Maddie Salters attends the grand opening of Bompas & Parr’s British Museum of Food.
Recently opened to the public, the British Museum of Food is an interesting take on British culture from the perspective of what we eat. For the first time in world history, a stunning set of exhibits has been curated to introduce the evolution of how people understand and relate to their food, what part it plays in daily life, and how it is made. Part science museum, part art gallery, and part history tour, it gives guests an interactive seat at the table, inviting them to listen, touch, and yes – taste the exhibits.
I attended the Grand Opening for the British Museum of Food a little bit ahead of its public opening. The fanfare was led by the fantastic foodie duo of Sam Bompas and Harry Parr of Bompas & Parr, whose pet project this had been for years. Known for their culinary stunts, from Alcoholic Architecture to Cooking With Lava, the duo are now trustees of the museum. When he showered confetti across the crowd gathered for the launch, (almost as kaleidoscopically coloured as he himself was dressed), Mr. Parr expanded on his vision: “Around the world there are various museums devoted to specific items of food and drink, such as herrings and absinthe, but nowhere has an institution been created that seeks to embrace this crucial part of human existence … and where better than the spiritual home of London’s food culture?”
But how to achieve this lofty goal? The curators decided to manifest the motto ‘From Field to Table, Mouth … and Beyond’ in five zany, incomparable exhibits that take guests on a sensory adventure through the evolution, biology, history, and art of food.
I began my evening at Choco-Phonia: a series of four booths, each with a bowl piled high in chocolate bits, and each playing its own sound bite. From crowds bustling to birds chirping, I was asked to rate how sweet versus bitter, and how creamy versus dry the chocolate in each booth was. A social experiment in a “sonic wonderland”, designed to test how the science of sound effects the sense of taste. Notecards filled out by guests were all over the place in terms of ranking the chocolate – whereas I thought they all tasted pretty similar. (Perhaps, as a New Yorker, I am not as stressed by the sound of a crowd– stress might otherwise leave a more bitter taste on one’s mouth.)
The museum next featured the Atelier of Flavour and The British Menu Archive. Among the gallery of photography and paintings in the Atelier, which spotlighted food as art, were a number of different representations of the traditional English Breakfast – impressive, in that I’d never seen art serve up that many interpretations of beans and toast, with an admirable amount of humour, kitsch, and inspired detail. The British Menu Archive appealed a little more to the history buff in me, featuring a selection of menus dating back hundreds of years – a rarely-acknowledged trail of source material, with menus from doomed British cruise liners, to dinners held to celebrate the Prime Minister. A stand-out in the collection was the hand-written POW Christmas Dinner menu, from WWII at a British camp in Poland, which went to impressive lengths to provide a real meal for tired soldiers, while giving a piece of morbid advice: to enjoy the traditional English fare while they still had a last chance to.
Most engaging to me, however, were the exhibits entitled Be the Bolus and The Butterfly Effect. Both were creative and immersive in a way I have never before experienced. In Be the Bolus, I was able to take the same journey that food does through the digestive system – almost literally! A nearly full-body massage chair has been arranged in the museum, to simulate what food ‘feels’ like as it is forced along the alimentary canal and through the body, while visuals follow food’s actual journey on-screen, in a movie presentation. While you’re being lifted, squeezed, and mashed, the headphones you wear switch off between the sounds of digestion and a handy factual guide to feeding. The Butterfly Effect, in contrast, is a tropical zone on the building’s first floor. Step inside, and London melts away; literally. It’s sweltering in the butterfly nature preserve, where blue monarchs and other gorgeous winged insects fly freely in the hundreds, around a collection of flowers and plants. Their beauty serves as a reminder of their unsung role in pollination, especially in at time where there are rising concerns about the honey bee.
While these initial exhibits may not be around forever (the museum hopes to make its new Borough Market location its forever-home), they were enough to convince me that both London and the world were sorely lacking without a Food museum. That the British Food Museum in specific takes on such a cultural focus, and presents food culture through interactive and downright fun exhibits means that learning has never been more tasty.
The British Museum of Food will be open for three months, starting October 23rd. Tickets run £5 for adults, and £4 for children under 16 years. Its aim is to show that health, nutrition, and how people eat all play a vital role in describing who we, as a people, are… with that creative and always eccentric Bompas & Parr touch.
Me? I learned I’m a person who likes chocolate too much to stop and smell the roses– or listen to the bees!
The British Museum of Food is located at 1 Cathedral Street, SE1 9DE. Find out more at bmof.org.
