Colm O'Regan: Why can't I get ketchup in cool cafes anymore?
Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Picture Denis Minihane.
There was another ketchup incident this week. I don’t mean that I spilled some ketchup on myself. That happens every week. (It’s one of the many reasons I’m not a TV star. I admire those who are. How can they regularly lay their hands on a jumper that doesn’t have ketchup stains on it?)
No, I was in one of those eggs-benedicty cafes for breakfast. The menu had a lot of words about where the sausages and rashers came from. Lots of things seemed to be made out of pallets. The waiter asked me, “What’ll it be?” as if I could predict the future. A man next to me was ordering and said “Can I do the scrambled eggs”. The pervert.
But still a very nice place with chairs that didn’t match each other and if Live Laugh Love was on the wall it would have been ironically. When the food came out, I asked for ketchup. There was a slight flicker of disgust that went across the waiter’s face. “No we actually don’t do ketchup here,” he said.
There was a slight emphasis on the word ‘actually’ as if it should have been obvious why they don’t have ketchup, as if I’d asked if they had any blood diamonds. He controlled his face and said, “Would you like some of our homemade relish?”
But I didn’t want relish. I wanted ketchup. I know that ketchup on a black pudding is probably the last dying kick of the failed system of late-stage capitalism but before the revolution comes would it be okay to have it?
It’s happened a few times now and each time I get the “actually we don’t serve ketchup”. I feel like there is some huge battle in the culture wars that I am unaware of.
I’m not looking to increase the world’s supply of single-use sachets. The bottle that a thousand people have touched is fine by me.
I don’t necessarily have to have ketchup made by a company that is probably donating huge money to Trump’s election campaign. I’ll eat artisan ketchup made by anarchists.
But is the whole concept of ketchup ethically wrong and no one’s told me? If it is, it’s a shame. It’s a substance with rich history and even physics.
A non-Newtonian liquid if you don’t mind. Maybe Isaac preferred relish. It’s pseudo-plastic as well. I’d well believe it. especially the stuff you get in chippers, who manage to serve simultaneously the nicest vinegar and worst tailings-pond, petrochemical-byproduct ketchup possible.
(Actually “non-Newtonian, pseudoplastic” means that its viscosity reduces with stress. Basically it gets more runny when you shake it.)
It’s been around in various forms for at least three centuries. The origins of the word are shrouded in mystery with it variously Cantonese, Fujian, Malay, Indonesian, and Arabic.
Clearly, I’m overthinking this. And you don’t want to overthink ketchup, especially when it’s in sachets. Those ones that cheerfully tell you with a dotted line where to tear. You need to just go for it. If you overthink, you lose your nerve and your hands sweat or maybe you can’t wait and rip straight into the chips.
Either way, your hands are too slippery to open the sachet and the sachet senses it and starts playing mind games and you realise you’ll never open this sachet. You could open it with your teeth but then the other people in the audience will notice you’re eating chips at the opera.
But back to the incident. At a time when restaurants are under pressure, I don’t want to be adding to their woes. If ketchup is against your values, that’s fine. I won’t be avoiding any place. Just put a little sign on the door. “BYOK”. I’ll know what it means.
