There have long been Le Creuset fanatics. During lockdown, John Lewis reported that sales of Le Crueset increased by 90 per cent. And last year, a sale at a Hampshire outlet store brought a crush of hundreds of people; police even had to attend. Then there was the affair of Pauline Al Said over the summer, a Le Creuset burglar who boasted that she was Britain’s poshest thief.
Pots and pans have become part of a competitive aesthetic portfolio that not only indicates your degree of stylishness as a cook, but your attitude to the latest trends in wellness and health. The ideal kitchen is now free of ‘forever chemicals’, and exclusively stocked with glass, wood, cork, ceramic, cast iron and stainless steel. When it comes to pots and pans, top of the hierarchy is cast iron, followed by multi-clad and ‘tri-ply’ pans (which combine different metals such as aluminium and stainless steel). The harder a pan is to clean, the more clout it gives its owner.
Then there’s the most controversial breed of all: the heavily Instagrammable ceramic non-stick brigade. These are mid-range, in the £150-and-up domain, and above all, they are cute. At the front of this pack is Our Place, founded by Shiza Shahid, former CEO of the Malala Fund. Our Place, which has nearly one million followers on Instagram, is taught as a case study on digital marketing courses the world over. No other company knows quite how to flog to Instagram addicts. GreenPan, MadeIn and Caraway are keen to follow Our Place. HexClad, endorsed by Gordon Ramsay, sells frying pans priced at around £150 and aims at a more meaty, blokeish clientele. It, too, is a brand that seeks to perpetuate certain foodie trends.
As an Instagram Reel recipe follower, I am easily influenced by such marketing. So, just as the urge to binge-buy all of the above became overwhelming, I sought out Justin Kowbel. He is a Canadian ex-banker and co-founder of the sleek kitchenware shop Borough Kitchen, which has shops in London Bridge, Islington and Hampstead.
His gaff is classy but understated: very little Teflon in sight, very heavy pans, and plenty of Nordic bakeware. Just as I expected, he warned me off the Instagram pots and pans in pretty colours. They are for the unserious, slightly vulgar cook. According to Kowbel, there are two types of buyers: those who buy HexClad and Le Creuset, who are ‘not our customers’, and those motivated by ‘the love of cooking’ where it’s ‘all about the performance’ – who are his customers.
Kowbel points out the flawed, Insta-curated fallacy at the heart of Our Place’s Always Pan and its ilk: disposability. ‘They claim all this environmental stuff, but are actually creating an enormous amount of waste. They’re quick to replace, easy to make.’ This is not the case for Normandy pots and pans manufacturer Mauviel, run by the sixth-generation heir to the business, Valérie Le Guern Gilbert. Nor is it true for All-Clad, whose copper-filled pans can cost close to £500.
When it comes to stove-to-oven casseroles, the big divide is between Alsatian brand Staub vs Le Creuset. Kowbel rates the former. ‘Le Creuset spent the past 50 years investing in colour,’ he says, witheringly. I recall the cool mint, sea salt, meringue and cerise-coloured Le Creuset pots I had recently browsed in a Hampstead window. ‘Staub spent the past 50 years investing in functionality.’ Their casserole pots cost around £300 each.
‘Le Creuset spent the past 50 years investing in colour’
Having spent an obscene amount of time deciding on the final piece needed for my cooking ‘era’, I went for one of Borough’s Mauviel copper-handled frying pans. It’s a workhorse, like all frying pans, and when it comes to heat conduction, it’s perhaps too good. It gets scarily hot, scarily fast; I got a nasty burn from the handle and found myself whimpering, hand in ice water, for the rest of the evening (awkward with guests over).
Part of what drew me to cookery was the promise of a lifestyle, somewhere over the rainbow but perhaps within reach. This is a world where the drudgery of cooking, so loathed by centuries of women, evaporates in a pretty low-lit pastel-pink braiser. Cue tea lights, Mason jars and hearty satisfaction.
So I will not give up on appearance to chase functionality. I want both. And I am beginning to have it. Over the past few months I have acquired a Staub oval casserole dish, a Made In sauté pan, and the Mauviel pan. There is also a plush tropical-themed oven glove in my kitchen, a bright yellow lemon squeezer, a Beast blender in teal with three sizes of drum, the kind of mini whisk proper chefs use for dressings, and a pasta sieve. These are praised by friends who have also found themselves retraining their horizons, as children and the cost of eating out shape our life choices. The Instagram marketers have ensured that, for every stage of life, there is still something to which we can aspire. Thanks to them, and their army of well-paid influencers, what’s over the rainbow is getting closer
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