On the strength of "Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery"—and a subsequent lunch—David recommended Grigson to "The Observer" as their food writer; Grigson began her weekly column with the paper the following year. For her first article she wrote about strawberries, but was unsure of how to approach the topic. Her husband suggested "we'll find out what the strawberry has meant to people, what they have done to it, how they have developed it and so on". She used the same approach for most of her future columns.