Fourteen. Fourteen separate uses of the word artisanal on one menu, for one meal, at one very small cafe. I have questions.
I sat down at a small cafe just off the main drag this week with the specific, slightly unhinged intention of counting exactly how many times the word “artisanal” appeared on a single menu, and the final tally, fourteen separate uses across a menu covering perhaps twelve actual items, genuinely alarmed me more than I expected it to.
The artisanal toast alone appeared three times under three different preparations, artisanal sourdough, artisanal rye, and, in what I can only describe as a genuinely bold move, artisanal white, a phrase that felt almost defiantly contradictory given everything else the word usually implies about deliberate, careful craft.
I asked the barista, gently, what specifically made the coffee artisanal, and received a genuinely thoughtful three-minute answer involving bean sourcing, roast profiles, and a specific water temperature range, delivered with real, evident passion that made we feel slightly guilty for having asked in a spirit of gentle mockery rather than genuine curiosity.
This is, I think, the genuine tension at the heart of a lot of Shoreditch food culture: the language has become so ubiquitous it invites easy parody, and yet, dig one layer down, and there is often real, genuine craft and care behind at least some of the fourteen separate artisanal claims on that one particular menu.
I left having eaten a genuinely excellent, if repeatedly and insistently artisanal, breakfast, and with a newfound appreciation for just how thoroughly one single word has colonised the entire local food vocabulary, for better and for slightly, gently absurd worse.
For a broader look at the language and culture of London’s independent food scene, see News Satire Sites.
More from this author at Cyndi Himmelstiere, prat.uk.