust wine’s social signification.
For both beverages, marketing drives the relationship between product and perception. Babycham’s early adverts featured a deer frolicking through animated landscapes and leading couples to hidden stashes of bottles. Although men are present, they never drink it. Instead, Babycham is reserved for women who sip it from glasses, not from the bottle. The slogan, “I’d love a Babycham” implies consent. By agreeing to a drink, women agree to the man offering it. This connection is made explicit with caresses in Babycham adverts from the '70s, but appears in the early ads through the coquettish glances between the male and female protagonists.
Union wine advertisements fight against the feminine association that Babycham promoted. Their advertisements for Underwood wine in a argue that “wine doesn’t have to be this hard” and use the hashtag pinkies down to associate wine with easy pleasure. The new container changes the physical experience of moderation. Each can contains about two traditional glasses, “enough to share, or to keep for yourself”. Emphasizing bounty renders wine a chuggable beverage that doesn’t require reflection on flavor or presentation. Whereas Babycham wooed customers with branded coupes that perfectly fit a bottle, Underwood promises consumers a formless experience that translates seamlessly among drinking situations.
But Babycham changed drinking culture and rendered itself obsolete. Breaking out the coupes with the smiling deer is the beverage equivalent of wearing grandmother glasses. It’s ironic nostalgia. The brand built its market niche on being an acceptable drink for females, but when drinking is acceptable for females, that niche no longer exists. A taste for Babycham is admitting you can’t big guys. It’s a demonstration of nostalgia for a time when a drink seemed like an accomplishment. And doesn’t that seem simple?
On McDonald Italy's Sweety — the Nutella burger you didn't know you craved
Nutella wasn’t introduced as a spread. It was sold as a block of chocolate-hazelnut paste for slicing and placing on bread, like the thin sheets of chocolate Danes use as sandwich toppers. But kids would eat the chocolate and toss the bread, causing parents to eschew this “healthy” treat. To win over adults, Ferrero reformulated the product as a spread to ensure that kids had to eat nutritious, filling bread along with their chocolate. Parents were pleased, kids were happy and Nutella gained a reputation as a pseudo-healthy snack.
Despite myriad disagreements, Nutella has managed to retain this healthy aura. McDonald’s introduction of a Nutella-filled burger bun represents a new chapter in the product’s presentation. As part of Italy’s McCafe menu, McDonalds has introduced the ‘Sweety’, a Nutella-stuffed brioche designed to look like a Nutella sandwich. A dark line rings the bread, calling to mind a hamburger. The traditional burger box the Sweety is served in reinforces this association. Since meat and bread both offer nourishment, emphasizing these foods allows Nutella’s Sweety to masquerade as a nourishing breakfast.
But the idea of a hamburger-esque Nutella-stuffed bread is hardly compelling. So why are people obsessed? The answer lies in the symbols the product enables eaters to consume
The box gives clues as to the product’s appeal. Rather than feature an image of the food, it highlights the name ‘Sweety’ along with brands McCafe and Nutella. By consuming this product, the eater associates themselves with the two companies. Sweety appears on the top right of the box in a swirling font that looks like an old time candy sign interpreted through McDonald’s clean, modern lens. The word ‘with’ links the product name to Nutella in a font that visually mediates between the two. This conjunction suggests that the sweetness precedes the Nutella. It’s not Sweety filled with Nutella or Nutella Sweety, but the product name happens and then Nutella is added, making Nutella an added value to the experience of this product. McDonalds doesn’t appear on this face of the box. Instead, the name McCafe appears only on the front flap alongside a smooth image of the product. The overarching brand anchors the foodstuff, providing a place for Sweetness and Nutella to unite.
In this sense, Sweety woos contemporary eaters with the promise of consuming a product that is simultaneously transgressive and familiar. The Sweety looks like a McDonald’s burger, but acts like a Nutella-stuffed breakfast pastry and satisfies the desire to eat dessert while eating something of value. This is food, despite the fact its claims to nutrition have been largely debunked. Who cares if the Sweety is surprisingly small? Housed in its cardboard box, it recaptures the wonder of eating a McDonald’s hamburger and the joy felt at tucking into a Nutella sandwich—the joys of childhood adapted to the economy of signs.
On eels + mash and contemporary dining culture
You say eels and mash, I ask if you’re ready for lunch. We better hurry because this once-ubiquitous meal is disappearing faster than you can say ‘coals and coke’.
It’s understandable. A monochrome plate of stewed eels and mashed potatoes swimming in parsley liquor the color of hospital walls can hardly compete with photos fluffy bagels oozing bright orange cheese. No, stewed eels just melt-in-your-mouth, leaving you with a thorny spine to dispose of. They taste of porridge overcooked in the microwave and cross lunch ladies and drafty boarding school canteens
Shops serving eels once dotted the streets in London’s cockney communities and offered a cheaper alternative to meat pie. The few that remain each present a distinct vision of the past. M. Manze in Southwark—a new location, the original is in Peckham—caters to gastro-tourists from nearby Borough and Maltby Markets. You order at the counter before lugging your plate to a distressed wood booth and perhaps buying a souvenir mug after you finish. It’s an Experience. You eat at Manzes to not-order from the old school menu and to admire the tiled walls and wood fixtures while chewing through your single-textured food. By denying the tropes and symbols of the contemporary dining experience, Manze’s defends tradition.
Other pie and mash shops twist their history to appeal to eaters looking for an affirming nostalgia. Stop by Goddard’s at Greenwich or G. Kelly and you’ll have to order eels as a side. This separation defines eels as a taste and pie as a food. By guiding the diner away from a meal entirely of eels and potatoes, the restaurants imply that eels are a product not fit for eating. Meat pies and potatoes are the foods that nourish us. These restaurants play the parent directing us to make smarter food choices—only in this case, the smart food choice is the modern one.
Although it’s unlikely that eels and mash will ever recapture its central point in the British diet, the dish’s changing fortunes offers valuable lessons about contemporary dining culture. Eels and mash remind us that society constructs our expectations of a meal. Marketers have taught us to demand certain textures, cookbook authors urge us to beg for diversity and restauranteurs push us to crave story-filled dining rooms. Eels and mash negate these forces. With a uniform texture, boring color and standard presentation, eels and mash defies our expectations. And we should keep eating them.