Strange Nikolai

Hummous. Don’t get me wrong, but WTF?

Don’t get me wrong, I love me some hummous. MMMMmmmm tasy hummous. Or hummus. However you want to spell it. Spelling is ambiguous when the original word is in a different alphabet… let’s face it spelling is ambiguous anyway innit?

Everyone loves hummous, it’s the new middle class way of saying “look at me, I’m worldly and culturally sophisticated”. Seriously. Yes it’s tasty, but OMG (this is a sarcastic OMG btw… hmm I need punctuation for that…) I think you’re reading a leetle too much into it. You are eating food from a country most people haven’t been to – woop-de-fucking-shit…

And SUPER SUPER exciting it’s healthy and made from chickpeas which again are mostly eaten in foreignland. It’s a housewife hippie’s dream! Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m not hatin’ on the chickpeas – although I can’t think of anything else they are good in. Actually without chickpeas hummous would just be tahini. Which is awful by itself. Just no. Tahini is like shrimp paste or fish sauce (if you have not discovered the wonders of shrimp paste then you are missing out my friend…), it is great for flavouring other stuff, but by itself it is wrong. So very wrong.

I suppose it is the “housewife hippy” factor that irks me. You know the type, everything they cook has to be some crazy combination of weird foods they have “discovered” (nevermind the millenia of widespread use by johnny foreigner). Moroccan food seems to be the latest thing…

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Moroccan food can be very good – I have never been to Morocco, it used to be high up my list of places to visit, but all the Moroccan food I get served tastes to me exactly what I imagine Morocco is like – which is quickly downgrading Morocco on my list. What? That’s unfair isn’t it?? What I mean is that my imagination of cleverly spiced Moorish lamb and beef dishes is being replaced with the image of mouldy old camel meat spiced mostly with sand, and perhaps the dung of an animal that chewed some chillis once. And cinnamon. Way too much cinnamon. Or just incorrectly cooked cinnamon…

Back to hoummus and what set me off on this particular rant. I was in London the other day and wanted to get some food when a friend suggested going to “Hummus Bros”. Really?? A place that pretty much just serves hummus… I don’t call that a restaurant, I call it a salad bar. Hummus is a DIP, not a meal. What about the other equally (or even more) fantastic dips that are out there, tzatziki? taramasalata? fucking maggi-onion-soup-and-reduced-cream? Why did they not make the cut? What if I want something more substantial, huh??

At this point some self-important vegetarian~~ will say “Well, you can’t expect to go to a restaurant call Hummus Bros and get steak can you? hur hur”

At which point I will exclaim “Ha!” and jump up and point at them and say “Yes exactly, you have just fallen into my trap, you vegephillic freak! Next time you come into the SteakHouse or the BarAndGrill where I am eating and bemoan the lack of vegetarian options – you will be summarily taken out the back and shot… with that statement as your tacit agreement of these terms.”

Strangely Nikolai