14 January 2026

The myth of culinary soft power

A pan-Asian foodhall in north London is a failed experiment in geopolitics

It’s important for food critics to believe in soft power. Without such faith, how could I look my colleagues on the politics desk in the eye? In a world where nuclear missiles, drone capacity, economic sanctions and undersea cables are in sharpest focus, I feel compelled to defend my interest in the provenance of chanterelles, to wearily make the overcooked (oops!) case that what we eat is as nation-defining as who we might want to bomb. We have to take chanterelles and soft power seriously, you see, because if not us, then who? Film critics? Please.

I am on my way to a pan-Asian destination/assemblage/concatenation in north London, in search of lunch and evidence for my blind conviction in the power of food to unite us away from the war rooms. It is a peaceful walk through suburbia until I round the corner. There it is: the engagingly named Bang Bang Oriental Foodhall, looming over Colindale, like a Vue cinema scaled up to the size of two aircraft hangars. Inside, I am reliably told by the editor who sent me here, I will find Nepalese dumplings, and Korean fried chicken, Cantonese dim sum, and Thai spiced pork: united in pan-Asian harmony.

I do not want to dwell too much on the physical realities of this Zone 4 warehouse – certainly not at the expense of all the hard-nosed geopolitics ready for investigation. But I really cannot exaggerate the square footage of this place, spacious enough to host a Park Run, I reckon. And it is half full: good turnout for a Wednesday lunchtime.

The Chinese lanterns hanging from the corrugated iron ceiling do an unconvincing job of transporting you to the, er, “Orient” – but maybe, I hope, the food will take me there instead. I forsake the map – detailed enough to serve the navigational needs of a naval base – and go for a self-directed wander. Marco Polo in Metroland.

I walk past piles of raw pork mince, which I assume will eventually become lunch; rows of strung-up roasted duck; I watch men ferry around bowls of curry so large that they could sate a small horse. Bang Bang (sigh) caters to standard Anglo-Cantonese tastes, three women share prawn toast, salt and pepper chips; but also the traditional and (excuse the ghastly phrase) authentic. I sit down to a plate of Cheung Fun, a glutinous and slippery rice noodle sleeve encasing some aromatic-aspiring pork and vegetables. It doesn’t quite meet its ambitions.

We might blame that on this multilane highway in Colindale feeling very far from Guangzhou. In fact, this is a rather spiritually confusing place to be in: the speakers are blasting “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” (it is well into January, mind you); the Royal China vendor abuts the comparatively meek Taiwanese Chicken Shop (metaphor alert!); and at one stall under the menu section labelled “~ Beef ~” you can order orange chicken (what the hell, sure).

It is hard to find much to dislike about it at all, but a good case for the soft-power credentials of dim sum it is not. The anxieties of sharing waters with China is still a going concern in Taipei, last I heard, no matter that Royal China and Ji Chicken share an ATM a couple of hundred metres from the North Circular.

But in the spirit of this geography-defying thought experiment, I carried on, and ordered some Korean fried chicken (South, we are led to believe). It arrives, arranged in a heap for my benefit, lurid orange – eons of evolution have told me to avoid eating things in this hue, just as you might avoid a poisonous frog of the same colour if found in the Amazon.

It is sweet and hot and entirely artificial. With the E-numbers coursing through my veins, it sends me into a state of quiet reflection. Yes, the drones, the cables, the sanctions, the elections and the coups are the lingua franca of modern geopolitics. But even if soft power were not a concept consigned to the past, this chicken would be a bad way of cultivating it.

[Further reading: The indignity of Farmer J]