Feeding the Senses

"He was a bold man that first ate an oyster" Jonathan Swift

Down the darkly drizzled roads snaking around behind Borough market sensory sanctuaries can be found bursting with Friday-night Londoners.  The sky above is cut into segments by the railway tracks carrying weekday commuters back outwards to their Home Counties and expectant families.  Stepping inside one of the many inviting doorways and I’m transported to a Whitstable dockside oyster shack except the fishermen have been replaced with expensive suits and lazy wealth.  Candles drip thick, warm wax onto the deliberately rough tables whilst the rain soundlessly dapples the skylight above the open kitchen.  The oysters are muscular and creamy in my mouth leaving me with a taste of the ocean on a cold day, a memory of salted sea spray hitting my face in icy pinpricks as waves crash against the sea walls.  There is something decadently primal about eating a thing raw, whole, after it has been presented to you it all its naked beauty, savouring its delicious liquor like a Roman emperor with his concubine.