The Art Of Food Seduction

How Nigella Lawson, the world’s favourite home chef, is negotiating the old and the new

- Sneha Bhura

Back when the world was younger, the word gastroporn would elicit only one name: Nigella Lawson. The English food writer and cooking show host would often glide and flounce around her kitchen in a satin robe, joking about her ineptness with a knife, licking her fingers and the mixing bowl while rustling up breakfast waffles with all the warmth and gooeyness of a “domestic goddess”.

For the longest time, Lawson was the world’s favourite home chef. Before the internet played killjoy and changed the meaning of food porn into formulaic, precisely-staged, colour-corrected photos. And, then, everyone became a home chef, a food blogger or an Instagram food influencer. “I think a lot of people are very snobbish about all the food online, with people blogging and having everything on Instagram,” said the bonafide queen of food porn at a private dinner she hosted in Delhi on September 15. “I have to say I am someone who really feels that you know—and I think I am in the right country to say this as well— the best food is brown food. The food that has the most flavour is often the least photogenic.”