In Defence of the Soggy Sandwich

On picnic food, joy, and why the internet is getting this slightly wrong

I have a confession.

When I started The Duchess of Picnics, my entire brand philosophy was built on four words:

No soggy sandwiches. Ever.

I wanted the perfect hamper. The linen napkins. The Fortnum's tin. The aesthetic so beautiful it belonged in a Nancy Meyers film — golden light, wicker, something in a vintage French mustard jar that nobody could quite identify but everyone wanted to eat.

I cringe slightly typing that. Not because it isn't still beautiful — it absolutely is, and I still love all of it — but because I'd made a fundamental mistake about what picnics are actually for.

Stylist published a piece recently that I've been thinking about all week. They asked two brilliant, genuinely cool food writers — Sophie Wyburd and Seema Pankhania — what they always and never bring to a picnic. The answers were wonderful. Muffuletta. Summer rolls. Boursin. An insistence on proper napkins. A firm stance against sad sausage rolls.

I agree with almost all of it. And I still want to push back. Gently, warmly, but quite firmly.

Because I think we're — all of us, me included, Stylist included — at risk of missing the point.

The Soggy Sandwich Is Not the Problem

Here's what the research actually says, and I promise this is going somewhere good.

Jonathan Haidt — social psychologist, author of The Happiness Hypothesis — spent years trying to understand where joy actually lives. Not what we think will make us happy. Where it actually, measurably, biologically shows up.

His answer: between.

Not inside us (which is what self-help promises). Not in the things we acquire (which is what consumerism promises). But in the between — in the shared moment, the circle of people, the collective experience of being present together.

Which means the muffuletta is not the point.

I know. I know. Bear with me.

The muffuletta is delicious. Bringing something wonderful to share is a beautiful act of love. Sophie Wyburd is correct about all of it. But if you've ever had a genuinely transcendent picnic — the kind you still talk about years later — I'd wager it wasn't the food that made it transcendent.

It was the afternoon. The light. The conversation that went somewhere unexpected. The moment someone's child did something hilarious. The way everyone just . . . stayed, longer than anyone planned.

Dr Vivek Murthy — former US Surgeon General and the man who wrote the book on the loneliness epidemic — found that loneliness is as damaging to health as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. And the antidote isn't elaborate. It isn't curated. It is simply: showing up, sitting down, being present with other people.

The picnic is one of the most powerful delivery mechanisms for that antidote that we have.

And a soggy sandwich, eaten on a Somerset hillside with people you love, delivers it just as effectively as a muffuletta.

Possibly more so. Because nobody is worrying about whether they're eating it correctly.

What I Actually Bring Now

Full transparency: I have evolved.

Not from the soggy sandwich to the muffuletta — but from performance to intention.

There's a version of the beautiful picnic that is exhausting. The one where you spend three hours preparing and then spend the entire afternoon anxious about whether everything looks right and whether anyone noticed the effort and whether the burrata is too warm now and whether you should have brought more of the thing that's run out.

That picnic is not joyful. That picnic is a dinner party that got lost on the way to a field.

And there's a version of the throw-it-together-from-Tesco picnic that is also not quite right — not because the food is wrong, but because it was assembled without any thought, and that lack of intention is felt, even if nobody can name it.

The sweet spot — where I try to live now — is intentional simplicity.

One really good thing. Something local if possible. Something seasonal if you can manage it. Something that shows you thought about it for more than thirty seconds, without requiring you to have thought about it for more than thirty seconds.

For me right now that looks like:

A proper Somerset cheese. Barbers 1833 Vintage Cheddar, if we're being specific. Aged on the Somerset Levels, made by the same family since 1833. Nothing else you could put on a blanket is more rooted in where I live.

Good bread. Bought that morning if possible. This single decision does more for a picnic than any amount of artisan condiments.

Something you didn't make but someone did. A pie from a local butcher. A sausage roll from a farm shop that has actual flake-on-your-jumper pastry. Something that was made by a person, with care, near where you are.

Something cold and lovely to drink. Wraxall sparkling if it's a celebration. Belvoir elderflower if it isn't. A flask of tea if the weather is doing its most British.

A blanket that's actually big enough. This is not food but it matters more than everything above it combined. You cannot gather properly if everyone is perched on the edge of something too small trying not to touch each other.

Is this as photogenic as the muffuletta? Debatable.

Is it delicious? Yes.

Does it require me to have sourced and assembled a Sicilian-style sandwich loaf on a Tuesday morning? Absolutely not.

The Nancy Meyers Caveat

I want to be honest about something else.

I am still, in my heart, the birth child of Nancy Meyers and Ralph Lauren. The Picnicscapes I style — the tablescapes, the linens, the very considered colour palettes — they still bring me enormous joy. The aesthetic still matters to me. Beauty in the ordinary is part of how I see the world.

But I've learned to hold those two things without one cancelling the other.

The beautiful Picnicscape and the soggy sandwich are not in conflict. They are, in fact, the same philosophy expressed at different volumes.

Both are saying: this moment is worth showing up for.

The Picnicscape says it with linen and the right flowers and a considered spread that took some thought.

The soggy sandwich says it by being there at all. By someone saying yes, let's go, it doesn't have to be perfect, let's just go.

The research — Haidt, Murthy, Priya Parker's extraordinary work on the art of gathering — lands consistently in the same place: the quality of the gathering is almost entirely determined by the quality of the presence, not the quality of the spread.

Which is, if you need it, your permission slip.

So What Do the Cool Foodie Women Actually Know?

Everything, honestly. Sophie Wyburd's Tucking In is a genuine joy of a cookbook. Seema Pankhania knows her food. The Stylist piece is warm and useful and I'm not here to disagree with it.

I'm here to add one more thing, from a different angle.

The best thing you can bring to a picnic — better than the muffuletta, better than the Boursin, better even than a Barbers Cheddar and good bread and a blanket big enough for everyone —

is the decision to go.

Not when everything is right. Not when you've found the perfect recipe or sourced the right cheese or ironed the linen or checked the weather for the fourth time.

Now. This weekend. Whoever's available.

Before I start: a warm, enormous thank you to Stylist and to Sophie and Seema for sparking this whole train of thought. Their piece is well worth reading →. It's just that Haidt made me do this.

What's the best picnic you ever had, and what did you eat? Drop it in the comments — I genuinely want to know, and I'm quite sure the food was not the main reason it was the best.

With love (and a blanket), Gemma xx