jayrayner
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Posts posted by jayrayner
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Lesley C: Re famous parents, my understanding was that if you had one you were guaranteed the editorship of a national newspaper at some point. Is this not the case? Please could somebody break it to me gently.
On anonymity, no I do not have my photograph next to the column. They wanted to include one during the latest re-design and I lobbied hard for it not to be included. I've been rumbled only one during a meal (GR @ C, as it happens) and, while most of the places I am likely to review wouldn't recognise me from a by-line pic, I don't really want to take chnaces. I do always book under another name though I also always feel foolish doing so; it seems such an act of gross presumption. Like who would have heard of me anyway?
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Note to self: feign arcane knowledge of something pronto so that finch bloke starts hating reviews.
Just to disappear up my own fundament for a moment...
I've always said that the job of the newspaper restaurant reviewer is to sell papers. Which is another way of saying that the job is not about serving the trade or obsessive foodies. That means appealing to the greatets common denominator vis a vis the subject. Personally I think the only real quality you need is an obsessive interest in and like for restaurants. Lose that and it doesn't matter how much knowledge you have. Your columns will always be shite. Oh yeah. And do a bit of reporting.
I'm not certain yet whether Giles likes restaurants. As in likes them enough to want to waste his spare time battering around with you guys on this bulletin board.
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Is it only me, or has this thread just turned in to a reworking of Cain and Abel?
And then he smote him with a shank of lamb in a redcurrant reduction because the sauce was a little too tart for his liking and the lamb hadn't been braised for long enough and the service was lousy and anyway Abel had chosen the restaurant. And the Lord said unto Cain, where is your brother? And Cain said, am I my brother's feeder? And the Lord said well, looking at the restaurant bills for the last month it does look that way. And do you really only tip 7.5% you tight... (continued page 94)
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As I've said elsewhere my recent return trip to La Trouvaille was also spot on. The pork belly was just as good as I remembered it the last time. A special of scallops gratin was furiously rich and unctuous. Lavender lamb, pretty damn fine. And the bill? I dinno. My publisher paid. (I'm sure it's something Simon does for his authors all the time.) That must be the definition of a good night out.
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Simon, I'm genuinely intrigued. Why do you feel more inclined to ignore what I say about Ramsay than anybody else? (I'm working on the assumption that you start from a position of being genreally inclined to ignore everything I say about everybody.) I have reviewed Ramsay once, at Claridges, and far less than admiringly. indeed, I seem to recall that our views on the place concurred. Let me know my crime so that I may attone.
J
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I hesitate to wade in to any discussion where LML is indulging his obsessions with blumenthal but, for accuracy's sake, I am the restaurant critic for the Observer. Blumenthal writes the food column for the Guardian which is owned by the same company but which is not the same paper. (Though I accept that, on line, the identities become merged.) We have our own food writer, Nigel Slater.
Also, for sake of clarity I do state right at the beginning of the review that, historically, I've always thought highly of Blumenthal's restaurant and often said so. I also said that, depsite this, I had misgivings over the new project. He was not there on the day I went, the staff were not known to me nor I to them and I was not recognised.
Finally Matthew Fort, the Guardian's restaurant critic, and Blumenthal's editor on his column did not review the riverside brasserie. There endeth the lesson.
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Thanks to Steve for his kind comments and, of course, to Andy. If you swallow as well I may just have found my perfect partner.
As has been said here perhaps it might be useful if I knew more about Keller's work but I'm not convinced that it would have helped me write a better piece. Indeed, though I would have found it hard to resist doing so had I known, smartypants comments about these dishes being Keller knockoffs would probably have only irritated the vast majority of the people who read the column. As I, like others here, think it is only natural and healthy for chefs to learn from each other, even import ideas from each other, there would be no sin to report. And as I haven't eaten at the French Laundry - more's the pity - I couldn't do a comparrison job which, in any case would have been irritating for the vast majority of people etc etc.
Instead - and I'm going to blow my own trumpet a bit here - I think I dealt with the point anyway by taking as my theme ambition and the attempt to realise it. In other words I may not have known that the chef at the George was working in the same vein as Keller but I did spot that he was trying some dramatic stuff (which he failed to pull off). So I suppose I'm claiming I did my job. And that's not meant as defensively as it sounds. It's meant about half as defensively.
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Morning all. To be absolutely clear, I didn't say that the dish tasted of snot, only that I have an aversion to tapioca which I think tastes like...
No, I didn't recognise it as a knock off of a keller dish because, sadly, I've yet to visit the French Laundry. While it may have made me look smart to have made the comparrison should I have been in a position to do so, I don't think it's relevant to my opinion on the amuse I tried. (LML will doubtless disagree but like I care). That said, I am interested to know whether, in Keller's hands, this dish works. Maybe I wouldn't like it the way he does it either.
interestingly I now know (knew after I'd written the piece and it had gone to bed but before publication) that one of the other dishes I tried, crab soup on a cold crab jelly, is also a French laundry knock off. Again I didn't think it worked and again, I'd be fascinated to know if Keller can make it work.
Just for background Kevin Mangeolles was one of those who wnet on the Caterer magazine trip to the French laundry. Clearly he came back with a full note book.
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I am, at present, the biter bit. I've been waiting at my desk for the past few days for the editor of the Food Mag to assault me with a freebie packet of carluccios pasta, for slagging off anything in her fine magazine in a public forum. Now that Restaurant magazine is about I shall have to be more circumspect.
Bloody journalists, eh. Thankgod I had previously made my feelings about the feature in question known to the editorex herself.
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Though depressing it is not hugely surprising. This is the most likely time for restaurants to go bust. Any place which found itslef in trouble towards the end of last year would have held on in the hope that the xmas rush would get them through. It would be now, in the dead calm of January-February, that serious financial problems would start to take a toll, particularly in whatever form of recession this seems to be. Personally I would expect to see a few more big names hit the wall before the end of March.
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Neat London, the combined brasserie and gastronomique operation in the Oxo Tower, has closed. A mark of recession or quality?
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I'm about to write this one up for around ten days time so I'll punt it here first: Lightship ten, in St Katherine's Dock. I am not normally a fan of these concept places but this one is stunning. A creaking old, 19th century lightship with a truly delicious dining room in thick old wood moored on a gentle swell and food that is really rather good if unsurprising, in a modish French sort of a way. My wife who, being a restaurant reviewer's mole is rather jaded with life, swooned at the glorious isolation of it all. It's been open a month.
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Forgive the ommissions. I wasn't faxed the back end of the alphabet which also included Scotland and Wales and have only just received it.
As to statistics
*** 2 no change
** 13 no change
* 97 +9
Bib gourmand 107 -19
According to the hype sheet there are more *stars than ever before and 11 new pubs on the list
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Well, here are the headlines
Fat Duck goes up to two stars
Petrus stays on one (why? why?)
London
Foliage gets its one star
Club Gascon gets one
Nahm gets one (why? why?)
The glasshouse gets one
cheznico gets one
Elsewhere
Midsummer House, Cambridge gets one
Longueville Manor, Jersey gets one
The Star Inn, Helmsley gets one
Guellers, Leeds gets one
The Castle, taunton gets one
Walnut tree inn gets one
Amaryllis gets one
That's about it. Almost all the deletions are restaurants that have closed or moved elsewhere. THere are also relocations that carried stars with them (Martin Blunos has his two stars at Blinis, after closing Lettonie for example.)
No new three stars, so I look an arse over the Caines thing.
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I'm not going to say much, apart from a short post here and in general, but Simon's maths is spot on. I made the point in the piece that it was only one member of the party who wnated to go off menu. Sure, if ten poeple came in and attempted to throw the menu out the window then it would be a different matter. THis is a question of degree.
Anyway Simon, I hope you do/did have a great meal.
Jay
PS. Oh, and BTW, you and I agree on loads of things (La Trouvaille, Conrad Gallagher, etc etc). You just can't bring yourself to admit it.
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just for accuracy's sake, Anthony could not review my 'next zionist romp' because my last book was not a zionist romp. It was about Jews in Britain which is a rather different thing. My next book - my first non-fiction - is also not a zionist romp: it's about a plane that disappeared in the Andes in 1947.
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Sorry if it's not clear. I simply mean that he's a restaurant chef. The introduction describes him deciding to leave the kitchen at Les Halles to make the trip. Should ahve made it clearer. Unfortunately it's now gone to bed for publication tomorrow.
Jay
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As this review appears in the Observer in about 48 hours time and as I think it's going to take a bit of a cut I thought I'd post the whole thing here. As ever with a review it's just one guy's opinion.
A Cook’s Tour
by Anthony Bourdain
Published by Bloomsbury, price £16.99
274pgs, hb.
In his latest book the New York chef Anthony Bourdain travels the world in search of the perfect meal, meets lots of interesting people and gets grotesquely drunk with them. As with any account of drunkenness in which you were not involved it can be terribly tedious. Around page 100, when he arrives in Morocco, there is finally cause for a deep sigh of a relief. At least here, in an Islamic country (however moderately Islamic it may be), the opportunities for hitting the bottle must be limited. No problem. Bourdain simply sends out a lackey to score some hashish for him and then gets monstrously stoned instead.
It’s all a terrible disappointment. Bourdain’s previous book, Kitchen Confidential, was a remarkably assured and funky description of what life was like back stage in restaurant kitchens. His vivid, testosterone-sodden style, suited his subject matter. He was able to take on the role of spokesman for a sub-culture not known for its articulacy. That book only stuttered and stumbled when, running out of material about the gonzo furies of kitchen living, he began writing about his life outside it. This book is almost entirely about his life outside it.
It might have worked were Bourdain himself not so terribly unconvinced about the project. In the introduction he announces simply ‘I needed something to do. I needed another idea for a book - preferably while I was still in good odour from the last one.’ Well yes, that is indeed how publishing works, but at least have the grace to finesse it a bit. Try to pretend that you want us to be interested, not that you are merely trying to fulfil a contractual obligation. He then compounds the insult by announcing, two pages later, that he agreed to have his entire travelogue filmed by the US television’s Food Network in a deal which both publishers and TV people agreed would be good for sales, if not for the authenticity of the trip.
Or, as he himself puts it ‘I sold my ass. When I signed on the dotted line, any pretence of virginity or reluctance - of integrity (I don’t even remember what that is) - vanished.’ I know why I read beyond that line. I was being paid to do so. There is no good reason why any other reader should bother to do so. The rest of the book is punctuated by morose and thoroughly tedious diatribes about how awful it is being Anthony Bourdain and, especially, Anthony Bourdain being followed by a television crew. Maybe that’s why he felt the need to get so pissed.
The tragedy is that, buried here beneath the accounts of inebriation and self-hate and depression, there is some very good stuff. Bourdain understands, better than any chef need, that great meals are not about the food on the plate, or the service - although those things do matter - but about the moment. It is a curious alchemy of location and emotion and incident. His account of the slaughtering of a pig on a family farm where, pace John Berger, every scrap of the beast is used - intestine small and large, liver and heart, even the bladder which is inflated to make a child’s toy - is pungent and rich with the smell of the land on which it lived. Here he is happy and it shows in the prose. Likewise, hopping between stalls in Vietnam grazing on street food, he is at peace.
But for all the efforts he is willing to make in pursuit of the great meal - he goes into the Cambodian jungle and across the Moroccan deserts; he eats a geriatric iguana, the still beating heart of a Cobra and a sheep’s enormous, roasted testicle - he is actually happiest right back where he began, in top class restaurants. His most reverential, gilded praise is reserved for dinner at Arzak, the great Michelin ranked joint in Basque country, and for the 20 course affair he enjoyed at the French Laundry in California’s Napa Valley, which is now regarded as one of the very best restaurants in the world. ‘It was far and away, the most impressive restaurant meal I’d ever had,’ he says simply. Bourdain is a man with a hunger for hyperbole.
That said the French Laundry is not his favourite restaurant in the world. His favourite restaurant is not in Ho Chi Minh City or Phnom Penh. It is not in Fez or San Sebastian or San Francisco or Saint Petersburg. It is - pause for moment of National Pride - in London. Bourdain’s favourite restaurant, it transpires, is St. John, the nose to tail, offal-fixated, meat-eaters heaven no more than a five minute stroll from the offices where this newspaper is produced. Now I like St. John. No I would go further than that. I love St. John. I think Fergus Henderson is a brilliant chef and his food, beautifully thought out. But I suppose I hoped that, having travelled the world, and eaten in some of the darkest most shadowed corners that it has to offer, Bourdain might have had something a little more exotic than that to offer as a top tip. Like so much of this book, it is a big let down.
ends
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Andy - impressive on picking Angela (Hartnett). How the #### did you hear about her? Sergant and that bloke from amaryllis were the other two who could have been in but weren't. The third is Jason Atherton, also now part of the Dubai operation, previoiulsy at l'anis doing a great job on limited resources etc.
Simon - your descripton of GR at Claridges sounds appalling and yr right; they don't deserve to survive if that's what happens. I reviewed on the first official night, and yes GR was in attendance entertaining Meades. I was eventually rumbled too (they have a bar man called Said, brought over from Petrus, who has the memory of a mountain goat, #### him); given that they had worked out who I was and what I was doing there the fact that the overall result was not great - and I said so in my review - I think speaks volumes.
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Andy
I think your comments on GR trying to replicate what Marco has done are a little unfair. Marco has collected restaurants. Ramsay is collecting chefs. It is fair to separate Petrus out on grounds of food and I agree that Wareing's food is distinctive, but the retsaurant is Ramsay's doing. He made that happen and promoted the talent to allow it to happen. My feeling is that, in the long run, his strategy will pay dividends. THis is not all just guess work on my part. I've recently finished work on a large fetaure for the January issue of the magazine everybody love's to hate (OFM) in which we punt seven chefs to watch. It's hardly a new exercise, but fun to do. Of the seven, three - including Wareing - are from Ramsay's organisation and I really think I could have inculded two more. None were from Marco's. The only one I could name is Robert Reed and for various reasons I couldn't include him. Marco controls 11 restaurants I think, and to have so little buzz around his brigades is, well, odd.
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Rules is one of those places that divides people. Having been there for 203 years it is bound to trade on its history and a bit of that does go on. It has also brought in a couple of unfortunate innovations. A laminated menu is one; electronic waiters' notepads are another. But, all that aside, I believe the fundementals are still more than there. THe chef, David Chambers, knows what he is doing and I doubt there is anywhere better for game in London. THe main course dishes for two are particularly good.
Mind you, I would have to say all this, as two weeks ago a piece of mine was published in a newspaper here extolling its virtues. THe link is posted in here:
http://www.observer.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,9950,568739,00.html
Now let's see what others think
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THis is the list that I keep on my computer for myself. I've not cleaned it up, so forgive typos, unintelligible stuff. It's a date, followed by restaurant name (sometimes in shorthand) followed by place and style. This covers only the last calendar year. (Also does not include two out of London that I did for Waitrose Food illustrated, Champgnon Sauvage and Lords of the Manor)
23/10/00 Edgwaregury Elstree/Provincial
26/10/00 Six-13 London/Kosher
13/11/00 Rules London/Game£110
20/11/00 Petit Robert borugh/french£92
27/11/00 FitzHenry Edinburgh/bistro £77
28/11/00 Vovlona and Crolla Edinburgh/Itlaian £30
02/12/00 Castle Taunton/blah£167
11/12/00 Ubon Japanese/London
28/12/00 Gastro London/French
9/1/01 Heathers Deptford/Vegetarian
15/1/01 Tuscan Steak London/Italian
5/2/01 Trevi Italian/London
12/2/01 Cigala Spanish/London
20/2/01 Movenpick Bleah/London
26/2/01 Kitchen rotisserie/London
5/3/01 Aurora bistro/London
15/3/01 Neon Italian/London
16/3/01 Noto Sushi Japanese/colindale
26/03/01 Lanesborough grand/London
30/3/01 Great House Suffolk/french
8/4/01 Corinthian weird/Glasgow
9/4/01 Well View Dumfrieshire/homely
15/4/01 Wlater de cantelupe Worcester/pub
24/4/01 Cinnamon Club Indian/London
8/5/01 Connaught french/London
15/5/01 12th House bistro/london
22/5/01 Eagle&child Stow/bistro
29/5/01 Hakassan chinese/London
3/6/01 Rebato’s Tapas/London
12/06/01 Neat grand/london
18/06/01 Black Bull Thai/Kent
3/7/01 Namh Thai/London
10/7/01 The Fox ?/London
15/7/01 Loch Fyne fish/Hampshire
17/7/01 La Trouvaille French/London
28/7/01 Walpole Arms eclectic/Norfolk
3/8/01 Babylon horrid/london
7/8/01 gallagher pointless/london
20/8/01 Chruchill Arms pub/Gloucetsrhire
3/9/01 Hotel du vin bistro/bristol
5/9/01 Provideores eclectic/london
12/9/01 Eyre Bros spanish/London
18/9/01 red house bistro/hampshire
22/9/01 west street bistro/Lonodn
08/10/01 Rodos Greek/London
15/10/01 Pacific Edge Romford/Urgh
18/10/01 Afghan Kitchen Afghan/London
* = invoiced
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On women reviewers - you're perceiving a gorss imbalance where, in reality it is less pronounced.
So women reviewers:
Fay Maschler London Evening Standard
Caroline Stacey Independent
Jan Moir Telegraph (Took over from Alice Thompason)
Marrion McGillervray (v good) Financial Times
Kate Flett did indeed do the job on the observer befor eme. Tracey McCloud did or may still do some for the Independent titles.
I'm sure there are others I've forgotten. Hope that helps. I'm posting my restaurant list separate to this.
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I think this is going to be a long one.
Yes, too many national newspaper reviews are in London. I have an explanation (though not an excuse) for my record: when I was offered the job it was on the understanding, from both sides, that I would continue to contribute to other parts of the paper. I was, in short, to remain a feature writer/ invetsigative reporter and that I have done. Most of the other national restaurant critics do only that or one other thing. It was understood that this would not be the case with me, and that was accepted, by the paper if not by the readers.
I've just checked back and my record is so-so. In the past six months just under 40% of my reviews have been out of London, up from 30% in the previous six months. Some of those came from Scotland but, other than that, there was a depressing lack of any coverage from north of Birmingham to berwick. So, while I don't think I'm doing badly, there's a long way to go. (I could post the list of restaurants I've done in the past year if anybody's interested.)
But, to the other points you raise: are 95% of the best new restaurants in london? No. I'd guess it was around 80%. Maybe 75% at a push. Seriously.
Are all the best restaurant PRs in London? As far as I'm concerned there is only one good restaurant PR, but we won't go into that. Certainly the London operations are far better at keeping me posted. The balance in my propoganda pile is about 80% London, 20% others. When I want to decide where to go in London, I open the window and listen to the buzz from the streets; when I'm trying to decide where to go outside London, I pick up the guide books.
Re restaurant critics, I suspect most of us do live in London. The only one I know who doesn't is Matthew Fort, who now lives in Gloucestershire. But even he sees fit to come back to the capital an awful a lot. (THough he is also very good at reporting the rest of the country. I guess he scores about 50 - 50.)
And so to the content of those reviews. I am pleased to see Steven's comments about the british being better writers because I think it's true. However I do bow before the quality of US journalism generally. It is, for the most part much, much better, if somewhat duller. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is economies of scale. A succesful publication in the US has a readership in proprtion to the country's population. It's much much bigger which means that when a publication is succseful it is much more profitable. The New York Times, the Washington POst et al have more money to play with and can give their writers more time. THat means more detailed work, more trips to restaurants and - because they don't give a toss whether their publications are well designed or not - generally more space.
There is also a more wide ranging issue to do with the level of intellectual debate in the US. I hope we won't get diverted down this route because I really don't wnat to get us off the subject but... In Britain we receive a charicatured view of the US, culled from the coasts which doesn't really reflect the literacy of the nation as a whole. Springer and OPrah, Hollywood trash and the National Enquirer are only a part of the story. For the most part the US is far more willing to read serious, lenghty stuff than we are here. We have two or three political magazines, selling no more than 40- 50,000 each. they have the New Yorker, selling a million, Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, New Republic and on and on. They are prepared to read 10,000 to 15,000 word peices of journalism. in Britain that sort of stuff does not exist, sadly. I wish that it did as I'm paid by the word.
All that said I am not a massive fan of the US approach to restaurants. Most punters do a restaurant in one hit and the restaurant has the responsibility to get it right in one hit. I think it's fair for a critic to approach it in the same way. On the 'why can't food be taken as seriously as art' question, I think they appeal to different types of readers. the people who read the art columns in newspapers tend to be specifically interested in art. the people who read restaurant columns sometimes go out to dinner. that argument will never satisfy those who contribute to this site but, based on my post bag/email inbox, I think it's true.
As I've said before my job is to sell newspaper and the way to do that is by writing an interesting column. I think it should always be about restaurants (unlike, say, AA Gill who can sometimes whitter on about something else entirely for 1450 words.) When deciding where to go I don't generally look for the most interesting or new restaurant. I look for the subject which will make the best column; that will sometimes (even often) be the most interesting or new restaurant.
Hope this makes some sense
Restaurant reviews
in United Kingdom & Ireland: Dining
Posted
As you'll see there is an element of food writers eating each other, so to speak.
Here's what I wrote:
<>
So yes, I did write this. And do I have a problem with it? Absolutely not. There are so many mediocre Chinese retsaurants in chinatown that the good ones - and yming is a good one - need to mark out their territory. i genuinely do love the place so I don't mind anyone quoting me as saying so. BTW I didn't know the other food writers were Meades and Fort.