Snacks and Starters

In Southeast Asia, there is no tradition of holding early-evening drinks parties. You may find them among the Westernized urban middle classes. However, we are as familiar as anyone with the snacks and the sort of finger-food I expect to find coming around with the drinks in London, and just, I think, as expert and inventive. This may be partly because of our long tradition of eating between meals and in the street. Foreigners tend to romanticize street food in the same way that, say, French peasant food is romanticized. I am sceptical. These ways of eating have their roots in deprivation; their great traditions are in the cunning use of raw materials, especially offal, that don’t appeal much today, certainly not at cocktail parties. I must add, though, that in any Asian town, if you know where to go, you can usually find excellent food being sold by a few street vendors – but you need that local knowledge.