Contempt for Content

The word content comes from the latin word for satisfied (consensus) which in Middle English came to mean contain and what it means now neither satisfies or contains meaning. For me the people and businesses its associated with use it as bad marketing. The endless content alone in Lisbon for burger and brunch places that lack everything that a good business should offer is staggering. Blue buns, fake smiles, staged photos of staff pretending to be customers, product placement (even though they receive nothing in return), everything is offered as take away or to be delivered, its pet friendly and anything other desperate measure to try to be liked. Surely the whole point of opening a space is that people come and sit down. They’ll spend more money sitting down , the might have another drink, they might leave a tip for your underpaid staff. The staff that do the labor while you post ‘content’.

In a way I guess I’m jealous that they have a place and I don’t. Jealous that they have an investor and a salary and I don’t but I trust the path I’m walking (and taking many naps on) as if it was meant to be it would be. Over the last ten years I’ve talked to many people about working for them or opening somthing- the closest I got was with Etienne in Paris and with Cassady in Ibiza. It wouldn’t have been about content, the content would be where we were, the food and wine we served, the cutlery, the glasses, the staff, the music, the conversations and the guests. If you’re reading this I know you could easily feel the difference as you read this between sitting at the bar or St John and having a plate and glass or sitting in a brunch spot where you want a glass of water and the waiters are outside standing around a matcha latte with a ‘photographer’. If bus drivers or the postman/woman stopped to take a picture of each corner they turned or each letter that went into a box we’d be sinking into the earth. In these generic, almost clinical spaces with too much noise, too many staff, too many lights and too many smells that aren’t food I wonder why they try so hard. I am not their audience and never was. Their content takes up space in peoples heads, their audience wants what they sell - they can’t see past that content creators are in advertising. They are selling you what you saw in their cute video, those cute guys and girls staring into the camera with a mouthful- they want your money. Unlike bars and restaurants that build a customer base by hard work and quality food and service - they pay people to trick you into wanting to try the place that could be anywhere in the world.

When I was fifteen on my first trip outside of Ireland and England I went to Belgium. It was a school trip to see Flanders Field. We were reading the First World War poets about the trenches. We stayed in a hostel in Belgium and on the first day I spent all the money I had at a supermarket to try crisps, sweets and chocolate bars that I didn’t know. The next time I went away was to Amsterdam at eighteen to do the same but also with weed, magic mushrooms and beer. When I went away I wanted to experience something different, to give more to remember to the trip. If I was to travel and only eat and McDonalds and drink at Irish pubs my life as a cook and writer would be very different. I wouldn’t be me. Each time we give money to these businesses who strip culture away, rip it out of neighbourhoods we lose ten more places that are part of the community. The contents of our cities and towns are to be preserved, we’ve already let the supermarkets kill the markets and farmers, maybe we can save the local places by a simple choice.

‘I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. Siegfried Sassoon