Love Bite: Taking Away the Takeaways
Words: Lauren O’Neill
Make it stand out
It’s Lent, which means it’s time for some abstinence, baby. I grew up Catholic, so when it comes to this time of year, I always consider giving something up, even if I don’t actually end up doing it. This isn’t because pressing pause on the stuff I like comes particularly easily to me - I am someone who spends most of my disposable income in restaurants and refuses to leave even a solo lunch without ordering the stupidest, most coquettish dessert on the menu - but more just because I’ve done it throughout my life. As a kid, when Lent came around I’d always give up chocolate or sweets or crisps (I’d usually pick the one I liked the least) for a few weeks.
We were encouraged to do it at my Catholic primary school – we’d make wall displays about the stuff we’d chosen to give up, or the new, better habits (“being nice to my brother”; “always saying thank you”) that we’d try to adopt. The religious idea behind Lenten promises is that as you gear up for the hottest comeback of the year – the resurrection of Jesus, which is marked by Easter. You make some sacrifices and some improvements, and then you get to celebrate by enjoying the thing you temporarily left behind once again, hopefully with a new appreciation for it.
While I’m not really one for the religious side of it – and I definitely don’t think there’s anything aspirational about properly eliminating any aspect of your life that you enjoy, whatever internet-pilled, pro-ana Catholicism might say – I do still see the appeal of using this time to assess your relationships to certain patterns you might have fallen into. So though it’s been a while since I gave anything up for Lent, this year, I have decided to address one of my biggest vices: ordering food deliveries.
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Now we all love a takeaway, don’t we girls? I will admit to having been so hungover that I have cried with gratitude upon the arrival of my falafel wrap with garlic and chilli (multiple times), and I genuinely believe that one of the top three earthly sensations is the epic feel when you’re hungry and you flip the lid on a warm pizza box that has just been dropped into your lap. It’s phenomenal, electric even. It’s like seeing someone you fancy take their top off.
For me, as is true for a lot of people, there’s little better than treating myself on a Friday night with a couple of taps on my phone and £20 spent. And if I’m not ordering a takeaway, I’m often watching online content about them. There’s something hypnotic about watching takeaway hauls – from Big John announcing he’s ordered “sweet and sour chicken balls” as he unboxes his Chinese meal on his massive kitchen island, to people eating in their cars because they can’t wait until they get home, or that kid who uses an online Wheel of Fortune to decide what he’s going to order.
I also love that takeaway videos feel so specific to the UK. We’re not earnestly telling TikTok about our “cheap eats'' like Americans; we’re bellowing to the camera about the fact that we’re getting a burger tonight. The excitement people often find in the sheer ordinariness of getting a takeaway feels very in tune with British culture: there’s a quiet indulgence in total banality that feels like it basically sums this country up. That British food is constantly memed because it’s pretty plain – despite the footage of us all eating fish and chips, slathering the polystyrene trays in curry sauce and acting like it’s haute cuisine – makes all of this even funnier. (Though it’s important to note that popular takeaways like Chinese food have also hybridised with British tastes over the past few decades, and often created amazing, flavoursome outcomes that are a far cry from chippy tea, as good as it is).
“We’re not earnestly telling TikTok about our ‘cheap eats’ like Americans; we’re bellowing to the camera about the fact that we’re getting a burger tonight.”
Obviously, the reason why takeaway videos are so popular is because there’s also level of living vicariously through someone else involved – as is true with a lot of what we consume online – though when I think about what I enjoy about watching takeaway content, it really does come down to the fact that I like seeing people have fun with food, eating it largely for pleasure rather than utility. It’s like getting that pizza box moment without having to spend any of the money, which is an added bonus.
Where my own relationship to food deliveries is concerned, however, I recently felt like they were becoming less of a treat that I found exciting and more of a habit. The fact that in recent weeks, too, many Deliveroo and Uber Eats workers have gone on strike over unfair pay, has also been a good, important reminder that any pleasurable experience has the shine taken away from it when you know that someone else has had to have a shit time to make it possible.
So, I’m off the takeaways for Lent, cold turkey, and I’m already enjoying the results. I’ve picked back up with all the cooking I was doing at the start of the year, and last weekend, instead of wallowing in my hungover pit like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, I got up, walked to a restaurant in my local area that I love, and had lunch by myself. It was a different experience to sitting on my arse on the couch watching Pulling while absentmindedly eating the same thing I always order, and I welcomed the change.
Obviously I’m not saying I’ll never get a takeaway again, but I am glad to be reassessing my relationship to them. When I make my return, I’ll try to prioritise places that I can go and collect my food from, or which have fairer delivery services that they run themselves (if you’re in London, Yard Sale pizza is a good example). In the meantime, I’ll be queuing up videos of people unpacking their curries, pizzas and burgers to keep me ticking over. Some people like videos of celebrities at film premieres; I like watching people rate their doner wraps out of ten. None of us can be blamed for drooling over footage of someone else living our dreams, after all.