What do mullets, SpongeBob stick-and-pokes, and foil-wrapped sandwiches have in common? According to this week’s guest, London writer Clive Martin, they’re all hallmarks of a new type of food-obsessed, young urban professional that Clive calls the “defining person-type of 2025.” You know the type: people who queue up around the block for hours for a taste of the latest Instagram-viral, cartoonishly gigantic Italian sandwiches, in a neighborhood where the old school Italian sandwich shops are being displaced.
Clive calls these people “The Normans,” after a North London cafe-restaurant they frequented for its loving homages to greasy-spoon staples like chippy teas and chicken fingers. But it’s a subculture that transcends international borders, at least in the English speaking world: a distinctly bro-y strain of contemporary foodie culture fueled by viral images of oozing cheeseburgers, indie rock music, Anthony Bourdain hagiography, and upscale, farm-to-table recreations of working class and immigrant food traditions. The plan their weekends around new eateries, walk around wearing restaurant merch, and secretly wish they could they could quit their fintech job and start over as Carmy from The Bear.
Clive is a former colleague of ours from VICE, and one of our favorite observers of contemporary culture—especially when it comes to cities and gentrification. We brought him on to discuss his article for VICE, titled “Meet the Normans,” and how food supplanted music, film, and art as the dominant mode of cultural consumption among young people.
We also get into the subculture’s nature as a kind of masculine reaction to other strains of millennial yuppie food culture, how both the food internet and the bro internet are reshaping our cities, and how the rising cost of living is pushing the gentrification cycle into exurban areas like Upstate New York, Margate, and Joshua Tree. Finally, we share some of our favorite, decidedly not-Norman restaurants in London, Philly, and LA that are still hanging on.
Follow Clive on X @clive_mart1n
Read more by Clive:
“Urban sprawlers: How city folk ruined the countryside” (The Face)
“Ketamine, crime, and chaos: Life in a London party slum” (VICE)
Other relevant reads:
“Welcome to Neo New York, where everything feels old school but isn’t” by Emilie Friedlander (VICE)
“We are all foodies now” by Steven Phillips-Horst (Spike Art)
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