Review of 2021: digesting a rollercoaster year

For food, 2021 has been a year of two halves. Caterers and restaurateurs endured a professional famine for the first six months followed by huge scale feasting once lockdown was finally lifted in July.

And the rollercoaster continues as we crawl out of 2021, with Covid numbers rising again. Thankfully, for the caterers at least, the storm has hit at a quieter time of year, but some restaurants are feeling the pinch.

Until mid-December, things had been all systems go, with wall-to-wall weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs and special celebrations. Having seen how uncertain a global pandemic makes things, brides and grooms (who may have postponed their nuptials more than once) were rushing to marry within summer’s window of opportunity.

It was a joyful time for the professionals, who could see how much their customers had missed partying: “The best thing was how grateful people were to be celebrating again” said Simone Krieger, of Krieger’s Kitchen, who has, like most of her contemporaries, been working flat out since the regulations eased.

Far from being modest affairs, parties didn’t take long to return to pre-pandemic levels: “People seemed to want everyone they could have there” said Krieger.

By late autumn, fatigue was setting in, with caterers quoting, planning and staging parties for months without a break. Benji Levey of Eat Me Events told me in mid-October that he and many of his contemporaries hadn’t taken a day off (apart from the chagim) since the lockdown was lifted. Ben Tenenblatt and Dor Barak of D’vash had the same experience yet the overwhelming emotion for all of them remained gratitude to be back doing the job they love.

Barak told me the pressure had been on with many of his clients wanting to him arrange events in far shorter time frames than normal, reducing timelines from months to weeks or days. “They were mostly big scale events, for families that have not been able to have their events and want to do them quickly.” He was planning huge weddings in a month or less, scheduled for whichever day of the week was available for clients worried about what the future may hold and wanting to get married while they could.

Even in the early autumn there was an awareness of the writing on the wall. Barak said to me of his clients: “They’re seeing things are fine for now, but they don’t know what it will be like this winter when there may be a new variant.” How right he was. Krieger told me she is already seeing clients downsizing their parties: “One client has cancelled her venue and will be splitting her January party into smaller groups in a marquee in her garden. People are worried.”

While many caterers are still weathering the storm, one of my favourite people in food, Celia Clyne, was forced to close her huge kitchens. The Grande Dame of kosher catering, wound up the business in October, but son Mark will continue with the Manchester deli/café (and now restaurant) Celia’s Kitchen. I’ll miss our Manchester meet ups.

Over in Israel — as we headed out of the restrictions in May — another industry great also stopped cooking, but, thankfully, temporarily, after restaurant, Uri Buri, was razed to the ground by political protestors. The owner — the resilient Uri Jeremias — refused to condemn the culprits, picking up the pieces and setting his restaurant up in temporary premises while he rebuilds his sea-facing Akko restaurant.

In July, the JC introduced Jeremias to readers via a Zoom conversation with the equally charismatic London-based Israeli chefs Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich of Honey & Co. The Honeys shared the influence he’d had on their careers (and personal life) and confessed to being slightly starstruck to be in his company.

I also transported readers to Israel (virtually) to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut with a panel of foodie experts. They shared what we’re missing out on in Tel Aviv (sigh) and a week later, some of the country’s most knowledgeable wine experts shared what’s new in Israeli wine. (Both broadcasts are available on the JC’s Facebook page.)

It’s been a good year for cookbooks. A much-needed ray of sunshine beamed from the Middle Eastern/Mediterranean-influenced recipes in Claudia Roden’s Med and Honey & Co’s Chasing Smoke in which the Honeys gave us a flavour of their pre-pandemic travels across five countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. (If only we could have gone there ourselves.)

Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad’s Ottolenghi Test Kitchen reflected our shared experience of sometimes limited ingredients; and two charity cookbooks caught our eye — Sally-Ann Thwaites’s Cooking from the Heart — packed with easy-to-make, tasty recipes; and Babka, Boulou and Blintzes, a collection of chocolate-based recipes compiled by Michael Leventhal — my copy is already coated in sticky fingerprints.

It’s been a breakout year for grass roots businesses, with young foodie entrepreneurs serving up all sorts of treats, from wine and indulgent bakes to coffee and vegan sweets. There are plenty more exciting products to try in 2022.

My highlight of 2021 — other than my 10th anniversary as JC food editor — was managing to celebrate my son’s bar mitzvah. In early October, a small group of friends and family joined us under blue skies in a marquee in our garden for Middle Eastern mezze. It was cooked for us by the super-talented, and endlessly patient Simone Krieger — another of the nicest people in Jewish food. She filled long tables with creamy dips, colourful salads and spicy salmon skewers that are still being raved about. After a year of “will we/won’t we” it was a joy to celebrate my son’s coming of age. A few weeks later, things are less sunny.

The newest variant of this tiresome virus is spreading so fast that some of us are again choosing to push celebrations into 2022 and we look to be heading into yet another coronavirus-affected year. After all their pivoting and lateral thinking, I feel many of our caterers and restaurateurs are stronger and ready to face the challenge.