The Divine Comedy

What is Hell? No, I'm not talking about being forced to watch five hours of Comic Relief. I ask, because despite being a devout lapsed Catholic, I believe I have visited it's latest incarnation. On Sunday, I descended into that fiery pit of despair and like Dante in the Divine Comedy, I witnessed the three realms of the inferno. We all have a little voice that we can listen to or choose to ignore. Unfortunately, I have three other little voices, age ten, nine and four and I allowed myself to be swayed by seemingly innocent cries of 'it'll be fun'. I know from experience that these things are never fun. So unlike Dante, who was guided through the wasteland by the benign ancient poet, Virgil; the horror of my experience was heightened because it was instigated by my 'how bad can it be' wife and three children, 'the miserable pleaders'*.

In the Christian tradition, hell, of course, is home to that most charismatic of figures, Satan. It is the terrible place where our soul pays for our sins. A place of punishment for those not found worthy of entering the Kingdom of Heaven. In hell, our immortal souls are separated for eternity from God and live in perpetual torment. Whether we believe or not, Hell is a subject that has fascinated some of our greatest thinkers over the centuries, had the power to restrain some of the most powerful and ruthless figures in history and inspired some of mankind's greatest works of art and philosophy. In many ways, the Enlightenment was man's attempt to escape the fires of hell.

Have we succeeded? If the the Enlightenment was an attempt to emancipate mankind from the arbitrary chains of faith, then Western Europe has been freed. Despite the lingering influence of religion, our lives are largely governed by the principles of political and economic liberalism developed during what became known as the age of Age of Reason. Yet sometimes, I can't help feeling that the great thinkers like Locke, Rousseau or Kant would be horrified by what our self-determination has created. If they had foreseen where man's emancipation would lead would they have put down their quills, backed out of the room and vowed to lead more frivolous less useful lives? But, to be fair, not even Adam Smith, the founder of modern economic theory and the most prescient of it's critics could have foreseen the horrors of Jimmy Spices.

Jimmy Spices is a restaurant chain that started in the West Midlands in 2003. So successfully has it led people into temptation that it's dark powers are now spreading through the South of England. The website claims that:

'Jimmy Spice's is the ultimate destination for food lovers keen to sample some of the world's finest cuisines. Our renowned restaurants are pioneering Multi Cuisine dining, with a sumptuous range of Indian, Thai, Italian and Chinese dishes served up freshly every day. As it's Multi Cuisine, you can go back and try a different cuisine! It's a revolutionary concept that will dazzle the intrepid diner. Enjoy a vast array of authentic cuisine from India, Thailand, China and Italy all served in a massive open plan restaurant. As it's a Multi Cuisine offering, you can eat as much as you like! Simply choose from the dishes on display and the chefs will immediately cook your meal in front of you.' 

If the concept sounds appalling then the experience is much worse. They reassure you with a relatively calm and spacious bar area, but as I was led into the main restaurant I immediately sensed an unnatural sterility. This place had no soul. Perhaps it was the photos from around the world, as if the UN had gone into interior design using pictures found in disaster zones. It was a true democracy, irrespective of the food on offer every nation was represented. Lacking context, the photos had lost any quality they once  had. The people in the images, stripped of their dignity, stared back at me, like refugees behind the the bars of the frames, waiting to be processed...but, it wasn't them being processed, it was me.

When is The Who's 'My Generation' ever appropriate for a relaxing lunch? The thumping bass driving inexorably into the classic refrain of 'hope I die before I get old' made me consider whether Pete Townsend had been an early customer? But the incessant beat was really a necessary device to get you into the appropriate state of mind to 'tolerate' the restaurant. The sound and energy of The Who was a perfect way to synchronise expectations with the reality of the restaurant. It was like setting my sensibilities to 'fraught.' Which was just as well for what awaited me.

'Food lovers', 'finest cuisines', 'dishes served up freshly', 'authentic cuisine' 'chefs will immediately cook your meal for you'. As we sat down, I absorbed the scene around me. More reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch's triptych 'Garden of Earthly Delights' than anything I have ever experienced, including a Stooges gig in New York that had been a mixture of orgy and riot, I felt like Edward Woodward at the end of the 'Whicker Man' as all the pieces fall into place - 'pioneering', 'can go back and try a different cuisine!',  'intrepid diner', 'a vast array of authentic cuisine', ' massive open plan,' 'eat as much as you like!'...'eat as much as you like!'...'eat as much as you like!' EAT AS MUCH AS YOU LIKE!'. 

Something I have noticed in rich countries is the more that is on offer, the worse the behaviour. Buffets, in my experience, seem to bring out some particularly unattractive qualities. What I saw was a scrum of three hundred or so people battling over a selection of pre-cooked items. There is freshly cooked food available, but frankly if everyone had wanted that food we would still be waiting. Barely anyone, in fact, could be bothered to wait and instead there was a lot of barging, pushing and grabbing. Greedy and desperate not to miss out on anything quickly available, people from around the world, loaded the smallish plates, carefully judged to limit the amount each customer could carry, with as much food as possible.

Hell? Is that too strong a description? Gluttony, avarice, greed, sloth, envy, wrath and even lust were in evidence. And the food? It is now accepted that there are really only five types of taste: bitter, salty, sour, sweet, and umami (mono sodium glutamate). Jimmy Spices has the sort of food that appealed to these primal urges in such a basic way that it removed any pleasure from the experience of eating. It was culinary titillation. I was informed that the chef's had worked in five star restaurants in their countries of origin, but that doesn't make the food 'authentic'. The freshly cooked food was only marginally better than the rest of the fodder. Good food, no matter what the cost, is about good ingredients, attention to detail and someone giving a damn. I hope the chefs are earning enough to make this experience worthwhile.

I realise it is unfashionable to quote Marx these days, but occasionally, his foresight is still quite remarkable: 

'In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.'

Jimmy Spices is an expression of Marx's cultural homogenisation. In one hit of 'umami' it expresses much of what is wrong with the path our 'self-determination' has taken. What is sold as choice, is really just exploiting some pretty basic and rather unpleasant human traits. It often seems that the ultimate expression of 'reason' has not been the values which those early philosophers struggled to express but rather a process by which we can be persuaded to buy anything.

What is so depressing, in this context, is that food can be such a joyful experience. When done well, it's a chance to learn about our own or different cultures, for talented chefs to show off their skills and produce something unique and create something genuinely joyful. Jimmy Spices, may only be a cheap restaurant chain, but the whole 'concept' is an expression of a greater malaise in our society. It's as if the high salt content in the food sucks all the the humanity out of the room. We don't need a religious hell, we are more than capable of creating our own secular hell on earth.

By the way, the kids loved it.

(*I quote the great Kenneth Williams in Carry On Cleo)