What's Your Food Dream? Spell It Out...

Reality TV comes at you hard, this episode hit us in the feels and made us think

We’ve started streaming the latest series of MasterChef Australia (so much more to say about that, another time) and one of the first episodes of this season truly gripped us in a way we didn’t expect.

Welcome to another long-read on Chip Paper, from Patrick Hanlon and Russell Alford. Chip Paper is our space on Substack where we share long-form food writing features, deep dives, snappy travel guides and recipes, all punctuated by our own hand-drawn illustrations. We started as bloggers, built our brand on Instagram and are now freelance food and travel writers and restaurant critics for The Sunday Times Ireland. We’re also over at gastrogays.com.

Facing into the first elimination, the 22 contestants arrive to the studio to find a giant black curtain in the middle of the space. The room is darker than usual and, suddenly, projections slowly begin to illuminate the dark space, written onto the curtain. ‘A Sri Lankan-style brunch café… an immersive pop-up dining space... a paddock to plate restaurant”. Short sentences, all hand-written, scribbled on the surface in individual projections until effectively all the space is taken up.

“It takes me a second to realise these are our handwriting,” Sumeet says, “and these are our food dreams coming up”. Another contestant exclaims “it’s the wall of dreams!” while a couple of others share the meaning behind the words and flesh out what their food dream entails. It’s clear that each of the contestants have been asked to write down their dream - where they want to take their cookery and school after this competition - in advance of the process starting.

It was like an energy cleanse in the room: emotions unlocked when the contestants are reminded of said dreams, stoking reflection on what they are fighting for, and rooting them right in this spot as the first step in achieving them. New judge Poh Ling Yeow, who finished runner-up on the first ever season, explains how so many of her different food dreams have been realised even though she didn’t win. Holding back tears she urges the contestants to hold dear their dreams, which follow you for life, adding “whether you make it to the end [of this competition] or not”.

Guest judge Jamie Oliver is similarly emotional as he discloses that, amidst all his global success, he still has a long-held dream of a cosy, country pub which he hasn’t yet been able to realise. As a viewer it reminds us all we all have dreams, big and small, and even those seemingly at the pinnacle of success feel they still have so much they want to achieve –– just as much as those taking their first baby steps in an industry.

Maybe we all never stop dreaming?

This episode resonated so deeply and personally with us in a way we didn’t expect. We have earned massive success (and our fair share of failure) in our careers without ever really putting pen to paper and planning. Never written our goals and dreams down let alone had them projected back to us. That applies to both our joint and personal endeavours in our adult lives; we’ve just been riding a wave since graduation, trying our best to last the course and steer the ship.

We had never committed our dreams to paper, unafraid of how silly, wacky or scary they might seem. So, we asked of one another: “what would you have written down in that situation?”

So, here are our food dreams, laid bare for you to be privy to – and you might be surprised to learn we have kind-of already found them, sitting across the road from one another in the most unlikeliest of locations. We would love you to bear your own food dreams in the comments at the end of this post.

Patrick: Destination Deli

“A provisions stores, bottle shop and neighbourhood spot (more than a café but not quite a full restaurant) running from morning - coffee and pastries - through a busy lunch with killer sandwiches and salads to evenings where the kitchen flings out killer small plates, simple and refined, alongside the most gluggable wines. An open kitchen with cheese and meat counter would anchor the space and the shelves would be filled with a keen curation of products that you simply couldn’t leave without grabbing one or two every time”.

My dream ties in so many of my passions: cheese, natural wine, coffee and local produce, in a contemporary, designer space. Your dream is always a reflection of your personal style and passions, right?

I see myself more in the kitchen than front of house, putting my knowledge of how to build epic sandwiches and being a cookbook author to the test and being more hands-on in food, as I feel slightly removed from food having written about it for a decade rather than a role IN food production, even though my first real job was in food.

Indecision is probably my worst attribute and you can already gather there is a LOT stuffed into this food dream, but that comes from a notion of commercial viability. Getting any food and beverage space off the ground when contending with sky-high rents, ballooning overheads and fierce competition means any space needs to earn its keep every hour of the day, and then some.

My dream is very much not a single subject but a nimble idea that combines different curations and adapts to the energy of the hour. Of course, it would need to be in the right neighbourhood at the right time and I wrestle with whether this is a dream that could be for Ireland or whether it lives somewhere else.

This dream also almost became a reality. Worn down by the constant struggle of the content creation world, in late 2019 and early 2020 we were ready to throw in the towel and take our skills offline and into a physical, customer-based food business not unlike what I’ve just outlined. We did LEO courses, tried to nail down the business plan, we even have a secret Instagram account for it –– but Covid threw everything out the window. The amount of barriers to opening up a physical premises in a physically-distanced world (with no idea when restrictions would lift) was suffocating. Covid also afforded us opportunities to use use our engaged, digital presence for good: connection, awareness, information, entertainment. So digital remained our lifeline, and so we shelved the physical dream…

Russell: An Epic Chicken Shop

“Welcome to my two-pronged chicken shop - where you choose between two similar but different choices: fried or rotisserie. Succulent brined birds, spinning elegantly in a rotisserie oven, cut into quarters, halves or served whole with salty skin, delicious gravy and a host of sides. If the supermarket version is what’s known as the “Bachelors Handbag” I’ll be selling the Birkin or Louis Vuitton version. But if that doesn’t tempt you, fry it up baby! Crispy, free-range chicken, served in the most perfect burger of your dreams. Wash it down with a natty wine or a glass of bubbles”

I don’t know which I’m more passionate about: rotisserie chicken, all slow-cooked, basted by its own molten fat, and gloriously spot-burnished by the oven, or succulent chicken furiously fried in its crunchy, craggily coating, heavily seasoned and served with gravy, dips and sides.

Chicken, served in both of these ways, is among the ultimate elite examples in food whereby you can smell it long before it arrives on the table and taste it before you’ve even held it to your mouth. That’s the kind of craveworthy, saliva-spiking, blow your mind, “super fucking delicious” style of food I adore and much of what our debut book Hot Fat was based upon.

It would be a tale of two chickens, with the most delectable and delicious sides, including those which might be a bit more experimental or challenging, and a casual vibe –– somewhere that keeps customers coming back time and time again for the flavour and to keep tempting them to further explore the menu.

There would be incredible craft beers and amazing wines too, I love the contrast of high and low, and the likes of Champagne and Pét Nat pair perfectly to fried food and fatty dips.

While chicken is to go-to protein for so many and very accessible I’m also incredibly particular about standards, so free range local at a minimum is non-negotiable in anything I would put out there.

In ways we took a small step into this when we developed our meal kits with Hapi Food Co during the pandemic. It felt so exciting to be developing a product to our exacting standards and with our ethos and approach at its core. It was so successful it sold out and we remember seeing the countless boxes in the production kitchen in Clonee about to be collected and delivered and it felt like a sense of real pride.

Where Two Dreams Materialised: Southport Corridor, Chicago

You wouldn’t believe where we found as close a blueprint as possible for each of these very different food dreams: America. Yes, right in Chicago’s Southport Corridor neighbourhood there they sat, across the road from one another, Foxtrot, and GG’s Chicken Shop.

Foxtrot has crushingly just had a sudden, shock end to its operation a week ago, ceasing trading overnight (amidst speculation of bankruptcy) and closing its 15 stores across Chicago (in fact 33 in total, including others in DC, Texas, plus two sites of OutFox Hospitality’s sister brand Dom’s Kitchen ). We went to two different Foxtrot outposts in Chicago and it just captivated us: unusual snacks, stunning coffee, co-working and hangout spaces, hipster merch, bold and brilliant natty wines.

It felt like such an exciting curation of different things we love –– and then we realised this wasn’t just one location but more than a dozen of them, like ushering in the new era of cool convenience stores and what seemed to be a successful new player in the market, built from delivery app beginnings and being a beacon through pandemic times and steadily building up to 2024. Sadly it seems to be no more after a merger, change of CEO and financial troubles bubbling under the surface, but Urban Deli in Stockholm is another good blueprint we have come across.

GG’s Chicken Shop is six years younger than Foxtrot was but it is going strong a year into business. Lee Wolen, the chef behind Michelin-starred Boka, is behind this gourmet chicken shop, which opened in early 2023 and is named after his mother, Geri. This is just one outlet from the Boka Restaurant Group which has a dizzying array of concepts dancing from one end of the dining spectrum to the other across Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.

We really like Bubbledogs’ approach to fast-casual, high-low (hot dogs and Champagne) and also Butchie’s in London for American-style chicken sammies and Chimac for its Korean angle – both owned by different Irish people named Garrett FitzGerald, what an incredible time to be alive!

Ideas evolve, locations shift, circumstances change and life gets in the way. To have a dream, and be serious about it, requires being comfortable and confident even when the shape of the idea needs to be amended, or refined. Does a dream ever really die? We don’t think so, and ours are emblazoned as brightly in our minds as when each idea first took root.

We have been candid, so now you can too –– what’s your food dream? Whisper it into the world in a comment below…