Restaurant reviews

[Tonyfinch]

In today's Independent on Sunday, Janet Street-Porter uses an obviously completely contrived spat between Gordon Ramsay and Terence Conran as an excuse to "review" The Orrery and GR@RHR.

Her reviews are utterly without any style or interest save for one very nasty comment that her fellow diners at The Orrery were "thoroughly dreary" and that "they looked like a load of ear,nose and throat consultants from the London Clinic out with their wives"

What does one make of such a remark? Do reviewers labour under the impression that it's the job of fellow diners to entertain them? What have ear,nose and throat consultants (or their wives) ever done to Janet Street Porter?

One can only hope for Janet Street Porter's sake that she has no need to avail herself of the services of an ear nose and throat consultant (or one of their wives) in the near future or she might live(or not,as the case may be) to regret that piece of gratuitous unpleasantness.

[Steve Plotnicki]

"One can only hope for Janet Street Porter's sake that she has no need to avail herself of the services of an ear nose and throat consultant"

Tony - She must not be Jewish. If she was she would share the chronic sinus troubles that plague us due to thousands of years of Jewish inbreeding. I wonder how she feels about gastroenerologists?

[Tonyfinch]

Steve,JSP is famous for her grotesque teeth so she must hate dentists too.

Dentists, ear nose and throat consultants......THAT'S IT !

SHE'S AN ANTI-SEMITE!!

[Tonyfinch]

Now I think about it she can't be mixing with any Jewish people because in the article she also says that when she first reviewed GR for Vogue she couldn hardly find anyone willing to go with her,so intinidated were they all by GR and a 3 star restaurant.

Can you imagine anybody Jewish turning down the chance of a completely free meal at a 3 starred Michelin restaurant ,even if you did have to spend the evening with JSP? I don't think so.She just wasn't asking us. She MUST be an anti-semite.

[circeplum]

or simply unpopular ...

[conrad]

If Janet Street-Porter is now being invited to pontificate on the restaurant scene, then the lunatics really have taken over the asylum. It almost outclasses the debacle a few years ago when the Mirror hired Dirty Den from EastEnders to write a wine column.

[Tonyfinch]

It irks me no end not only that JSP feels able to sneer at people who make more of a contribution to people's health and well being in a day than she'll ever make in her whole life,but that she feels confident enough to metaphorically wink at us and assume that we will agree that its a shame that really interesting,glamourous people like her (and by extension us) have to put up with these thoroughly dreary people (and their wives) in restaurants.

Who the hell does this ugly ageing slapper think she is. Talentless and pointless, I think she should be shot along with Macrosan and Adam (who think you can't get a decent scoff for 26 smackers in London).

[conrad]

How about JSP and Michael Winner doing a Pizza Hut all-you-can-eat blowout together? Mmmm. You read it here first.

[Tonyfinch]

Now they're being cited on menus! At YMing in Greek St tonight I opened up the menu to read:

"Double Braised Pork In Hot Pot.Highly recommended by Matthew Fort of The Guardian, Jay Rayner,The Observer,Jonathan Meades,The Times-soft and tender   £9 "

I'm not sure whether the last words referred to Meades or the dish but with such an impressive line up of upturned thumbs I felt compelled to order the dish,which I have to say was more soft and disintegrating than soft and tender,although it was tasty.

Question for Jay Rayner. DID you highly recommend this dish?

[Jinmyo]

Question for Jay Rayner. DID you highly recommend this dish?

Jay, also: How do you feel/what do you think about this?

[jayrayner]

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.

[Andy Lynes]

That must be a first! I don't think I've ever seen a critic mentioned on a menu before.

I'm booked in at Yming as part of a party of 10 in June (a works do). I will take great delight in pointing out Jay's name to anyone who will listen and saying "That bloke, right, I know him! (Sort of)."

[jayrayner]

I don't understand why the text that I pasted in the first time didn't appear. I'm going to try again. If it fails this time can someone let me know what I'm doing wrong

Quote::

From the specials we went for the double braised pork in hot pot which, according to the menu, is ‘praised by food writers’ and is about so to be again. Slices of belly pork, some completely lean, some quite fatty, are cooked in a dense gravy until they all but fall apart on the chopsticks. The efforts to retrieve the shards of meat are well rewarded. And below is a softened stew of vegetables - onions, mushrooms, Chinese greens - which soak beautifully into a bowl of rice. Beside these a plate of king prawns in hot sweet sauce seemed only workmanlike, but that is simply because the competition was so great.

ends

[cabrales]

At YMing in Greek St tonight I opened up the menu to read:

"Double Braised Pork In Hot Pot.Highly recommended by Matthew Fort of The Guardian, Jay Rayner,The Observer,Jonathan Meades,The Times-soft and tender   £9 "

Tony -- At that restaurant, were any other dishes annotated with praise from restaurant reviewers?  

[conrad]

While Jay Rayner's amour-propre may be well served by seeing himself appear as a blurb on YMing's menu, the danger in this tendency lies in this: that kitchen brigades change and chefs move on, and even though a particular dish may remain a stalwart of the menu, the reviewer's encomium may now be appended to what turns out to be a sodden mulch. What is the shelf-life of such endorsements? At least with the stickers in the window from the annual guides, one can see which was the most recent edition the restaurant appeared in.

[marasubo]

While Jay Rayner's amour-propre may be well served by seeing himself appear as a blurb on YMing's menu, ...What is the shelf-life of such endorsements?

Would it not be the critics/publications reponsibility to keep abreast of chef changes and report on them?

If the critic/publication could not justify the cost of returning to a particular establishment to re-try core items s/he had highly praised once the chef had changed, fine.

But perhaps they could justify the cost of publishing a "what's new" sort of buzz column as a catch-all, including chef changes etc and even adding something to the effect of:

for chinese restaurant x, favourable comments were made when the food was cooked by chef y who has since moved on, and the new chef z has not yet been reviewed...

or something?

[jayrayner]

Good point about chef's moving on though restaurants selling themselves on old reviews is hardly new. There's a chinese place on beak street (I think it is) which has a review in the window by Michael Parkinson, circa 1977.

Fact is most people looking at these reviews in windows a) don't pay attention to the date on them and b) don't know the chef has chnaged since then. Twas ever thus.

On the updates column, well er yes but as I've said so many times before we - or at least I - don't attempt to produce something comprehensive. if you want that you have to go to a guide book. One person reviewing one place once a week can never be comprehensive. We give a general over view, as much of our own prejudices as anything else. My job is to produce a column about restaurants which firstly, is readable and secondly, is informative. I try to do both things at the same time but it doesn't always happen.

All that said if I know about a change of chef I will say so, not that I think most readers care. People on this bulletin board certainly care. It would be sad if we didn't, given how interested we are in the subject. general readers are a different matter entirely.

[Wilfrid]

As an aside, I did indeed notice that what used to be Ming has now become YMing.  Anyone know why?  Or Y?  Existential crisis perhaps?

[Tonyfinch]

Cabrales,there were no other dishes on the menu so endorsed.

I suppose its not that different to critics quotes on the billboards of theatres " I laughed till I cried" and so on. When you think about it its surprising we don't see critics cited on menus more often if they've enjoyed a particular dish.

[Tonyfinch]

YMing may be so called because the proprieter's name is Christine Yau. According to the Time Out guide she is "dedicated to the cause of promoting good Chinese food in Britain and is one of the driving forces behind the new Chinese chef's course at Westminster College".

My meal there was fine, although apart from one dish I can't say the food was noticeably superior to other nearby Chinese restaurants,although the atmosphere and service were more relaxed than in many Gerrard St/Lisle St places.

The best dish for me was Spiced Aubergine. I am not a lover of this vegetable but I think this restaurant has it sussed-soft but not slimy,chunky and juicy and humming with garlic,it really hit the spot.

[Basildog]

When Cabrales gets round to posting her report on my place i think i will put her comments on the loo wall.No offence, it is a place of honour at Margot's.Its full of menus, cartoons, kids pictures etc etc (yes this is a hint for Cabrales to post the report!)

[Tonyfinch]

But are you going to quote her on the menu?(assuming a positive report)

[Basildog]

No, we don't like to blow our own trumpet.We keep our visitors book in the loo too.

[Tonyfinch]

Here we go again with the sneering.In todays ES magazine Nick Foulkes reports on the Brasserie Roux in St Jamse's. He writes:

"it has to rely on corporate riff raff,the sort who wear short sleeved shirts with suits and ties and dream about driving a company Audi but will never progress beyond a Vauxhall. It was depressing.Had I been able to order a few shavings of Prozac on my food I would have done so. Food was calculated to be inoffensive to conference delegates".

Who on earth do these snobbish little snot rags think they are? Slag a restaurant all you like but this need to slag ordinary people who may be trying to make an honest living strikes me as as a form of professional incompetence that goes far beyond any "crime" these people may have committed.

Sack the bugger now. That's what I say!

[Lord Michael Lewis]

Sack the bugger now. That's what I say!

Is it germane where he parks his tool?