Taking My Journey

 So after that little experiment where I tried to correlate different kinds of food with different emotions I decided to visit restaurants and eateries in London that focused on the whole dining experience heavily taking into account the ambiance of the restaurant in addition to paying attention to the actual food served.

So there I began my research on finding the most unusual restaurants in London. I narrowed down to three restaurants I would visit in order to complete my journey. I would’ve dined at them all but that would require a lot of time and a bottomless bank account.

Restaurant 1: Inamo

 Inamo is a chain of Oriental fusion restaurants with a very unique dining experience. This is mainly due to their interactive ordering system. Each table has an interactive menu projected onto it which allows diners to order their food and beverages in addition to offering a host of other features which include the ability to change the table cloth, have a live video conference with the chef, order a taxi and even play games while waiting.

The restaurant is always buzzing. I went there on a Tuesday night, without a reservation and I was made to wait for an hour at the bar. The restaurant itself is poorly lit but I suppose that works perfectly as it places a heightened emphasis on the bright table projections. The staff was very friendly and the service was prompt. I would definitely recommend such a place solely for the experience of their interactive menus.

I feel like Inamo is one of the few pioneering restaurants that have started a trend where human labour is being replaced by technology, which mirrors what the human race has gradually been doing for decades. It’s just a matter of time before restaurants will be devoid of any form of human service.

Restaurant 2: Burger And Lobster

 Burger and Lobster is a chain of restaurants that has a very unusual menu, well actually it doesn’t have a menu at all. There are only three dishes served at this establishment and they all cost the same price of twenty pounds. The three things to choose from are: a beef burger, a grilled lobster and a lobster roll, all of which come with a side of fries and some salad. In spite of the extremely simplistic and limited menu the restaurant is extremely popular and I have to say the lobster roll was absolutely delicious.

Restaurant 3: Doodle Bar

This quaint little café located near Battersea bridge overflows with character unlike the previous two restaurants I visited. Not part of any chain, Doodle Bar is the perfect place to chat over both a glass of wine and a cup of coffee. The most interesting part of the café is that it has a huge wall filled with doodles drawn by guests. It urges people to contribute its ever-changing décor. The Doodle Bar is also a place where community meetings and workshops are commonly hosted.

Food: A History by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

In ‘Food’, Armesto manages to recount the entire history of food since the days of cannibalism. He discusses the economic and social value of food and its significance in culture saying ‘food is a subject of pleasure and peril’.  The book explores how cooking has served the purpose of uniting people in social settings in addition to feeding people. Another key point elaborated in this book is the change from aristocrats ordering their cooks to lay out decadent spreads of food as a means of showing their wealth off to the current trend of Michelin star gourmet restaurants serving stingy quantities of food to their guests where more emphasis is placed on the taste and presentation and not the mere quantity presented.

Il faut vivre pour manger et ne pas manger pour vivre – Moliere, Le Malade imaginaire

The Hundred-Foot Journey

The movie looked at the Journey of a Chef who had to travel a 100 feet from his family’s restaurant in order to work at a Michelin star French restaurant across the street. Even though the two restaurants are located opposite each other the protagonist needs to make a journey between the two cuisines. The Indian food that he grew up eating and then learned to cook signified his past in India whereas the French food was a metaphor for him moving to a foreign land and learning the ways of the people who lived here. By the end of the movie he marries a local French girl and becomes the head chef of the French restaurant, which signifies the end of his journey.

This particular scene from the movie highlights the emotions one can experience even while eating a simple meal of spaghetti. The scene is extremely dramatic and everything from the opera music to the constant angle shifts between Roberts and the spaghetti mirror the intense emotions experienced by Roberts as she continues to devour the Bolognese.

Can eating be a journey?

Is every meal a different journey?

What are the emotions we feel while eating?

Are some gustatory journeys better than others?

Can a food journey be compared to an airplane or any other actual journey?

Can you use food as a metaphor for another journey?

Food and Emotion

So i started off by taking some pictures of the food I eat frequently and the kind of emotions evoked when I eat each separate food item.

Grapes: refreshed

Rasberries: disturbed, out of my comfort zone, uneasy

Red bull: giddy

Nuts: tired, heavy

Carrot: fuller

Apple: exhausted

Chocolate bar: happy, uneasy, stuck

Well the result of this little experiment made me realise that he food I had chosen was mainly snack food that takes a few minutes to consume unlike a proper meal. This is probably why the journey of eating these foods was extremely short lived with the exception of the chocolate bar, resulting in quick, fleeting emotions. The next thing for me to do will be to record my feelings throughout a proper meal and then come to a conclusion of whether or not eating can be a journey.

Asking and answering questions as a way of researching:

-What is this journey like? What are the features of it? Where does it go?

I think a journey is anything where the start and the end are distinct. A journey involves an element of change. The change could be very obvious and physical and the change could also be extremely subtle and occur inside the individual.

-What ideas come to mind to do with the journey? Who is it for?

A journey is for and only for the person taking it. The experiences that come with a journey cannot be explained as they can be felt. This doesn’t mean a journey can’t be shared between more than one person. Millions experience the mundane journeys in life. Does this mean they all take the same journey? Are journeys expressed by the internal or external experience?

-What journeys of the past can you think of? 
What are the connections between the contemporary journey and the historic journey? What are the differences?

Journeys have been taken by people all over the world. From historical expeditions by explorers like Columbus and Marco Polo to journeys taken by commuters from home to work and back everyday. What makes a journey significant? Was Columbus’s discovery of America more important than the journeys other people took leading to their own discoveries?

La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jeanne de France

 The poem recites the journey of a young man in the Trans Siberian Railway that went from Moscow to Harbin in the company of Jeanne who as he later finds out, is a prostitute.

The poem is illustrated by Sonia Delaunay in a way that enhances the poem. I think that the text and image work together in a harmonious fashion. The illustration is extremely abstract and only a faint outline of the Eiffel Tower can be seen amongst the vibrant strokes. I somehow feel like this works perfectly with the poem as it doesn’t detract from the text or distract readers.

Can the little things we do on a daily basis be small journeys of their own?

Check my social media

Use the loo

Brush my teeth

Take a shower

Eat breakfast

Next I decided to read through the pdf provided on John Berger and the experience of drawing. The excerpt was very stimulating because Berger takes you through his entire thought process while he draws. His use of metaphor is extremely effective and richens the whole reading experience. It also shows the process of drawing in a whole new light. Berger describes drawing as a journey that the artist takes for himself. A sort of mandatory journey or right of passage every artist needs to take in the preliminary stages of his work. In some weird way you begin to get more intimate with an object after you have drawn it. It’s almost like you’re charting the curves and crevasses of the object while you draw it, much like being familiar with a person’s body after having sex with them.

Questions

Can a journey be a relationship?

Can you take a journey with someone/something?

Can a brief experience be a journey?

Can a journey be a mundane act or routine?

Bibliography: 

Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penuguin BBC.

To kick-start my research of the ‘Journey’ brief I decided to play it safe and watch one of the films prescribed to us. I’ve always wanted to watch the Matrix, so this was the perfect excuse.

I’m not here to write a page long movie review. If that’s what you want then click the green stuff here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/

While watching the Matrix I kept thinking about how the movie related to the brief I was currently working on. On the most basic level the characters kept journeying between the present dystopian reality and the simulated reality of the Matrix. But on a deeper level the movie showed the journey Neo takes from his initial mental state of self-doubt and uncertainty to a new enlightened state of self-belief that helps him exceed previous expectations of himself and become the ‘Chosen One.’ This can be seen in the final scene where he is able to outperform the Agent. Here Neo becomes the only one to be able to deconstruct the Matrix into its code, seeing it as a mere computer program and not as the virtual reality he is trapped in. This state of enlightenment marks the end of Neo’s internal journey. The kiss with Trinity at the end of the movie is symbolic of Neo’s new state of being as love can be seen as the ultimate sign of self-fulfillment.

Questions:

Can a journey be internal?

How does one take an internal journey?

How is an internal journey different from a physical journey?

Can a physical journey bring about an internal journey and vice versa?

Are the two mutually exclusive?

How can you explain your internal journey to someone?

What marks the end of an internal journey? Is it ongoing?