Gastronomy Will Eat Itself

[Thropplenoggin]

The new "best" restaurant in the world - El Celler de Can Roca - lets us peep inside its doors here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...er-de-can-roca

What's on the menu in this self-styled avante-garde () establishment of haute-gastronomie? Why, oysters with 'distilled earth' of course. A unique twist on that classic 'sea and mountain' pairing! Who could imagine that our two-year old selves eating mud in the back garden were so evolved gastronomically?!

I once submitted a series of satirical restaurant reviews to Private Eye of perversely à la mode establishments that didn't exist. Such things as an Asian restaurant where the food has to be eaten with a solitary chopstick; a restaurant where the chef will personally come to your table and regurgitate the food into your mouth, as a starling does to its chicks; a restaurant where you have to assemble each dish yourself à table using tweezers, etc.; etc.

It wasn't accepted. How could it be? Gastronomy knows no bounds, lies safely beyond all parody (one thinks of Tom Lehrer downing plume upon Kissinger winning the Nobel Peace Prize for carpet-bombing Cambodia). All these ideas are probably only months away from coming into existence somewhere.

p.s. Last week's TLS contains an interesting review of a book chiding our modern gastronomic excesses: You Aren't What You Eat: Fed Up With Gastroculture*

*Caveat lector: upon further investigation, the book not only sounds irksome, it also features some classic 'log-rolling' (Private Eyes passim) in which Poole (Grauniad journo) keeps shoehorning the astoundingly smug restaurant 'critic' Jay Rayner (Grauniad journo) into his book.

[amateur51]

The new "best" restaurant in the world - El Celler de Can Roca - lets us peep inside its doors here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...er-de-can-roca

What's on the menu in this self-styled avante-garde () establishment of haute-gastronomie? Why, oysters with 'distilled earth' of course. A unique twist on that classic 'sea and mountain' pairing! Who could imagine that our two-year old selves eating mud in the back garden were so evolved gastronomically?!

I once submitted a series of satirical restaurant reviews to Private Eye of perversely à la mode establishments that didn't exist. Such things as an Asian restaurant where the food has to be eaten with a solitary chopstick; a restaurant where the chef will personally come to your table and regurgitate the food into your mouth, as a starling does to its chicks; a restaurant where you have to assemble each dish yourself à table using tweezers, etc.; etc.

It wasn't accepted. How could it be? Gastronomy knows no bounds, lies safely beyond all parody (one thinks of Tom Lehrer downing plume upon Kissinger winning the Nobel Peace Prize for carpet-bombing Cambodia). All these ideas are probably only months away from coming into existence somewhere.

p.s. Last week's TLS contains an interesting review of a book chiding our modern gastronomic excesses: You Aren't What You Eat: Fed Up With Gastroculture*

*Caveat lector: upon further investigation, the book not only sounds irksome, it also features some classic 'log-rolling' (Private Eyes passim) in which Poole (Grauniad journo) keeps shoehorning the astoundingly smug restaurant 'critic' Jay Rayner (Grauniad journo) into his book.

I rather like Jay Rayner's restaurant write-ups because like me he's a greedy so'on'so and he enjoys his noggins. When reading his stuff I always remember that his mum was the sainted Claire who once told me, re how wheel-chair users are frequently ignored: "Once you disappear below the nipple line love, you might just as well not be there!"

[amateur51]

My favourite British food writer was Jonathan Meades when he had a weekly restaurant column in The Times from 1986 to 2001.His column was always headed with the caveat that the writer was only impressed by skill in the kitchen and at front-of-house and he was not impressed by 'swags and nappery"

Sadly his health dictated that he should lose a huge amount of weight (a third of his body weight as he was 'morbidly obese'), which he did and most successfully too, as he's kept it off without looking vaguely like Lord Lawson who went several chins too far

A selection of Meades' food writing can be found in his book 'Incest and Morris-dancing'

http://www.amazon.com/Incest-Morris-...onathan+Meades

[Thropplenoggin]

My favourite British food writer was Jonathan Meades when he had a weekly restaurant column in The Times from 1986 to 2001.His column was always headed with the caveat that the writer was only impressed by skill in the kitchen and at front-of-house and he was not impressed by 'swags and nappery"

Sadly his health dictated that he should lose a huge amount of weight (a third of his body weight as he was 'morbidly obese'), which he did and most successfully too, as he's kept it off without looking vaguely like Lord Lawson who went several chins too far

A selection of Meades' food writing can be found in his book 'Incest and Morris-dancing'

http://www.amazon.com/Incest-Morris-...onathan+Meades

I have this. A fine read. AA Gill is another fine wordsmith (though, ironically, he dictates his well-turned sentences, being dyslexic) and a food critic I trust, albeit with the occasional unpleasant habit of behaving like Hemingway in hunter's fatigues, blunderbuss draped over one arm, having dispatched a baboon or some such critter, still acting under the misapprehension that this hackneyed rite-of-passage proves you have a pair of cojones.

Rayner remains for me insufferably smug and offers nothing intelligent to say about food. Food criticism should not simply be about filling one's boots and reporting back. Gill gives you much more than that. So did the Graun's Matthew Fort, at least he did in his pre-TV days.

[vinteuil]

... I envy you, possessors of the Jonathan Meades book - hard to come by, these days, and not cheap!

Yes, Matthew Fort was always worth reading - and I usually admire AA Gill, altho' some of his tics are becoming a bit of a caricature. But he writes with relish, gusto, panache, and various other words I'm sure M Roget cd provide me with. He's particularly good at withering - both in his TV crits and his restaurant pieces: I wish he wd be more often celebratory. P'raps he's a depressive and doesn't currently find much to celebrate...

[Anna]

The new "best" restaurant in the world - El Celler de Can Roca - lets us peep inside its doors here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...er-de-can-roca

This restaurant was featured around two years ago on MasterChef. Certain foodies on this MB (I will not name names) vowed that if any of us found ourselves in excess funds we should all go there and sample it - one of the reasons being Jordi Roca's totally amazing nose, which quite entranced us.

[Thropplenoggin]

... I envy you, possessors of the Jonathan Meades book - hard to come by, these days, and not cheap!

Yes, Matthew Fort was always worth reading - and I usually admire AA Gill, altho' some of his tics are becoming a bit of a caricature. But he writes with relish, gusto, panache, and various other words I'm sure M Roget cd provide me with. He's particularly good at withering - both in his TV crits and his restaurant pieces: I wish he wd be more often celebratory. P'raps he's a depressive and doesn't currently find much to celebrate...

I might be willing to part with mine...for the right bouteille.

[Thropplenoggin]

This restaurant was featured around two years ago on MasterChef. Certain foodies on this MB (I will not name names) vowed that if any of us found ourselves in excess funds we should all go there and sample it - one of the reasons being Jordi Roca's totally amazing nose, which quite entranced us.

Is he the sommelier? Or a future 'schnozzle durante'?



It's the kind of nose that has small creatures nesting in it.

[Anna]

Is he the sommelier? Or a future 'schnozzle durante'?
It's the kind of nose that has small creatures nesting in it.

He's the exceptionally good pâtissier My father always said, large noses in men signify great character, beware of men with a retroussé one. I have stuck to that maxim all my life.

[Nick Armstrong]

He's the exceptionally good pâtissier My father always said, large noses in men signify great character, beware of men with a retroussé one. I have stuck to that maxim all my life.

By your pa's lights, then, Jordi's the bee's knees




Worth getting yer gnashers into his sugarwork any day of the week!

[Anna]

By your pa's lights, then, Jordi's the bee's knees




Worth getting yer gnashers into his sugarwork any day of the week!

Gosh, yes! I just want to nibble it His sugarwork.
To steer this ontopic, no, I cannot, I am too distracted, I must log off.

[vinteuil]

... I usually admire AA Gill, altho' some of his tics are becoming a bit of a caricature. But he writes with relish, gusto, panache, and various other words I'm sure M Roget cd provide me with. He's particularly good at withering - both in his TV crits and his restaurant pieces: I wish he wd be more often celebratory. P'raps he's a depressive and doesn't currently find much to celebrate...

... a recent example:

"In its new semi-detached home, The Review Show has a bigger garden, more space, more time. I watched the first episode and though, according to the watch, it horologically lasted a mere hour, in human time it was a Ring cycle. In intellectual time, it stretched way back to the 1990s. Everything else is the same. The set is basic, an inward-looking elliptical semicircle of three pundits separated by a dirty glass table, with Kirsty Wark as invigilator and spare pundit. It comes from Glasgow, which will suit Wark, the Central Belt’s cultural Ayn Rand, but not any of the others, Paul Morley, Sarfraz Manzoor and Hadley Freeman, all of whom were so keen on the appearance fee and the sound of their own opinions, they flew up to the one city in Britain that would mercilessly mock them. I do wish they’d do it live at the Glasgow Stand on a Friday night. It was like listening to The Guardian’s online comment stream. Unsurprisingly, they are all current or former Guardian writers, and if that sounds dismissive, I will add that Hadley is one of the best, sharpest and funniest cultural commentators. Naturally, she was allowed the least uninterrupted space to speak in.
You know how it’s a human truth that it’s funnier to laugh at someone than to laugh with them. When a comedian makes you laugh, you know he’s manipulating you. But when you laugh at someone who isn’t trying to be funny, then you’re in control, and there’s the added pleasure of having discovered your own comic material. So, for your delectation, let me offer you Paul Morley, one of the most reliably and unknowingly hilarious talking heads on TV. He has the awkward look of a chap who hasn’t taken middle age in his stride. He is a sorry kidult, trying to remain down with the times and up with the unfortunate chins. His every utterance is replete with self-satisfaction and the assumption of a righteous and commonly held set of cultural truisms.
What really makes Morley thigh-slappingly funny, however, is that he is trendily, snobbishly cloth-eared and glass-eyed, and has an intellect full of ponderous, banal, trite truisms. He will incline his head and say there are a number of interesting things about this programme/book/film/picture, then pose a counter gnomic question — is it really about what it’s about? And that’s the limit of his critical insight. You could paddle through his depths without ever having to roll your trousers up, but a giraffe would drown in his arty self-regard.
The central and terminal problem with The Review Show is that everyone’s a critic, but none of them knows how to criticise. Criticism is a discipline — it’s not a gut reaction or something you pick up in Soho House. The first two rules for beginners are: describing what you’ve seen, or paraphrasing what you’ve read, isn’t criticism; and complaining about what the artist didn’t do, or failed to say, isn’t criticism either. How can a lot of people examining the arts craft a show this dull and self-referential?
The Review Show is the lowest point of arts broadcasting. This month, Joan Bakewell turned 80. Blessings be upon her. Late Night Line-Up, which she presented in the 1960s and 1970s, was the grandmother of the current review show. Even allowing for the warm glow of hindsight, its descendant is a pale and timid, intellectually correct and meagre thing. And the reason is that clever, original and profound intellectuals won’t appear on this sort of television any more. Why would they? It has devalued, coarsened and cheapened its own currency."

[Nick Armstrong]

AA Gill

......

Thanks for that, vindetable.

And then there was that note-perfect Totentanz on the theme of Nigel Slater's tv gastro-shows, about which we have spoken before... Are you able to post that here? I've mislaid my copy (which I think you sent me!)

[amateur51]

... a recent example:

"In its new semi-detached home, The Review Show has a bigger garden, more space, more time. I watched the first episode and though, according to the watch, it horologically lasted a mere hour, in human time it was a Ring cycle. In intellectual time, it stretched way back to the 1990s. Everything else is the same. The set is basic, an inward-looking elliptical semicircle of three pundits separated by a dirty glass table, with Kirsty Wark as invigilator and spare pundit. It comes from Glasgow, which will suit Wark, the Central Belt’s cultural Ayn Rand, but not any of the others, Paul Morley, Sarfraz Manzoor and Hadley Freeman, all of whom were so keen on the appearance fee and the sound of their own opinions, they flew up to the one city in Britain that would mercilessly mock them. I do wish they’d do it live at the Glasgow Stand on a Friday night. It was like listening to The Guardian’s online comment stream. Unsurprisingly, they are all current or former Guardian writers, and if that sounds dismissive, I will add that Hadley is one of the best, sharpest and funniest cultural commentators. Naturally, she was allowed the least uninterrupted space to speak in.
You know how it’s a human truth that it’s funnier to laugh at someone than to laugh with them. When a comedian makes you laugh, you know he’s manipulating you. But when you laugh at someone who isn’t trying to be funny, then you’re in control, and there’s the added pleasure of having discovered your own comic material. So, for your delectation, let me offer you Paul Morley, one of the most reliably and unknowingly hilarious talking heads on TV. He has the awkward look of a chap who hasn’t taken middle age in his stride. He is a sorry kidult, trying to remain down with the times and up with the unfortunate chins. His every utterance is replete with self-satisfaction and the assumption of a righteous and commonly held set of cultural truisms.
What really makes Morley thigh-slappingly funny, however, is that he is trendily, snobbishly cloth-eared and glass-eyed, and has an intellect full of ponderous, banal, trite truisms. He will incline his head and say there are a number of interesting things about this programme/book/film/picture, then pose a counter gnomic question — is it really about what it’s about? And that’s the limit of his critical insight. You could paddle through his depths without ever having to roll your trousers up, but a giraffe would drown in his arty self-regard.
The central and terminal problem with The Review Show is that everyone’s a critic, but none of them knows how to criticise. Criticism is a discipline — it’s not a gut reaction or something you pick up in Soho House. The first two rules for beginners are: describing what you’ve seen, or paraphrasing what you’ve read, isn’t criticism; and complaining about what the artist didn’t do, or failed to say, isn’t criticism either. How can a lot of people examining the arts craft a show this dull and self-referential?
The Review Show is the lowest point of arts broadcasting. This month, Joan Bakewell turned 80. Blessings be upon her. Late Night Line-Up, which she presented in the 1960s and 1970s, was the grandmother of the current review show. Even allowing for the warm glow of hindsight, its descendant is a pale and timid, intellectually correct and meagre thing. And the reason is that clever, original and profound intellectuals won’t appear on this sort of television any more. Why would they? It has devalued, coarsened and cheapened its own currency."

Let this be lesson to all celebrity bookers for chat shows, both serious and pretentious or otherwise. Ignore AA Gill at you peril - his bile is corrosive

[french frank]

... a recent example:

"[...] The central and terminal problem with The Review Show is that everyone’s a critic, but none of them knows how to criticise. Criticism is a discipline — it’s not a gut reaction or something you pick up in Soho House. The first two rules for beginners are: describing what you’ve seen, or paraphrasing what you’ve read, isn’t criticism; and complaining about what the artist didn’t do, or failed to say, isn’t criticism either."

And as this is the Refreshment Room:

I like making soups but don't always bother to make a good vegetable stock. When I do, I wonder what my mother's generation would make of simmering lovely fresh vegetables (onions, carrots, leeks, celery &c with herbs and seasonings) and then - throw away the vegetables and keep the water ...