For the tingling luxury of instant gratification in a low-blood-sugar crisis you can't beat dirty burger
My walk of shame is more of a ravenous dash. An excited run to the parked car. Yes, it is about the three layers of bun, the two thin beef patties and the secret sauce (oh God, the sauce) but so, so much more. The soft rustle of warm paper as I slip my hand deep into the bag and slowly pull out the chunky waxed box. The almost imperceptible click as I unhook the cardboard seal of the crass red and white carton and the salty rustle as I tip the fries into the lid. The wisp of stray lettuce. The warm, soft cushion of dough in my fingers. The peeking gherkin. The excited dribble of sauce between patty and bun. But more even than that. It's the gorgeous, tingling luxury of instant gratification.
All comfort food is about timing. Get it wrong – too soon, too late, too often – and it misses the point. To be truly comforted you need, briefly, to be in a bad place. That slightly out-of-body feeling of extreme tiredness, low blood sugar, lost, away from home. In truth I have wolfed the Big Mac everywhere from Stockholm to Stoke-on-Trent. Hottest was Stockholm, where the fries almost burnt our lips and the bun was gold rather than beige. The most satisfying was at a fast food cathedral just off the motorway this summer, a salad dodger's nirvana boasting everything from a Domino's Pizza to an outpost of KFC. We didn't possess the shiny manmade fibres and luminous trainers to eat in, so ran through the torrential rain back to our rented car, its windows lashed by the torrential rain. Ten minutes later, still licking our lips, we were back on the road, briefly satisfied, the windows fugged up and dripping with condensation.
While I'm (over)sharing: for all my love of 12 quid-a-bar artisan chocolate, rattle a tube of Smarties at me and you will get the same reaction as when you shake the dog's lead and shout "walkies". Forget tucking a Rolex Oyster into my Christmas stocking, just slide in that foil-wrapped ball of sweet, sickly segments known as a Chocolate Orange. The Tunnock's wafer. The two fingers of a foil-wrapped KitKat. The list is short but timeless. These are all things I have loved since I was in short trousers.
I can be as snooty about this sort of stuff as I am about "good" food. No cheque on earth would ever get me to eat a thick-crust pizza or a cheap doner kebab. The ones that look like a lump of dog food on a revolving spit. But give me a greasy spoon bacon sandwich on the worst plastic white bread and I'll be yours for life. A hot sausage roll from a high-street baker? Oh yes please. The sort of hot cheese and onion pasty you pick up a train station? Yes. Yes. Yes.
There is almost nothing that figures higher on my list than the chip. It comes, hopefully, dipped in mayonnaise (but only the good stuff please) or the gravy left from the Sunday roast, reheated on a Monday then used as a dip. I am less fussy about chips than I probably should be. Truth is that most chips are good. But if I need a quick chip-fix, then I'm not going to bugger about with triple cooked. Any chip in a storm.
I do like the fact that dirty food has grown up, witness Hawksmoor's divinely greasy french dip or Meatliquor's chilli cheese fries. My own dirty secrets (dipping crusty bread into hot gravy, melting cheese over chips, or a bag of sweet and salty popcorn and a tub of Häagen-Dazs vanilla) have become fashionable, not to mention someone's fortune. But there's a problem. Good though it is to eat (and it is) when our secret food becomes mainstream, even hip, it suddenly lacks the frisson of illicitness. It doesn't quite hit the spot any more.
It took me longer than I dare admit to click that my secret foods are usually consumed around the extreme highs and lows. They don't feature in my life at other times. So if you see me running from the Golden Arches to the car with a rustling paper bag, please be kind.