Viva Lewes Issue #114 March 2016

food
Buttercup
Health goes mainstream
I don’t remember when
Seasons opened up in
Lewes; was it as long ago
as the eighties? I’d toyed
with vegetarianism, on
ethical grounds, as a lateteenager,
but this ‘health
food’ scene seemed a bit
sandal-wearing worthy, a
bit old generation hippydippy,
and I viewed the
place with some suspicion.
Nowadays I am, along with
many other people I know
around me, more enlightened.
I don’t understand
why I didn’t understand
before! Health food isn’t
about people trying to
prove their worthiness.
It’s about people trying to
be healthy. And it works. In fact they shouldn’t
call it ‘health food’ at all; they should simply
call it food, and label all that other stuff, packed
with processed carbs and sugar and suchlike,
‘unhealth food’.
Which is a long way round to coming to the
point. I decide to pay Buttercup Café a visit,
several years or so since my last, looking for a
spacious place to interview a writer, and eat a
wholesome lunch at the same time. There you
go: a ‘wholesome’ lunch, which I trust will not
be filled with additives, chemical compounds,
cholesterol-inducing fats and sundry other nasty
little buggers.
I’ve met my dining companion (Sarah Walton,
see pg 35) at noon (it’s the last Friday in January)
and we’ve been talking over an hour before we
order. The place (all French rustic inside, with
hanging plants, and pots, and interesting signs)
Photo by Rebecca Cunningham
has, in the meantime,
completely filled up with a
buzzing, mainly greytopped
clientele.
There are a few relevant
candidates on the specials
blackboard (there doesn’t
seem to be a set menu,
a boon perhaps, in a
restaurant which serves
seasonal produce): I go for
‘Chickpea and olive stew’
with all sorts of veggie bits,
and a poached egg.
Sarah goes for the same
thing. I’m pleased, mostly
because it can be hard to
eat a poached egg with the
decorum usually displayed
during first-time meetings,
and at least we’re in the
same boat. “Do you want bread,” says the waiter,
and I realise that, nowadays, that can be quite an
issue. To some, grain is the devil. I’m not there
yet: “yes please.”
The food is delicious. It all tastes of what it’s
meant to taste of. The tomato is tomatoey, the
potatoes have plenty of potatoey oomph, the
pearl barley has that great slippy chewiness to it.
The poached egg, which I lay on a piece of bread
(brown, wholemeal, naturally) is about as good
as poached eggs get. I rarely make them at home,
because they involve so much fuss. I manage to
get most all of the yolk inside me.
So do I feel virtuous when I leave? Worthy?
Smug? None of the above, actually. Not in this
era of health-food-hits-mainstream. I feel well
fed. Sated. Content. And… healthy.
Alex Leith
15 Malling St, 01273 477664
71