logo
episode-header-image
Mar 2021
28m 32s

The food that broke through lockdown

Bbc World Service
About this episode

On the streets of Bucharest a woman unwraps a package of Chinese pepper ... and falls in love. In Portland Oregon, a family finds a new home - in a farmers market. A food writer opens her front door in London and finds a Chinese banquet waiting for her. On a cold winter’s morning, in a city 10,000 kilometres away from her family, a woman stands and waits for a taste of home.

As part of the BBC World Service festival exploring how the Coronavirus pandemic is reshaping our social lives, Emily Thomas hears four stories of how food can bring us closer together when we’ve never been more distant from one another.

If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk

(Picture: Two women sit on a bench talking, Credit: Getty/BBC)

Contributors:

Albertina Coacci Tse Yin Lee Fuchsia Dunlop Schlifka Collier

Up next
Jul 9
Protein v fibre
Protein is a health and fitness buzzword – plastered on packaging, prioritised in diets and praised by fitness influencers. But is our preoccupation with protein overshadowing another nutritional essential – fibre? Ruth Alexander explores the science, and marketing, behind protei ... Show More
26m 29s
Jul 2
Video game food
It can be the difference between life and death for your character, signal you’re on a hostile planet or in a sumptuous world, or can even give you the whole basis for a game. In this week’s Food Chain we hear where the ideas for some of the most disgusting and delicious foods in ... Show More
26m 29s
Jun 25
The story of your plate
What can we tell about a society from the plates, bowls and cups it uses? In this programme Ruth Alexander learns about the history of pottery, from early earthenware to the porcelain discovered by ancient China, known as ‘white gold’. Professor of archaeology, Joanita Vroom from ... Show More
26m 28s
Recommended Episodes
Feb 2018
The World Service Cookbook
When the BBC World Service's Language Services moved into New Broadcasting House in central London, different services would take it in turns to host a 'Meet-Your-Neighbour' event to introduce themselves to other parts of the BBC. People started bringing in food that reflected th ... Show More
27m 59s
May 2024
#126 Adeline Grattard : « A Hong Kong, mais combien de fois j’ai comaté devant les stands de tofu »
Que ceux qui n’ont jamais entendu le son rauque d’un puissant wok prêtent l’oreille. Dans le restaurant Yam’Tcha qu’Adeline Grattard a fondé en 2009, la cheffe fait entendre ce prélude à une symphonie culinaire. Une partition qui se joue dans son établissement étoilé en 2010, ent ... Show More
48m 20s
May 2024
Women on allotments: soil in the city
In recent years women have overtaken men as the majority on allotments and community gardens. These spaces for growing fruit and vegetables to eat at home have been peaceful places that provide families with healthy food. Datshiane Navanayagam talks to two women from Kenya and Uk ... Show More
26m 28s
Apr 2023
How Food Can Foster Tolerance
Restaurateurs Asma Khan and Judy Joo share how food can bridge cultures and bring people together.   Background: Food may be a universal experience, but the culinary world has a long patriarchal history. Throughout their own tenures in the industry, chef and philanthropist Asma K ... Show More
21m 47s
Oct 2023
The best food writing is personal
This week, we bring you a conversation about food memoirs from the recent FT Weekend Festival. Cooking and eating are two of the most sensory and universal experiences we have, which makes food an excellent vehicle for stories. And food memoirs have become an extremely popular ge ... Show More
24m 10s
Mar 2024
Culture chat: ‘The Taste of Things’, starring Juliette Binoche
This week, we talk about ‘The Taste of Things’ with Tim Hayward, the FT’s restaurant critic, and our food and drink editor Harriet Fitch Little. The film is set in France in the 1880s and follows the relationship between a talented cook, played by Juliette Binoche, and the food c ... Show More
22m 21s
Nov 2023
Endangered Foods
Drawing on Slow Food's Ark of Taste, a list of endangered foods throughout the world, culinary historian Sarah Lohman decided to look closer at the American local culinary traditions and rare, cherished foods that are in peril of becoming lost. She shares the stories of her trave ... Show More
36m 51s
Sep 2022
The Hairy Bikers: Full Throttle Food
Thirty years ago, Dave Myers, a specialist prosthetic make-up artist walked into a pub in Newcastle after scoring a job on a Catherine Cookson TV drama. Beyond the throng of TV crew sipping their white wine spritzers, he spotted the then assistant producer Si King, eating the pub ... Show More
29m 20s