Luton has its first Somali restaurant. It’s such a vivid, jolly place, how did they ever cope without it?
Hooyos Somali Cuisine, 30 Guildford Street, Luton LU1 2NR (01582 269 478; @hooyosluton). Starters £4.25-£7; mains £7.50-£16; dessert £5.50; unlicensed
A menu isn’t always just a list of dishes. It can be a map of history and culture; a set of tidemarks left by the surging currents of trade or interventions by colonial powers or, more usually, both. A New Orleans restaurant menu, full of fancy references to andouille, étouffée and the deep-fried doughnut wonder that is the beignet, isn’t merely some outbreak of European exotica amid the usual American bistro repertoire. It tells us that between 1682, when explorer René-Robert Cavelier claimed the Mississippi basin in the name of Louis XIV, and the Louisiana land purchase of 1803, France was the dominant power. Later, France left a similar mark across Indochina where a baguette became Vietnam’s famed banh mi. Portuguese missionaries brought what became tempura to Japan and, in Goa, developed the vinegar-making that underpins certain dishes, including the true vindaloo.
