Recipes for disaster: Gordon Brown’s sushi
Credit: Artur Marciniec / Alamy Stock Photo
3 min read
Politicians making a meal of it. This week: Gordon Brown’s sushi
“What’s this?”
It was the final day of the G8 summit in Hokkaido Toyako, Japan, July 2008, and Gordon Brown was seeking urgent advice from his officials.It was his first time at the G8, the kind of showy international event where Tony Blair had always felt so comfortable.
He was sat at a table with his fellow global leaders, and in front of him was something deeply troubling. A memo on the brewing financial crisis? News about the Iranian nuclear programme? No, it was a plate with some small snacks made of rice and fish. The prime minister eyed it with suspicion. He turned to his adviser.
“What’s this?” he asked, according to one of those present.
“It’s sushi, prime minister.” This was the working lunch of the final day. Five courses, beginning with traditional Japanese starters, and ending with blancmange, “exotic-style”.
Between the jet lag and the meetings, tempers were wearing a little thin in the British team. The prime minister’s next words sounded very much like an accusation: “You said it was steak.”
Steak is later, prime minister. Sushi first
Brown liked steak. At the most famous meal of his life, the 1994 Granita dinner where he and Tony Blair had discussed which of them should lead Labour, he hadn’t actually eaten much, even though Ed Balls had briefed him beforehand on the menu. Instead, he’d had steak afterwards. He understood steak.
A year into his time in office, Brown was learning that there were a lot of things he didn’t understand. Being prime minister was proving a lot harder than being chancellor had been.
“Steak is later, prime minister. Sushi first.”
“What do you do with it?” Brown is supposed to have asked.
“You eat it, prime minister.”
Brown turned back to the plate and eyed it suspiciously. Fortunately, he now spotted something familiar. A little lump of green, like a teaspoon of mushy peas (or, if you’re Peter Mandelson, guacamole).
As Brown reached for it, his horror-struck aide tried to think of some way of averting disaster, short of hurling themselves at the table. Too late: the prime minister picked up the green lump and placed it, whole, in his mouth.
Wasabi paste is made from the underground stems of the plant, which is traditionally grown in a running spring at the foot of a mountain. It’s expensive, and so some places use a fake paste confected of horseradish and mustard, then dyed green. We can assume, though, that world leaders were served the good stuff.
The paste should be taken only in very small doses. To eat a lump whole is like sucking on a small hand grenade. I tried it, in the interests of research, with a large glass of water on hand and under the supervision of a horrified but fascinated teenager. The explosion hit my tongue first, and then my nose, reverberating around my head in a series of waves, blasting through my sinuses in a way that made me think I might be able to see a new colour of the spectrum.
Each time I thought I had got through it, another wave would hit.
And I had some idea what was coming. What it must be like to eat if you think you’ve chosen the mildest thing on the plate is hard to guess. In the account relayed afterwards, the prime minister’s entire body convulsed as he fought to maintain his dignity while the top of his head blew off.
Is there a lesson here? Perhaps only that when you’re prime minister, even the safest-looking choice can have catastrophic consequences. Though if you’re lucky, only for your taste buds.
