The UK is experiencing a foodie revolution. Popular TV cookery shows like Come Dine With Me and the many celebrity-chef fronted shows like Masterchef have helped to make cooking popular again.
The UK has been interested in design and interiors for a slightly longer time. The TV programmes that are helping to make cooking fashionable again did exactly the same thing for interior design back in the 1990s and early 2000s when the ‘home makeover‘ show began to appear in earnest. More recently and spectacularly, series like Grand Designs have upped the ante to impressive new heights.
Not everyone can afford a massive redesign on the scale of Grand Designs, in fact very few people can, but it’s possible to combine a flair for cuisine and interiors by redesigning the dining space within the home – an impressive dining area is surely the best place for a passion for food and design to coalesce.
Where should the changes be made? The dining table is very important but it can be expensive and difficult to replace such an established piece of furniture. In the meantime, it can be easier and more realistic to look at new dining chair to bring new life to the dining area.
Subtly matching the new and the old can be a difficult task; not everyone has natural design sense so it can help to bring a friend along with a natural flair for interiors when an existing table needs matching to new dining room furniture.
Clunky combinations are best avoided, but it’s also worth remembering that home redesigns can be expensive. People generally don’t have the money to burn like they perhaps did over the last decade or so.
Thankfully, many furniture retailers are offering great discounts and sales at the moment. The current Harveys furniture sale features up to 50% off some household furniture, with a great range of dining options being available in the mix. Some larger items have been discounted by over £500.
So stupendous has the UK’s culinary reawakening been that in 2010 a survey by French magazine Madame Le Figaro revealed that people in the UK are even better at cooking than the French; cooking more often, for longer, and with a greater variety of ingredients than their Gallic counterparts.
The findings were met with dismay and resignation across the English Channel. French television channel TF1 ignominiously claimed:
“They trounced us at Trafalgar. They whipped us at Waterloo. Now the English have scored their ultimate victory: they are better at cooking than us”.
Actually, some of the findings of the survey are sensational and difficult to swallow, but it’s almost certainly the case that more Britons are enjoying cooking than ever before. Many readers will be familiar with the casual experimentation and enthusiastic dabbling that routinely takes place in kitchens up and down the land. Some readers may have even attempted a soufflé!
Interior design and cookery are two increasingly popular pastimes in the UK, and bringing them together with a new dining room design is now more affordable than ever.
