Normalise Stuffing Octopus in a Bun This Summer

Welcome back to Insta Stories, a column examining the London restaurant scene through the often-problematic medium of Instagram. This week’s filter is an unusual party favour.

News of the week

Lockdown Instagram represented one of the more extraordinary landscapes in social media history, with grids formerly given over to hypebeast restaurant fare now filled with wholesome images of banana bread and home-made biang biang noodles. The world is slowly coming out of enforced hibernation again now, of course, and the restaurant-adjacent content floodgates have once again opened. Which places TOU’s new katsu sando kits at an interesting crossroads. On the one hand, the viral sando is one of the most recognisable dishes in recent (pre-coronavirus) history, with one of the longest and most dominant runs as London’s Most Instagrammed. On the other, the make-at-home kit is exactly the sort of absorbing, finessed mini-project that restaurant-obsessed Londoners would have been crying out for during the lost months of spring and early summer 2020 — but which may exert less of a siren song now that people are free to socialise in public again. Or perhaps this is the wrong way to look at it: with a history of restaurant-based hype and career foodstagrammers newly hip to the pleasures of cooking at home on its side, could 2020 be the year that Tou’s katsu sando goes not just viral, but ubiquitous?

Contender of the week

Wise advice from Omar Little aside, this thing does look like it’s got all the hallmarks of a future IG classic.

WAP of the week

The P stands for porchetta, obviously.

Heat checks of the week

At time of writing, London continues to bake in a heat that would not look out of place in southern Europe or South East Asia — which might explain why many Londoners fell on dishes from those regions as a source of solace.

Attack is the best form of defence of the week

Of course, there is also the “fight fire with fire’”school of hot weather management. Neither is incorrect.

Ubiquitous creature of the deep of the week

Petition for octopus to replace sausages as the default “wang it on the barbecue in hot weather” option in the UK, and for the “octo-dog” to take its rightful place in the elite tier of “protein in bread” hall of fame, alongside the Spanish mollete de calamares and Argentine choripán and exactly nothing else. No, there is not time for any further questions.

First class upgrades of the week

Black truffle cookie, meet salmon roe baked potato.

Dish of the week

“Grill it, stuff it with cheese and deep fry it” – sound advice for at least 90% of ingredients.

Shot of the week

A traffic light that only says ‘go’.