Any Londoner who regularly travels by Tube will have encountered it: an obnoxious traveller tucking into a pungent McDonald’s, greasy fingers on greasy fries, each mouthful of quarter-pounder an act of inhumanity. Or another, Pizza Express box balanced on thighs, chowing down on slices of an American Hot, as pepperoni wafts around the carriage, an assault on the senses.
This is not even the nadir. The worst by far is the drunk with the kebab. Few dishes are more potent than a lamb doner, where thick ribbons of meat and fat squelch under a sea of garlic mayonnaise. Eating such a dish in the stuffy confines of an underground rail carriage with the only ventilation the dusty air of the tunnels? I think not.
It is curious to me that hot food is allowed on London’s Tube. Britain is hardly a free and easy nation, yet for whatever reason Transport for London maintains an apparent degree of liberalism when it comes to commuters stinking out its carriages with mozzarella sticks and fat burritos.
It’s not uncommon to turn one’s nose up at the olfactory belligerence of a smelly meal eaten by a nearby stranger
When I asked TfL for its position on eating on the Underground, I received no reply. But the existing information, by way of their “Conditions of Carriage” document, is clear: any food goes. By contrast, smoking and alcohol are not permitted. Few take notice of the latter, though I’ve not seen anyone spark up on the Northern line in quite some time (for understandable reasons). Sharing a carriage with a bloke puffing away on a crack pipe once was interesting, but not something I’d recommend. Still, in my view, that’s less offensive than some sort of cheese-and-onion affair from the Cornish Pasty Co.
It’s not uncommon to turn one’s nose up at the olfactory belligerence of a smelly meal eaten by a nearby stranger. Plenty of Londoners — Standard readers particularly — have shared their thoughts on the rights and wrongs of social etiquette on this.
Reader Rog Enfield commented: “Smelly food is the worst. I love a kebab, but not the smell of someone else’s. There are so many who will do so [eat on the Tube] with zero consideration for other travellers.”
Another reader told the paper: “No eating on the Tube due to the people who leave their wasted food and rubbish for other people to clean up.”
Ah yes, the matter of rubbish. There aren’t any bins on Tube trains. Do people hold onto their containers for the duration, having tucked in between Notting Hill and Liverpool Street? Some do, but I’ve seen more than one eager beaver tuck their wrappers and packets behind them before alighting.
Sandwiches are much less intrusive, by the way. Cold food doesn’t really warrant a debate. Even Piers Corbyn, Jeremy’s wantaway brother, nearly got away with eating a large yoghurt on the Tube. It was only because he used a piece of cardboard as a spoon that he faced severe ridicule. Similarly, I once sat opposite a man who whipped out a camping spoon and proceeded to tuck into a tub of Sainsbury’s cottage cheese. Enjoyable to witness, no, but it was not irritating either. If anything, it was amusing. Had he dolloped the stuff on a steaming jacket potato then I might well have been less understanding.
Food of any kind is banned on public transport in Hong Kong, likewise Washington DC
It could be said that eating hot food on the Tube is tantamount to cooking fish in the office microwave. It’s just not on. Why people feel entitled enough to suppose the aggressive odours of their food don’t impact the lives of others is beyond me. How will poor Tim finish his marketing report if a Tupperware-bearing Mark is subjecting everyone to the otherworldly aromas of leftover monkfish?
In 2019, then-chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies recommended the Government make eating on the Tube illegal. No legislation transpired but it wouldn’t have been before its time. Food of any kind is banned on public transport in Hong Kong, for example. Likewise Washington DC in the US. In Japan, it’s considered highly rude at worst, unsophisticated at best. The closest TfL has ever got to acting on such upsetting eating habits was a series of posters urging customers, “please don’t eat smelly food”. I haven’t seen one in a while.
Most people I speak to about the subject agree. Sheila Dillon, from Radio 4’s Food Programme, supplied me with a blanket “no, never” to the notion of Tube-based dining. Others said much the same. “Absolutely not — gross,” one pal told me. “Selfish” was another word bandied around. “Revolting” cropped up.
Yet there are plenty who disagree — who don’t care whether people invade their lives with a Greggs steak bake. Maybe I’m being too uptight? I do wonder, not least because I’m so indifferent on most other matters.
But after careful consideration, I think a ban on hot food on the Tube would be welcome. If not a new, hard-and-fast rule, a campaign of some description would be a start. Just as TfL encourages the use of headphones. Imagine being forced to listen to Drake thanks to a bloke with a can of Brewdog and a katsu curry. As far as I’m concerned, that’s as close to hell as you can get.
