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jayrayner

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Everything posted by jayrayner

  1. For what it's worth, Wackychefs call on Hibiscus was spot on. Don't know any others. Press release at noon. Something on the Word of Mouth blog (I hope) within 30 mins of that.
  2. You wouldn't go out of your way to eat at thestaratharome? You're mad sir/madam. For a start, you'd never get there if you didn't go out of your way. ← Sorry, I did not mean to include the Star in that bracket as I think they are closer to the Sportsman, I was meaning more Ramsey/Gun/Rosendale. I have not been to the Star for about 10 years where as the others are more recent. ← The distance betweeb what Harris is doing at the Sportsman and what is being served up at the Rosendale should be measured in light years. I would say there is no comparrison but obviously there is. By comparrison to the Sportsman the Rosendale is completly hum drum and workaday.
  3. Just to weigh in with a tiny point (it's safer commenting here than over on my own newspaper's website, where they are lining up with the pitchforks) I did specifically say that what was more important than how the chiken was raised was whether it ended up in the deep fat fryer at the end. My argument was not a 'it's their culture let em got on with it' one; it was about price point and the availability of raw materials which are, if truth be told, nowhere near as substandard as us foodie-heads would like to believe. I'm rather keen on education as it happens.
  4. I will be opining on this on the comment pages of the Observer tomorrow, in a manner which I suspect will encourage howls of outrage. All in a day's work.
  5. Wasn't sitting at the table with you so can't comment on what you saw or heard, save to say as a judge on the semis of both this series, and the forthcoming sleb version, that was in no way my experience. At no point were we told what to say by producers and, as I think you can imagine, I wouldn't have hung around for long if they had attempted that.
  6. I think she meant the £48 lunch menu, including half a bottle of good wine, half a bottle of water, coffee and petits fours per head. It is v good value, even if the food is slightly less than the grand opera of dinner... j
  7. I'll let Sophie off the hook. She was with me and I was there to write about it for my new book, published next April. And I second everything she says. I thought it was a delight in every way - but forgive me if I say little more. I owe it to my publishers to keep my powder dry. After all they are the ones paying me.
  8. Happily the search for a companion is now over. Thank you one and all.
  9. I need your help. On Friday I go to Paris to research the last chapter of a book I've been working on about the globalisation of high end restaurants. In Paris I am eating in seven three stars in seven days. think of it as the high end supersize me, except here it's when they offer the tasting menu that I have to say yes. The trip was meticulously planned, with companions coming out to Paris for each lunch. Then, yesterday one of them dropped out on me. (damn you, Angela Hartnett.) I have a table for two at L'astrance, booked for 12.30pm, next Tuesday September 11 and I need a companion. let me be clear. I am not, sadly, offering to buy you lunch in a Paris three star. I am merely offering you the excuse/ opportunity to have lunch at a three star in Paris. The pool of takers will be small given that this will probably set you back the best part of £250. Still the offer is a genuine one. I need someone to fill that seat. Please PM me if you're interested or have any questions. Thanks Jay
  10. I'm with the positives. It was thrilling to see Marco out there, as I've just said here http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/food/2007/09/m..._mark.html#more
  11. It's a very nice restaurant, the sort anybody would want on their doorstep. But romantic? Nah, not really.
  12. Given the discussions about this restaurant here on egullet, I thought this post from the Observer's food blog might be of interest. I also hope it doesn't fall foul of the moderator police. http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/food/2007/07/b..._chef.html#more
  13. I know. It was masterful wasn't it. Mind you, while people here hardly needed to strain to work out which one it was, not a single person who put themselves forward clocked it. They all assumed it was 15 or part of the Padstein group. Actually Nathan himself didn't know either. Said he wasn't aware till he clocked me in the bar. Hey ho.
  14. It's written with a knife and fork, and the features are staggeringly predictable. I wish it all the best.
  15. Maybe the critic should be the person trusted by the editor to write an entertaining column which, in turn, he believes will help sell the most newspapers week in week out. BUt if you chaps don't like that version we'll stick with Daniel's. I'm sure you'll find it much more convincing.
  16. You call that expensive? Pelaccio is the consultant chef on a new London restaurant, Suka. Our bill for two with less than a bottle of wine was £168, or (at present exchange rate) $330. What bothers me is that the food you guys describe looks v enticing and perhaps at the sort of prices you are paying in NY I'd like it, particularly stripped of the sillyness at Suka. But at this sort of cost it's outrageous. It strikes me that Pelaccio may have been led astray by Chodorow, who has told him that Londoner's will swallow this whole. But here I am simple repeating myself. Here's a link to my review that appeared in yesterday's (London) Observer: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/st...2065858,00.html
  17. big pr yes, Heston'spr, no. that's now lotus
  18. In the context of what New York offers as opposed to London, its significant, although arguably not significant per se. This piece is from New York magazine remember. ← I see, so for New Yorkers a food city is assessed according to how New York like it is. Begs the question, rather. ← You have it in one.
  19. I would say the slip-ups are pretty minor for a piece of this sort and that, in the main, he's nailed it.
  20. Adam Platt, restaurant critic for New York Magazine, was over a few weeks back for a whistle stop tour. I take some responsibility for his itinerary, but not the fact that he ordered pig's head and bone marrow everywhere he went. http://nymag.com/guides/london/29444/
  21. 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.
  22. You're not from around these parts are you. Obviously there are publications which take freebies, but none of them have any credibility. In Britain, the dozen or so critics for the nationals (and major regionals) pay for all the meals they review.
  23. A student of logic might point out that, while celebrity and anonymity are incompatible, lack of anonymity does not make you a celebrity. As to the question, most of us who do the job are essentially freelance. We have newspaper contracts, but we also write books and do television. In short marketing ourselves is what we do - but far more important than an inch by inch pic is the quality of the copy. If the column's crap, if nobody wants to read it or pays attention to anything we say, we won't be getting work anywhere regardless of how big and lovely a photograph of our gorgeous selves appears alongside it.
  24. For a number of years I didn't have a picture by-line for the obvious reasons of anonymity. A year ago, however, when the paper redesigned the magazine was keen for me to have one on the page like everyone else. By that point my picture had been published elsewhere so regularly, usually in the service of book publicity, that I couldn't really argue. As it happens I don't look a whole lot like the current pic. As to your wider question - why so many picture bylines - it is down to a major shift in the way newspapers view and sell themselves. The age of the paper copy of the newspaper as provider of first-stop news has all but gone. I get the headlines of the day via electronic media now - radio in my case, followed by going online - and that is true of much of the population. The newspaper therefore has to redefine its role: not as news provider, per se, but as commentator, critic, sounding-board. These days I doubt anybody buys a newspaper because it's first with the news. They buy it because they like it's tone of voice, the way it speaks to them. The business understands this and, as part of the repositioning, has leaned ever more towards the building up of its writers as names, personalities you buy the paper for. And what better way to do that than by giving a face to the faceless? You may chunter about how silly this is, but all our research indicates this works. There are people who buy the Observer specifically to read Nigel Slater or Andrew Rawnsley, Lynn Barber or Kathryn Flett. We are, more than anything, responding to the age of the net when established old media companies can no longer be monolithic. THis site is a perfect example of the challenge we face. I can't imagine anybody who visits this site regularly really feels they know less about restaurants or are less entitled to hold an opinion about them than me, simply because I write about them for a national newspaper. If I am read, therefore it is, I suppose because of the way I write about them, the approach I use, the expression of personality, rather than for any implied authority I might or might not have. In short your own (probably low) opinion of national newspaper restaurant critics is exactly why they have picture bylines.
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