Friday at the V&A

One full day in London, so I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum. The street entrance of the V&A is far more imposing, but I always prefer the back entrance at the end of the tunnel from South Kensington Underground station because it takes me into the sculpture hall and straight to Doctor Joshua Ward, the quack philanthropist (1686-1761) who didn’t mind being immortalized in marble as a very sloppy dresser.

I discovered that the Mary Quant exhibit, which I thought had already closed, was still open, so I abandoned my first idea of going to see the Christian Dior exhibit in favor of revisiting the styles I wore in the sixties. Some of them I’d still happily wear, albeit with skirts about two feet longer than I wore in those days.

"Food: Bigger than the Plate" was the second exhibit I had on my to-see list. The Independent and the Telegraph, called it "a curious delight" and "witty, shocking and charmingly bonkers" respectively. I loved it.

The exhibit opens at the end of the food chain, with waste. From composting loos, we meander through creative uses of food waste, and arrive at oyster mushrooms growing from long mesh bags whose contents include grounds from the more than 1,000 cups of coffee visitors to the V&A drink daily. Once harvested, the mushrooms will be used as ingredients by the V&A café kitchen, closing the nutrient loop.

Next up is a display of items made from Merdacotta (which the V&A helpfully translates as “baked shit” just in case anyone missed the point). It’s the brainchild of Gianantonio Locatelli, whose herd of 3,500 cows produce milk for Grana Padano cheese and, as a byproduct, 150,000 kg. of dung per day (more merda than milk, in fact). Signor Locatelli developed ways of turning the dung into energy, heat, and fertilizer; and the leftover solids are mixed with Tuscan clay to form Merdacotta for bricks, tiles, and tableware. The whole manufacturing process is illustrated by a video that opens with a cow demonstrating (copiously) production of the raw material.

I doubt that Queen Victoria would have been amused.

Worldwide (even -- inexplicably to me -- in places where there is nothing wrong with what comes out of the tap) we buy 1,000,000 plastic bottles of water per minute. No, that isn’t a typo. Most end up in landfill, and it takes 700 years for every bottle to disappear.

We’re drowning in abandoned plastic and it’s almost certainly too late to do anything about it, but Skipping Rocks Lab of London is trying, nonetheless, with Ooho!, an edible, biodegradable alternative to plastic, manufactured from algae. Drink your water or squeeze your ketchup onto your burger, then eat the packaging. But don’t worry if you don’t want to because it is 100% biodegradable.

Microbes play a part in food production. Take cheese. Then take cheese cultured from microbes harvested from the ears, toes, armpits, and belly buttons of volunteers. On second thoughts, probably don’t. It was there to look at, but the V&A had wisely decided against offering samples.

At the end of the exhibit, the Loci Food Lab, a traveling food stand run by the Center for Genomic Gastronomy, whips up “a personalized, bioregional snack” from a wooded area of Britain for anyone interested.

From a touch menu on a tablet, you choose three from a list of 16 food attributes and receive a printed ticket. I chose “nutritious,” “affordable,” and “delicious” as the attributes I wanted in my snack. I didn’t think to make a note of all the others, but seasonal, open source, protein-rich, and the ever-fashionable gluten-free were among them. My ticket provided the menu for my Loci chef to prepare my snack. It also told me I was visitor number 34,407, and zero other visitors had chosen the same combination, which seemed strange as I’d thought them rather obvious choices. Apparently a mere 7% of visitors had included “affordable” in their lineup.

The bite-sized snack was assembled with piping bags and tweezers by the Loci Lab chefs and handed to me with my ticket listing the ingredients. It looked almost too pretty to eat, but I ate it anyway and it certainly was delicious.Read more