I don’t know about you, but I’m getting bored of opening up weekend magazines full of judgement about food that ain’t “dancing off the plate”. I recently read a article from a chef (who let it be known, I follow and adore – this is not a hate piece, more of a counter argument) who listed all the things she loathed to see online surrounding food, and lo and behold, the cheese pull was right at the top of her list. “Cheese stretched five feet across someone’s face isn’t appetising; it’s mundane”, with followers quick to jump in with comments such as “Its very vascular, the cheese pull”.
Now perhaps this is my self-defence raring into action, as if you follow my page, aside from jovial videos finding comedy in the tediousness of day to day life, cheese pulls are (pardon the pun) very much our bread and butter.
However, do we not deserve to just find joy, and simple satisfaction in a bit of gooey cheese? With the world being a heavier place than ever right now, social media needs to bring us some joy, amongst having to see every other post be about Farage, and that bright Orange turnip that is Trump. (As a lover of fake tan myself, using this as an insult really shows my distain).
Delving deeper into the food scene; how would people feel without the cheese pull, when eating a food whose whole identity is structured around that one food type? And I’m not even talking about my own business here. Imagine going to Naples, and ordering pizza, lifting out a slice to find the lack of a cheese pull. It’s the drama; it’s the occasion, it’s the experience! Or heading to a Christmas market and ordering raclette, awaiting the server scraping that bubbling hot cheese over your potatoes and lardons, only to see a dried up, burnt bit of cheese fall off and land sadly on top of your meal. The stretching of the cheese is the theatre. Whenever we’ve served raclette in the past, people make us wait to scrape the cheese, so they can get their phones out and record the moment. Yes it may be “vascular” or “overacted” but don’t we deserve the simple joys of food?!
As a company, we’ve always said that we rely on social media as a form of marketing, and that’s why we use it so heavily. A free tool for our small business to use, whereby we can demonstrate something so comforting and desirable through the use of a phone. We can only rely on sight out of our all senses when we’re trying to show off what we’re good at, when obviously in real life, we’ve got our other senses to lean on. One of the comments on said piece stated “Social media’s dumbing down of flavour”. Well Becky, if you can let me know a way we can taste through our phones, please do let me know!
One of my favourite photos we’ve ever been tagged in, is a young boy at East Sands beach, sat right to his Grandma, pulling one of our toasties apart, whilst she looks on, smiling adoringly. It’s such a wholesome photo. They’re just the personification of joy, in that moment, laughing about how far the cheese from their toastie has stretched. And this is what it’s about. Food bringing friends and family together at the beach. Laughing with your loved ones about how crazily big a cheese pull can be; sharing toasties on a blustery beach after bracing walks in the cold whilst dodging seagulls dive bombing from above. I will always believe that these moments can come from something as mundane and shallow as splitting a toastie in two with the person you love just as much as it can come from a large shared table of home cooking with your entire family. One doesn’t get the right to be superior to the other.
So I’m here to continue to stick up for the tiresome, overdone, unoriginal act that is the humble cheese pull, just as much as I am here for the ‘grandmas secret recipe stew” or the “brining your own pastrami”. I’ve got love for it all!
Kate Carter-Larg 