Food
Food awards create expectations. They are designed, you might say, to get the saliva of anticipation running. When you go to a Michelin-starred restaurant, you expect a particular sureness of technique and opulence of menu. Equally, when I visited the current champion of the Colman's Football Food Award, it was with confident and hungry hopes.
Cambridge United's Abbey Stadium saw off every other football club in the land to receive the award, judged by secret assessors. Graham Mills, "PR co-ordinator" for the club, tells me, proudly, it was "an objective survey". They defeated Norwich, whose patroness is Delia Smith. They beat Manchester United and they slaughtered Wembley, despite being a much smaller venue. The club is wistful in its triumph. Mills describes the Colman's report as "quite a romantic piece of writing, with the smell of the bacon rolls wafting around the stadium".
I know nothing about football. But, being something of a gastrophile, I was eager to sample these prize-winning viands, football or no football, especially since the Abbey Stadium is located only 20 minutes' walk from my home. Admittedly it is a bleak journey, punctuated by car showrooms and DIY warehouses. Armed with a heavy book to alleviate the boredom of the match, I was able to work up quite an appetite.
I followed a sallow bunch of Cambridge supporters through the turnstiles, paid my service charge of £8 and headed straight for the famous food stall. In front of me in the queue was a smiling man with even more bellies than chins, dressed in a yellow satin supporter's shirt. "I'm hungry, me," he remarked, as he ordered three bacon rolls, four pukka-pies, a pasty, a beefburger and a cup of tea.
Among the categories in which Cambridge United trounced the opposition was the range of food on offer. Apart from bacon rolls and beefburgers, there were about five different kinds of pukka-pies, chocolate bars, and an assortment of brown liquids (Bovril, tea, coffee, "Dayla" cola). Mills admits that they "gave chips the elbow" because of the risk of hot fat. Cambridge got credit with the judges, though, for including a "vegetarian option" in the oblong shape of cheese-and-onion pukka-pies. I tried one. The filling was redolent of socks and it stuck to the roof of the mouth. At least it was hot, tongue-scorchingly so. Apparently, some clubs were penalised for serving their pies fresh from the deep freeze.
The game was now starting. I took advantage of the lull in the queue to order CUFC's signature dish, the bacon sandwich. Rashers were dipped out of a tall metal canister and placed in a standard processed hot dog roll. Staff manning the stall scored highly for their "general banter", says Mills. "Sauce? Brown or ketchup?" I was asked before they noticed the brown was off.
So my famous roll was moistened with watery tomato syrup. I bit into it. It was hard to see what all the fuss was about. The bacon wasn't dry-cured, nor was the roll hand-baked. Still, eaten against the biting cold and the belligerent cries of disappointment from the terraces, it was strangely comforting. And certainly a better option than the beefburgers (brown and leathery) or the jumbo sausage rolls (as marbled and pasty as the fans' complexions).
But I was troubled. Was this bacon roll really the finest dish of the finest football caterers in all of England? Graham Mills answers with a line worthy of David Coleman himself. "The beauty of the palate is in the eater," he says - and you can't argue with logic like that.
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