A dish I can’t forget: xarém (cornmeal seafood porridge) from Tinel in Grantham

We weave stories around unforgettable meals. That fish you ate on the perfect summer holiday? You’ll tell yourselves that one day, you’ll return to eat it again. You even say it to the chef and front of house staff because it doesn’t seem inconceivable that one day you’ll find yourself back, ordering the same meal, and it won’t have changed. Your favourite waiter will be there. You’ll be given the same table. You will feel the same, familiar things.

What stories do we weave upon discovering that a restaurant – in this case, a tiny Portuguese-owned seafood joint called Tinel, sandwiched between mini-marts on an unprepossessing street in Grantham – is going to close in two months because Flavio, its owner, can no longer make a living? His xarém (also spelled xerém) is a soupy, deeply savoury cornmeal porridge, strewn with tiny clams, king prawns, and rosy petals of fried chorizo. (I asked how he made the stock. “You would not be allowed to leave this building if I told you,” he laughed. I believed him.) It’s a dish from his childhood in Olhão, takes at least 20 minutes to make from scratch, and I began to grieve its loss after two spoonfuls.

Saying goodbye to a chef without being able to say, “We’ll be back!” and mean it – not being able to imagine that, at some point in the future, we’d jump into the car, drive 90 miles up the A1, and walk into Tinel to be greeted like the returning friends we imagine ourselves becoming – is a mind-bending deviation.