Asparagus

Posted: 1st June 2016

*Editors note: I was rather excited on receiving the latest installment from “The Wine and Food Diary of Giles MacDonogh” as it affords us the opportunity to share some Asparagus images from the Connoisseur Magazine Archives with the Connoisseur Magazine Community of Readers!

I am suffering, suffering badly. It is the first of June and I have not eaten a single spear of proper asparagus. I have no plans to travel to the Mainland this month and the season ends on St John’s Eve – 24 June – so the chances are that I shall miss out entirely in 2016.

Now you will say there is asparagus everywhere you look: native English asparagus from the Vale of Evesham and elsewhere – the asparagus of Shakespeare, Elgar and Nigel Farage. I have seen this too, I have even bought some. Last week, campaigning in the Farmers’ Market outside London University, I found a stall operated by a thin wispy man who was (appropriately enough) selling thin wispy asparagus.