If chefs made survival boxes...

It isn’t only Scouts who need to be prepared in 2026, with their boil-in-the-bag porridge, chicken korma pouches and cheese spread. Missiles are coming (possibly), or at least digitilised warfare is high on the agenda. You know the kind? A rogue AI bot or some hi-tech hacker in a bunker attacking our circuits and power grids. Just for the hell of it, we would hope, rather than anything more wanton and sinister. (It could just be tired old infrastructure.) Whatever the cause, imagine the scenario: one minute, pan-frying a freshly caught halibut, radio playing and lamps on, the next, total darkness — no TV, no internet, no heating, even… maybe. If this sounds far-fetched, why are the rich and powerful getting ready? We should too. Let’s stock up on oatcakes.Michel RouxPA“I lived on Grandma Roux’s sofa for the first six months of my apprenticeship in Paris,” recalls the chef Michel Roux. “She’d been through the war and had raised four kids — she knew about hardship. And I remember her cupboards, filled top to bottom with tins of veg, pickles, sugar, flour, milk powder. All the essentials that would’ve kept her going for months. In case of a crisis, it was the norm. I’m not sure why people don’t have food stores any more.”In Roux’s box? “Well, I’d have tinned sardines, my go-to snack. I eat them straight out of the tin with Tabasco or ketchup. And I’d have a bottle of vodka. It’s a good spirit… to drink, or use as a sanitiser. And it’s so flammable.” No baked beans? “No one in the Roux family likes them,” he says. “Although my old man [the late, great Albert] used to have beans with a fry-up. We’d all shudder.”When the Iberian peninsula was sent back to the Dark Ages on April 28 last year, I was in Spain, at Gran Hotel Mas d’en Bruno, a 500-year-old rural estate and vineyard in the Priorat region. I arrived at midday and asked a member of staff for the wi-fi code. “It’s not working right now, but it happens, it’ll be back,” they told me. Soon after, we realised it wasn’t just the internet, it was everything: Metro systems in Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon and Porto shut down; flights were grounded; traffic lights failed; internet and mobile services collapsed; and hospitals relied on back-up generators.“I’d have tinned sardines, my goto snack. Straight out of the tin”Michel RouxFor me and a handful of travellers, it wasn’t so bad. Dinner was charcuterie and cheese by candlelight, a few bottles of wine and then a trepidatious but amusing walk back to barnyard rooms beneath the stars. But thoughts did linger, because it wouldn’t have been fun for much longer, trapped with a limited supply of food and only uncharged electric vehicles for travel. There was, for 12 hours, a disquieting verisimilitude to our supposed apocalyptic situation.“I’d have whelks,” says Emily Roux, Michel’s daughter. No beans for her either, of course, but plenty of tins. “I’d have canned butter beans, tomatoes, and carrots, green beans, peas.” Roux’s maternal grandmother, Raymonde, used to prepare her own vegetables in Avignon. “She’ll be 100 next year. She’s in a home now, but until recently, she would grow her own vegetables and can them herself for the winter months. I think we should all pickle more, too — cabbage, cucumbers, onions. I’d probably have some Spam. It’s not a favourite, but I quite like it. And then some of those pre-batch cocktails like Moth. They’re fun.”Florence KnightPaul ScalaFlorence Knight, of Lunette at the new and glamorous St Clement hotel, is less outraged by the prospect of baked beans, a classic staple of the British pantry. “I like Heinz,” she says. “And I’d have Codesa anchovies, dried porcini, and a bottle of Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spätlese 2023.” Anything else? “Nannuo Shan Cooked Puerh,” Knight adds. It’s a fermented dark tea from Nannuo Mountain in Yunnan, China.Eleven floors down at the St Clement is Danny Bohan, who oversees the more casual Café Clement overlooking the Thames. After cooking his 100th lobster omelette of the afternoon, he says: “I’d take tinned foie gras. I’d have it with piccalilli and wash it down with Cardenal Mendoza Spanish brandy. I’d prepare the ingredients for a kind of tuna salad as well: tuna, jarred peppers, capers, olives, jarred tomatoes, sherry vinegar, Tuscan olive oil, cannellini beans and black pepper.” Bohan goes on to finish a fully-fledged menu: “For pudding, I’d have tinned peaches, drizzled with honey and condensed milk.”“A bottle of Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spätlese 2023”Florence KnightPrep boxes, it seems, need not be boring. Holly Middleton-Joseph, from the superb Hausu in Peckham, would bring Bold Bean Co queen butter beans, crackers, anchovies, Maldon sea salt and “good olive oil”, among other ingredients. “I’d have to have a bottle of vodka and some cigarettes,” she adds. “Packet rice, tinned tomatoes, green Tabasco and a four-pack of Ambrosia custard would also be important.”Read MoreI start to wonder whether these chefs are taking the issue of food prepping seriously. Michael Caines, of The Stafford hotel in Mayfair, is more measured. “I might bury a Parmesan in the garden like Samuel Pepys,” he says. “My adopted parents grew up in the war, and we used to do a lot of wild camping, so I think I’d be OK. I’d have a lot of tinned fish and meat, and preserved vegetables. Charcuterie works too, and corned beef, sweetcorn, kidney beans and tinned pate. I’d also bring a jar of hotdog sausages, condensed milk and canned peaches.”“I might bury a Parmesan in the garden like Samuel Pepys”Michael CainesAcross town, Jack Coggins, from Goodbye Horses in De Beauvoir, is big on tinned fish. “My grandmother is Greek. I remember visiting her and seeing a lot of tinned dolma, octopus and horta (seasonal greens). I love big beans from Turkish supermarkets in London, and I’d bring a lot of Ambrosia custard and jars of Bonne Maman jam.” Coggins wouldn’t be without condiments: “I’m addicted to Reggae Reggae. I watched that episode of Dragons’ Den live with my mum. The founder, Levi Roots, came up the stairs like Bond coming out of the water. He changed the game. I have his BBQ jerk ketchup on everything. I had it on an egg sandwich the other day. I mean, stop it.” No bread or eggs allowed in the prep box, of course. “What about Nesquik and UHT milk?”Chefs are ever-inventive. Writer and cook Alexandra Dudley would include Merchant Gourmet pre-cooked lentils — a mainstay of many professional kitchens — as “they have more bite and flavour than anything you find in a can. I’d take as many chilli oils as I can carry. Lao Gan Ma fermented soybean one would make even shoelaces taste good.”Michael CainesPress handoutAs for James Close, newly installed at Rockliffe Hall in the North-east, he’s already thought long about his “survival food box”. On his shopping list would be Perelló olives — “non-negotiable” — Bold Bean Co chickpeas, Yorkshire crisps, La Belle-Iloise sardines, Savernou saucisson, Mr Porky original pork scratchings, Ember beef biltong, fizzy cola bottles, and Marks & Spencer chocolate malt balls. “I want my survival box to feel less like emergency rations and more like Mediterranean aperitivo with a few British classics thrown in,” he says. “Good ingredients, little luxuries and nostalgic sweets are essential. Practicality is important, but so is eating well when times get tough.” Close would also pack a few Nio ready-made cocktails, which come in flat pouches, thin enough to post through a letterbox.All good ideas. I’d advise you pack a bottle of water, too.