There is something refreshingly real about Grace Dent as she tucks into some spaghetti hoops, straight from the tin, mid-way through her interview. She likes the Peppa Pig shaped ones the best, but she couldn’t find any in Sheffield so the originals had to do.
Despite dining at some of the best restaurants in the UK as part of her job as a restaurant critic (which she insists is a real job!), Dent does not attempt to hide her love for simple beige comfort food as she enthusiastically describes her ‘drawer of deliciousness,’ stuffed full of freezer food ready to eat after a mere 12 minutes in the oven.
Comfort Eating is written as an accompaniment to Dent’s podcast of the same name which sees her inviting celebrities from the likes of Stephen Fry to Craig David into her home to talk about the ultimate comfort foods that have seen them through their lives. Containing chapters on how butter makes everything better and why cheese feels like a cuddle, the book, like the podcast, is clearly riddled with Grace’s characteristic humour and wit. You would be forgiven for thinking that Comfort Eating is simply a book full of funny anecdotes about food – the cover does show her with Battenberg rollers in her hair after all – however Dent is keen to point out that her book is more serious and emotive than one may think at first glance.
Dent explains how she believes that food is inextricably tied up with memories, describing in vivid detail childhood visits to the seaside eating fish and chips from the wrapper or tinned pasta in their caravan, perhaps explaining the comforting nostalgia she finds in her favourite spaghetti hoops. She read a particularly moving section on her late mother’s last days and how the only thing left that still bonded them was eating together, showing how food is far more than what is listed on the label. After all, ‘the greatest way you can show someone love,’ she says, ‘is by bringing them food on a tray.’
In a particularly relatable part of her interview, Dent spoke about how expensive eating well as a student can be, admitting that she spent most of her student loan on ‘vintage clothes, false eyelashes and Coors Light’ before buying the biggest block of Cathedral City cheddar Iceland had to offer and surviving off that for a week. Although perhaps not the most nutritionally sound advice, it was comforting to know that someone who now judges Masterchef for a living was a student like all the rest of us, struggling to eat enough fruit and veg and get in their weekly intake of vitamins and minerals.
Dent isn’t interested in the foods her celebrity guests are paid to promote online, but what they eat behind closed doors when nobody is watching, making clear her belief that good food can be a cheap packet of biscuits just as easily as the seven-course tasting menu that leaves you hungry at the end.
So pull up a chair, tuck into your favourite snack and enjoy a chapter or two of the unashamedly unfussy and honest memoir that is Comfort Eating.
Rating: ★★★★★
Comfort Eating was published on 5th October 2023. Other Off the Shelf Festival events can be found here