Growing up, our big treat was that once a month we’d go to Pizza Hut. Me and my brother would think about it all the time: Pizza Hut; salad buffet; Ice Cream Factory. Until The Simpsons came out on VHS, it did not get any better than that.
Restaurants are the closest thing to a family business. Because it was my grandad’s racket: he ran Indian restaurants in Leicester in the 1980s. His last job before he retired was running a greasy spoon, like a proper English greasy spoon, which I always thought was a triumph of cultural integration.
I’ll eat anything. I’ve had reindeer penis. I’ve eaten brain masala. I’ve eaten some molluscs in Japan – I could not tell you what they were, but they were delicious. Sometimes my experimental desire has consequences. I did once, having eaten at a very suspect roadside cafe in Peru, excavate my bowels on camera [on Joel & Nish vs the World with Joel Dommett]. That was a consequence of me playing a game of digestive Russian roulette. Except it’s not really Russian roulette, because there’s a bullet in one chamber and there’s a delicious meal in the other five.
My dream job is to go on Hot Ones [the YouTube show where celebrities are interviewed while tasting hot sauce of escalating ferocity]. I understand nobody wants to watch a video of Jennifer Lawrence and then watch a video of me. I’m aware that there’s a disparity in fame. But I would just like to be on it so that I can eat all of it. They don’t even have to release it. Just keep it in the vaults, that’s fine.
Good food is good food. I’ve eaten at Noma and it was phenomenal. But it also doesn’t get any better than a really high-grade shawarma from Kebab Kid in Parsons Green.
Nando’s is the only thing uniting this increasingly fragmented nation. Nando’s and David Attenborough. Even Attenborough’s probably alienating bits of the Conservative party because of his, you know, consistent refusal not to talk about the fact that we’re ruining the planet. So Nando’s might be the only thing holding us together.
Somebody was saying the other day that they had leftovers of pizza. The only reason I would have pizza leftover is because I’d been interrupted by a criminal who was trying to rob my house. Or I’d ordered two pizzas and midway through the second one my partner would have said: “Have you considered maybe not finishing that second pizza?” I’ve got no discipline. No discipline.
I’m trying to eat out less. Fortunately not for financial reasons, but just because I need to start cooking and eating more like a person and not living like Henry VIII. But unfortunately, too many good places are accessible from my house. And you do just think: “Well, I could make an absolute C-minus scrambled eggs, or I could get Hainanese chicken and rice from the place around the corner.”
All I’m thinking about on any given day is: “What am I going to eat today? Where can I go to the cinema?” That’s basically how I live my entire life. My 19-year-old cousin calls me a manchild and it’s very difficult to refute that accusation.
My favourite things
Food
Absolutely impossible to answer, but I’ll say okra, because it’s the thing that connects me most to my childhood. Very, very little oil, just fry it with red onion. It’s delicious.
Drink
Guinness, red wine or ginger beer. I don’t know a huge amount about wine – I’ve outsourced all of that to Ed Gamble – but the only thing I definitely consistently know I enjoy is Argentinian malbec.
Place to eat
Because it’s difficult for me to choose, I’ll say a place that no longer exists: the old Mirch Masala in Norbury, south London. The Pakistani cooking there was extraordinary and that was my family’s favourite place to eat.
Dish to make
I make a solid chicken curry. Like, absolutely fine, C+ chicken curry. But as any respectable South Asian will tell you, you bring a C+ to your parents and you get nothing other than a clip around the ear. But it didn’t come out of a tin and it’s fine.
Nish Kumar is touring the UK and Ireland from September. Tickets are on sale now from nishkumar.co.uk
