Behold This Golden Christmas Turkey Made Entirely of Steamed Dough

Christmas turkey, but make it fashion

Essential London restaurant Bao — winner of this year’s Eater London Award for best restaurant design, in Borough — has always been cutting-edge, progressing from a coveted Netil Market stall to one of the most inventive, playful, deeply cool restaurant groups in the city. That rep has now captured the attention of fashion designer Simone Rocha, who held her Christmas party at the Borough restaurant and was greeted by this bronzed, emoji-emulating Christmas turkey, fashioned entirely of Bao. Inside? Deep-fried mince pies.

Yes Christmas party food always runs the risk of being pretty tired; yes the London restaurant industry’s devotion to novelty dishes and ~food holidays~ usually leads to cutesy, small-scale afterthoughts. What’s most striking about this golden Christmas turkey made entirely of bao, other than it being a golden Christmas turkey made entirely of bao, is that it has a distinctive visual identity. It is patently non-naturalistic, looking nothing like a real turkey, but also uncanny in its thingness, in making something digital and flat — an emoji — flesh, with the same energy as a still from a 1970s BBC2 broadcast, specifically Ways of Seeing (1972) by John Berger. It’s a crowdpleasing symbol speaking in the distinct vernacular of the place that serves it: everything restaurant Christmas food ought to be.

And in other news...

• Stormzy took Observer critic Jay Rayner to the Caribbean restaurant at the centre of his childhood.
• Alan Yau’s 2020 looks to be defined by mashing Italian veal Milanese with Japanese katsu sando tradition.
• A look into how food refracts through different shop windows, as represented by dates. [Guardian]
• The Rum Kitchen will add to its Caribbean-inspired restaurants in Brixton and Soho after taking the former Byron Burger site on Bethnal Green Road in Shoreditch. [Propel]
• Good tweet: