Zoticus

Why are sushi, Mexican and pizza significant to an assessment of London as a gastronomic city anyway?

Simpsons in the Strand does the 'Ten Deadly Sins', which is pretty hard to beat.

It's debatable whether the 'dozen or so critics' you mention have any credibility either. ← Indeed it is debatable. The same bloody debate has been going on here for years. ← Not surprising.

It's debatable whether the 'dozen or so critics' you mention have any credibility either.

A student of logic might point out that, while celebrity and anonymity are incompatible, lack of anonymity does not make you a celebrity. ← A student of logic would also point that although not a sufficient condition, lack of anonymity is a necessary condition for celebrity. Anyway, I'm not having a dig. I think celebrity is the newspapers' logical answer to the user generated content available on the web. The one thing the web as yet does not do, is have Clive Owen testing toasters, or Anne Robinson talking about the contents of her fridge. As long as the newspapers can continue to do this, then they will have something that is both demonstrably in demand, and that their competitors on the web do not have. It follows from this that it is in the interests of newspapers to develop a stable of individuals who can both write, and have some kind of celebrity status.

How would you respond to the claim that, since anonymity and celebrity seem to be incompatible, by including photos some restaurant critics are attempting to create a more marketable identity for themselves?

Just had a look at Companies House re: ownership of The Riverside Brasserie, yes HB is not involved, it belongs to Garrey Dawson, Lee Dixon et al (Alexander's of Limpsfield thread). Also noticed that HB and wife resigned from all directorships of FD and Hinds Head and all subsidiary companies as of 11/'06.

Walking.

Don't worry Simon, no one reads the Observer anyway.

Point taken, I hadn't watched the other ones. Still, they all seem a bit a contrived in that faux reportage style of infomercials. They wouldn't be out of place on the Home Shopping Channel.

i watched this last night, can't see why it provoked such a strong reaction. tony said he wanted to do something different other than the usual 'here's me in my kitchen plating a dish' scenario and i think they certainly achieved that. ← Obviously, the 'here's me in my kitchen plating a dish' scenario would have been out of place considering that this is a commercial for Audi. The whole thing seemed uncomfortably contrived, and could only have been surprising to those who hadn't realized that car engines get hot. Somewhat worryingly, this group included Guardian Science Correspondent Alok Jha.

Agreed. Who the hell are these people and why are on earth are they reviewing restaurants? What's wrong with peer-reviewing? Everyone would be better off if Shaun Hill, Nico Ladenis, Pierre Koffman etc. were reviewing restaurants instead of these awful fucking luvvies.

Yes! It's now £115. (Could HB have got a tip-off? It's not long until Restaurant Magazine publish their 50 Best. Perhaps he's number one again)

Okay Scott, no need to be insulting. I see, so you were merely regurgitating a few cliches, and didn't expect to be called on them. So why didn't you say so in the first place?

What do you mean by 'artist'? What exactly did MPW do with food that was artistically great? ← you missed the point. the key is the difference between the creative and the technical. passion, creativity, inspiration - the things that the technician doesn't have. ← No, I understood the point. I was challenging you on the evidence for you claim; i.e. is there any?

What do you mean by 'artist'? What exactly did MPW do with food that was artistically great?

Are you implying that food moving on amounts to improvement? I would argue that good food has a few constant qualities and that a good chef understands these whatever the gastronomic zeitgeist. If anything, haute cuisine was in a healthier state when MPW was still cooking. It was sophisticated and elitist, but as far I'm concerned that's vastly preferable to predominance of pop-rocks, tabletop crib-sheets on how to enjoy what you're eating, and the general attractions that techno-food has to the psychologically immature.

If you ask for advice you should expect advice. If all you wanted was merely confirmation of your own pre-existng beliefs, then that's what you should have requested. As far as I can tell, most of the advice on this thread has been constructive, even if it isn't always what you wanted to hear.

There are thousands of places like Rafa's all over Spain, they're the reason Spain has such an enviable food culture. The sad thing is the gastronomic insecurity of so many people who are incapable of realizing these places are good without an Adria to direct them.

I think you have your answer. The whole sweetshop thing is sickly in conception and is probably based on a delusional memory brought forth from a particularly intense NLP session. For a start, we don't have, and didn't have, sweetshops in the UK, we have newsagents, which don't smell of anything one would particularly wish to put in one's mouth. Sounds to me like a displacement activity for actual cooking.

Yes, a sort of 'molecular yardie'.

Like everything else, Heston has his own way of dealing with critics.

Is that a waft of snobbery drifiting across from table three? I think that poster was merely rather clumsily making the fair point about not shovelling seasoning on until you have tasted first. Elementary perhaps, but ... ← No, I just found it funny. ← Laughing at others' social ineptitude is snobbish. I found it funny, so I must be a snob too.

Even if it isn't "true or fair comment - or both", the phenomenal costs involved in pursuing a libel suit, and the financial disparity between media corporations and small businesses should continue to ensure that restaurateurs remain one of the few communities about which one can publicly say whatever one likes.

How about those that try to drive their ratings up, surely that's an equally pressing problem?