1 October 2025

Can this curry make Britain less depressed?

I am searching for a cure to the national malaise at a Thai café on the peripheries of Soho

Photo by Adrian Muttitt/ Millennium Images

They must have seen us coming. Him: a young man bearing the unmistakable countenance of being from Fulham. Me: just scraping 5ft 4in, with a physiognomy that screams, “Go easy, I am a Celt!” As such, the servers at Soho’s beloved Thai restaurant Speedboat Bar brought us a lurid-brick curry with a frightening film of bright red oil across its surface, toned down to meet the muted proclivities of the northern Anglophone palate. I was told this beef-and-tendon dish ranked among the spiciest in London, but the effect was more pedalo across the Serpentine than motorboat across Phang Nga Bay. “I am braver than I look,” I muttered, as I scuttled away.

I have been traipsing around London in search of heat. As summer finally relents and the city sinks back into its natural greyscale, when even the scavenger foxes succumb to seasonal affective disorder (SAD), I wonder if salvation might come in the form of a hot and spicy broth. Primitive? Crude? As diagnostic practice goes, it’s a tick to all of the above. But in Dublin, where I am from, GPs regularly prescribe jumping into the Irish Sea as a cure for old-fashioned Hibernian melancholy. And we all have to develop our instincts for medical intervention somewhere.

Britain, if not in a technical state of depression, is at least suffering from chronic malaise. The economy is stagnant, and politics keeps rudely intervening in our lives. And we are not just suffering this melancholy in the abstract – over the past decade, antidepressant use in Britain has nearly doubled. I wonder, sometimes, if someone has conspired to put the increasingly sedate Trafalgar Square pigeons on SSRIs too.

But rather than Sertraline, I prescribe hot broth or cold seawater, which share the same sledgehammer approach to vitalising the human body: pain, no matter how unpleasant or repellent, is still a sensation. In this numbed-out, trance-like public square we have created, is it any wonder the masses long to ascend the Scoville scale? In downwardly mobile Britain – groaning under all those beta-blockers – should we be surprised our food keeps getting spicier? Where else are we supposed to mine for serotonin?

So, off I go, slouching towards Chinatown, seeking redemption for the weak attempt at self-harm on my taste buds at Speedboat. I pull up at the bar at Noodle & Beer (guess what they sell? Take your time) and order Chong Qing Xiao Mian – or, for the non-Mandarin speakers among us, a Sichuan-adjacent bowl of wheat noodles in broth with a menacing pile of chilli flakes heaped high in the middle. I dive into lunch, seasoned with the grace of a blunt-force weapon. THWACK. Tears stream, nose runs, and I am immediately confronted with the Icarian revelation that I am not braver than I look. And though I didn’t walk into Noodle & Beer with a diagnosable case of SAD, I left with a moderate-to-severe case of sweaty palms.

There is something odd about seeking a meal where pain counts as a win. At some point, attempts to distinguish culinary intrepidity from base sadomasochism have to be abandoned – the case collapses in on itself. I look to Bengal Village, a vintage Brick Lane curry house and proud owner of the accolade “Britain’s hottest curry”. I can tell you this: any recipe containing an ingredient known as the “Bangladeshi snake chilli” does not have pure-of-heart intentions. I trawl through news stories about diners crumpling to the pavement in agony after consumption. And I wonder what they are seeking. Are these people masking sexual perversion behind Arch Gastronomic Seriousness – eating ghost peppers as though their manhood depends on it? Or maybe they’re just miserable.

I am looking out the window on to Dickens’s grey and lugubrious London, thinking about defying my Celtic palate in search of dinner with more personality than boiled cabbage and ham. I suspect I might be overstating the redemptive properties of spicy broth; perhaps psychological salvation in the long winter months will not be served in a Thai fast-casual on the peripheries of Soho. But for a short moment, it might just help you feel something.

[Further reading: How eating organs became cool]