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jayrayner

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Everything posted by jayrayner

  1. I am actually a five foot nothing brunette called Tabitha.
  2. You do know Heston isn't involved any more? Is it even still operating?
  3. I don't have much to add save that, as many people have said, this is an open forum and I credited the site as my source. I too am pleased to see the drop in price which makes a lot of sense. I will be adding a short para to a fortchomign review to report this. It will appear Sunday week. The text on the web site does still need some work, and perhaps they might just like to clarify the section on Simon's experience to make it clear that he was head chef at the Riverside Brasserie rather than the Fat Duck just to avoid any confusion.
  4. I do believe we ran the entire statement.
  5. There is a noble tradition of cooking on car engines as this fine book proves: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Manifold-Destiny-G...ie=UTF8&s=books sorry. Still haven't worked out how to do bloody hyperlinks.
  6. As this is the last of the four part serial I want to take the opportunity to thank Maggie and Dave of the Daily Gullet for doing such a fantastic job with these excerpts. It’s been intriguing to see the book roll out in this way, and better still to read the thoughts of others Anybody interested in how the writing process impacted upon my eating habits might like to have a look at this piece from yesterday’s Observer. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly...2017508,00.html (Apologies for just posting the url. I've spent ten minutes trying to make the hyper-link thing work and failed dismally. Any mods who want to do it for me are most welcome) Obviously I’m still around to answer any questions but for the moment, once again, thank you.
  7. Totally with you on the problems of reading extended text on screen. The e-book has had so many false dawns and yet morning has never come. Why? Because the old-fashioned book - paper, covers, binding - is an extraordinarily efficient tool for the job it is called upon to do. You are absolutely right, of course. It is valid. What troubles me is that it seems to have become the default; that if food is deployed in the text it has to be used in that way. And the problem is that the more often it is used in this way, by a growing number of writers, the less likely it is that it will be succesful. In short maybe my concern is not with the use of food as a metaphor for sensuality per se but that there are a lot of crappy writers out there using food as a metaphor for sensuality. (slip inside these parentheses for a moment: I am aware that, in making bald and critical statements like this, I leave myself open for the accusation that I'm not too hot at the whole business myself. I regard that as, literally, an occupational hazard.) Anyway, let's open this up a little. Food in fiction: would anybody like to nominate favourite scenes, passages or whole books? What works for you?
  8. I'll join in Karen. It's almost too obvious an observation but one of the pleasures of a site like this, is the opportunity to get instant feeback on a piece of work like the Oyster Hosue Siege. After the better part of two years locked away with this novel I was hoping I might get the chance to talk some of it over, so thank you for providing me with that. Obviously I'm with you, where food writing as recipes and pictures is concerned. I think you can do a lot more with it. Personally, though, I avoid notions of metaphor. Indeed one of my pet hates is fiction - or even non-fiction - which uses food as a metaphor for sensuality; which softens the edges of the gnarled old peasant because of the lunch she puts on the table, or makes the dark browed silent guy suddenly sexy because he does fabulous things with chocolate. Too much food writing tries to reach for the metaphysical, as an excuse for gluttony. In my experience from standing in too many kitchens, and hanging out with too many hard core chefs, for many of them - for many of you - food is about control. It is about feeling in charge of the zone and forcing the ingredients to comply with your demands. And that, really, is what lies at the heart of this book. It is about chaos - both of the siege and the men who cause it - and an attempt to enforce order upon it. You'll have to take my word on this until you receive your copy because so far this site has run only about 6,000 words of a 100,000 word story. In short the major themes are yet to develop. Above all though, it will only work if it functions well as a thriller, regardless of whether it appeals to those with an interest in food. Whether it does so or not will be for readers to decide.
  9. Matthew, you are such a tease. It is, as Matthew knows full well, Alexander's at Limpsfield. Before anyone asks, no previews here.
  10. I admit exactly that in a forthcoming review of yet another place mentioned here. Mind you the crowd here does get aroud a bit so there is going to be some crossover from time to time.
  11. A professional eater writes... on three occasions during my tenure in the critic's chair, I ahve suspected my companion - happily never me - may have been poisoned. I couldn't prove it because to do so would have required tracing the bug from the kitchen, on to the plate, into the victim and out again. So I was, legally, not able to mention it. Plus... looking closely at the issue as I had cause to do, it became clear that the symptoms of food poisoning do not make themselves felt within an hour or two of the meal. It takes a few hours longer. In short, I'm with Tim. I suspect you got hit with the awful bug that laid low my father and many of my colleagues last week. It is, I know, a dreadful experience. But it's almost certainly not the scallop's fault.
  12. Mr Andrews is just that kind of man.
  13. I would be exceptionally surprised if it still were. It is standard practise for reviews in these circumstances to be taken down pronto by the legal people.
  14. Would be great if someone could merge the two topics here. I'll throw in my thruppence worth. Obviously without being able to see the review, now that it has been ruled defamatory, we can't comment on the specifics of the case. But Nathan has laid out the basic law. The laws of libel apply as equally to the restaurant critic as they do to the court reporter. So I assume there was something in the review which could proven not to be true. An example: if you say the soup came from a packet and it didn't, you could be sued for libel. The rather obtuse formulation I once used to get round this was along the lines of 'the soup tasted like it had come from a packet, which is an achievement given they had made it themselves from scratch'. If the jury found in favour of the plaintiffs, despite there being no issue of veracity, then I imagine the Irish News will be granted the right to appeal, and the case will start the merry dance upwards. It's what happens there that becomes interesting. Appeal court judges do, of course, have the power to overturn a verdict if it is deemed wrong on a point of law. For the moment we must assume this verdict was correct. Will it change the way British restaurant critics behave? Unless the media lawyers are exceptionally twitchy, I should think not. As long as what we write is either true or fair comment - or both - then it's business as usual.
  15. Nice to hear that Catherine. Just in case anybody is confused she's referring to The Apologist, which is my previous novel. ← Glad to have that cleared up, I thought she was comparing you to Plato for a moment there. ← It is possible to compare me to Plato, just not in a good way.
  16. Nice to hear that Catherine. Just in case anybody is confused she's referring to The Apologist, which is my previous novel.
  17. This one I can reply to. Glad you're enjoying it. The plan is to serialise the first eight chapters over four weeks. You've had one. Three more to go. It is, I should say, interesting to see a novel I've been working on for two years receive its first publication in this way. The novel in serial form, which was such a given in Dickens' day, has rather gone out of fashion. We are, I think, revising a noble tradition.
  18. I would agree with everybody here. Your prices are way over the top. I don't care how many stars some of your brigade once had. At the moment you have none. Egullet is offering you a serious opportunity here. Take their advice. Slice 30% off those prices. Drop some luxury ingredients if needs be. Ease back on the number of staff needed to execute it. Make your point through consistency and proficiency and start adding the bells and whistles as you get the customers. IF i was to come to your place and, at those prices, found a single fault, I would put you over the spit and bbq you. Nothing personal; it's business.
  19. Obviously, having read Bakerestates' post, it's clear that a review from me is worthless (I mean really... why do I bother getting on the train?). Then again he does live in a part of the country where a copy of the Observer brings people out in hives. Enough of this. Send a letter to each of the national restaurant critics, and a copy of the menu. Do not offer free meals. We don't need them and (generally) do not want them. Do not offer to make a booking for us. We make our own under pseudonyms. Just explain who you are, where you've been before and what makes your restaurant note worthy. Remember, we are not simply looking for a restaurant to review. We are looking for something to write about. Anything which makes you different should be in there. Finally, hand write the envelope. We will open it first. Really we are that sad. We receive so many mail shots - 40 or 50 in a slow week - that something which looks personal will make us salivate like Pavlov's hound. All that aside, Claire is right. Get the business working first. Drag in the punters. Build as much business as you can. And then try to get us there.
  20. THe second floor restaurant at L'atelier in London looks like it might have once been a toilet.
  21. Please don't underestimate what I mean by this. I was writing something about Joel Robuchon recently (part of a book) in which I argued that the mark of his greatness was the fact that he had changed the way chefs looked at, thought about and made something as basic as mashed potato. THere are any number of chefs who have created great individual dishes, who have pioneered new flavour pairings and methods - Heston Blumenthal among them, and much more often than most. But very few have managed to change something as basic as Robuchon did. Blumenthal has also, to my mind, done exactly the same with the humble chip. his triple cooked chip is now, like the name of the Glasgow restaurant, ubiquitous. I see it on menus everywhere. That seems to me to be the mark of a truly great chef, and his one truly great contribution to British gastronomy so far.
  22. regardless of what the guides say, I would find it hard to imagine how you could run up a bill of £50 at Yauatcha, unless you went for some of the premium dishes and raided the wine list - and I'm hardly a man of small appetites. I can think of no other michelin starred joint in London where you could eat properly - four plates dim sum each, say - and come out with a bill of £50 for two. More to the point, this is what I've done on a number of occasions. Then again maybe I've not been trying hard enough
  23. The cheapest michelin starred restaurant in London has to be Yauatcha, surely?
  24. We do it specifically to piss off all of you.
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