London’s Endless Appetite

London is a foodie metropolis: undoubtedly one of the best places to eat in the world.

But eating in London is also, like everything else in the city, shaped by its history as the capital of a globe-spanning empire.

How did the contraction of this formal empire change infamously terrible British cuisine? How did multiculturalism become an excuse for underpaid racialised labour? And how did landlords ruin Chinatown?

The essay collection London Feeds Itself, now in its expanded second edition, is one of the most ambitious attempts to ask all of these questions.

Eleanor Penny sat down with its editor Jonathan Nunn, also editor of Vittles, and contributor Amardeep Singh Dhillon to tuck into the history and present of food in the capital.