Lecker Lecker Interviews

Welcome back to Out of the Box, an audio exploration of what surrounds our food. That is, the containers and packaging in which it enters our lives. In this series, I'm talking to people who have taken an interesting and innovative approach to packaging what they cook and produce, as well as exploring some of the broader context around the history of particular food packaging, as well as obviously waste, and the impact that packaging has on our environment.

Takeaways are a huge part of our food culture here in the UK. Since I was a kid, getting a pizza, or a parmo, or a chicken tikka masala in pila rice, or sweet and sour chicken balls, or what was known locally as a family pack, that I realised later was simply an enormous kebab, has been a part of the English food in my life, as much as scones, or shepherd's pie, or gammon and pineapple.

And I want to stress that this isn't something that I think we should feel shame or guilt around, unlike how the British media sometimes seems to want us to. But the thing that does make me uncomfortable. is what's left after the takeaway has been devoured. These days, rather than the polystyrene tubs, it's often lidded plastic containers, technically reusable, though I suspect they aren't always used as such, or paper boxes and bags, but the problem is that takeaway packaging has to be durable in order to transport the food to us in good temperature and condition, and that isn't always compatible with an option that's easily biodegradable.

And often takeaway food is cheap, which is part of the appeal, and it's not seen as an option to raise the price to take into account more expensive, environmentally friendly packaging. I think part of the problem is that actually, with the volume in which takeaways are produced and distributed in this country, there's No one use packaging is entirely sustainable, and this is a thought process that led me to Dabba Drop.

I've been aware of Dabba Drop for a while, though have never actually had the chance to try their food. The company was founded in 2018 by Renee and Anshu, who wanted to offer something different on the takeaway market. Dabba, quite literally, means box. Filled with delicious dishes, these stacked dabbas are delivered around London by pushbike, e-bike or zero emission vehicles. And the same riders and drivers collect the emptied dabbas the next time around, to return to be washed and filled again.

I met Renee and Anshu at the Dabba Drop offices in East London to talk about packaging, dishes, and the original inspiration for the model: the dabba walas of Mumbai.

Welcome back to Out of the Box, an exploration of what surrounds our food. That is, the containers and packaging that it enters our lives in. In this series, I'm talking to people who have taken an interesting and innovative approach to packaging what they cook and produce, as well as exploring some of the broader context around the history of particular food packaging, as well as, obviously, waste and the impact that food packaging has on our environment.

I'm back after a couple of months break to rest and recuperate, and while I was away, I have some really interesting conversations about packaging that I'm excited to bring to you. One of the types of packaging I feel like I'm confronted with most physically in my own home is milk bottles. Even though there's only two of us in my household, I feel like the plastic really just piles up.

I obviously recycle the bottles, but It feels like there's a better way. Shouldn't we be going back to the milk rounds of yore? As soon as I started researching this topic, I very quickly started getting some very well targeted Instagram ads for Abel & Cole and their Club Zero milk delivery service.

Club Zero is actually a branch of Abel and Cole's business that applies to over a hundred products which, like Abel and Cole's veg boxes, can be delivered to your front door in pre filled packaging and you simply leave it out the next week to be returned along with your box. They're now delivering milk to thousands of people in refillable, returnable containers.

But it turns out it was a pretty complicated process to get to this point. I met Abel and Cole's sustainability lead Hugo Lynch, who has been a major part of launching Club Zero, to talk about all of this and some of the backstory. as well as the challenges of rethinking milk packaging in this way. We were also in the room with Holly Bradley, Abel and Cole's PR manager, who along with Hugo, had very kindly rescued me from the riverbank path when I couldn't follow a series of very simple directions to their HQ in Wimbledon.

Welcome back to the Lecker Book Club. Every month I’ll pick a newly released food related book and talk to the author about the process of writing it. I’ll also be writing about it on Substack and Patreon. Join me there as well!

This month: Ramen Forever by Tim Anderson.

Ramen has ended up as a cornerstone of Tim Anderson’s life. As he writes in the book, it was originally his love of ramen - as well as Japanese food more broadly - that took him to live in Japan, which steered the course of his future in many ways, including meeting his wife. Avid food TV watchers in the UK may also remember that ramen was at the heart of his Masterchef story; when he won the series in 20211, ramen was his winning main course in the final. He previously ran a ramen restaurant in Brixton, Nanban, which opened in 2015 and closed in 2021. But although he’s got five cookbooks already to his name, he’s never written a book entirely about ramen….until now.

Ramen Forever is out now, published by Hardie Grant. Find all of the Lecker Book Club reads on my Bookshop.org list.

Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.

Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

Welcome to a brand new subscriber series on Lecker. This is Out of the Box, a meandering exploration of what surrounds our food.
That is, the containers and packaging that it so often comes to us in.

In this series, I'll be talking to people who have taken an interesting and innovative approach to packaging what they cook and make, as well as exploring some of the broader context around the history and culture of particular food packaging, as well as, obviously, waste and the impact that food packaging has on the environment that we live in.

The first interview of this series is with Sohini Banerjee. Sohini runs a supper club called Smoke & Lime and also cooks at the Cafe & Deli Italo based in Bonnington Square, Vauxhall in South London. I stumbled across an Instagram post Sohini did a couple of months ago about the condiments that she makes and more specifically how she's packaging them. So she agreed to talk to me a bit about that for part of this series!

Welcome back to the Lecker Book Club. Every month I’ll pick a newly released food related book and talk to the author about the process of writing it. I’ll also be writing about it on Substack and Patreon. Join me there as well!

In Made in Taiwan, Taipei based journalist Clarissa Wei beautifully captures the food and spirit of this proud island nation, and brings it to life on the page. The book is stunning - you’ll hear more about the thought and consideration that Clarissa and her team put into how it looks as well as what it says later in this interview -and it examines the current state of Taiwanese food in incredible breadth and depth. For me, someone completely new to the food of the country, it’s a beautiful and rich education.

It was such a pleasure to meet Clarissa via video chat and talk about this book, which involved an astonishing amount of research and recipe development on the ground. I’m a big fan of her work as a journalist - the podcast series she made with Whetstone Radio Collective, Climate Cuisine, is one of my all time favourite listens - and it was so interesting to hear how she approached this book, the subject of which is something hugely personal to her but one which she wanted to approach journalistically, and write as an act of documentation. We talked about how missing home through food sometimes takes unexpected, shifting forms, her culinary collaborator on the book Ivy Chen, and why it was crucial that Made In Taiwan moved away from its original proposal as a “cosy” cookbook and became something deeply political.


Made In Taiwan is out now, published by Simon and Schuster. Find all of the Lecker Book Club reads on my Bookshop.org list.

Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.

Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

Is it possible or productive to organise around a common language in order to reimagine how we produce grain and bread? In the third and final part of Good Bread, Kim and Ruth reflect on some of their experiences working on the project and consider what the future of good bread might look like.

Good Bread is a three part series made with Farmerama exploring The Body Lab, a participatory arts and research project by baker Kimberley Bell and artist Ruth Levene considering standardised grain testing and the possibility of reimagining measurement within the system that surrounds bread production. 

The Body Lab is funded by Farming The Future.

Good Bread is hosted and produced by Lucy Dearlove.

Thanks to everyone at Farmerama who has helped on this series in various ways: Jo Barratt, who was a fantastic exec, Abby Rose, Dora Taylor, Olivia Oldham, Annie Landless, Eliza Jenkins and Lucy Fisher. The music is by Owen Barratt. The artwork was by Hannah Grace. 

Thanks also to everyone else who has been part of the series: Fred Price at Gothelney Farm, Rosy Benson at Field Bakery + Mill and Chris Holister at Shipton Mill. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the Breadline!

Make sure you listen to Cereal, Katie Revell's Farmerama series about bread.