Smashed #26

The UK restaurant scene digested

An angry man looking impatiently at his watch earlier today.

The Reviews

Jay Rayner, The Observer
Arabic Flavour, Aberystwyth

I haven’t written one of these ‘review of the reviews’ columns for a couple of weeks and the backlog is a bit too big to cover in one go so I am cherry picking the best of the bunch; I hope that’s OK with you. It’s actually a good thing as, otherwise I’d have to write about Jay Rayner’s review of Upstairs At The Grill in Chester. And then I’d have to say that it read like one of those 1 star Tripadvisor write ups. You know the ones: ‘I rocked up to (insert name of small local restaurant doing it’s absolute best to please it’s customers here) with 20 of my closest pals at 8pm on a Saturday night without a booking and they refused to give us a table. I’ve never been so insulted in all my life. I’ve eaten at five-Michelin-starred restaurants all over the world and I’ve never experienced anything like it. From now on I’ll be taking my custom to Cote where I’ll know it will be valued’.

It wasn’t quite that bad. There was just seven of them and only five of them turned up 15 minutes early for their table, the others were 45 minutes late, but they’d told the restaurant that in advance so that’s obviously absolutely fine. Especially when you’re there incognito and reviewing for a national newspaper and you don’t want to make things tricky for the restaurant or draw attention to yourselves; the whole idea being that you should have as normal an experience as possible so your readers will know what to expect if they follow in your footsteps. But maybe Rayner’s readers are the sort to book a table of seven, turn up early with only five of the group, be joined by the other two halfway through the meal and then write a shitty review on Tripadvisor because everything wasn’t perfect for their frankly unmanageable table.

Rayner almost certainly ended up reviewing Upstairs At The Grill, a restaurant that opened 22 years ago and serves steak, because he was in Chester recording an episode of Kitchen Cabinet and was probably stumped to find anywhere else of any discernible interest that would accept a reservation for a table of seven in the main dinning room (because you can’t review a restaurant if you are hidden away from all the action in a private room).

I’m not saying that Upstairs At The Grill isn’t worthy of a review but it’s difficult to fathom why a national newspaper would want to run one across a double page spread in its Sunday supplement unless it was given no alternative. I’m trying to imagine the response I would get from an editor if I pitched a review or feature about a local restaurant with little national profile, no accolades from the restaurant guides, that is not run by a named chef and doesn’t have a well known owner, serves a standard steak house menu, is not celebrating a significant anniversary and has no topical hook due to it’s offering or geographical location (it’s not the world first vegan steakhouse and no one is saying Chester is the new foodie hotspot for example).

There seems little to be gained by dragging through the mud the name of a well established and apparently well-liked local restaurant that was otherwise happily going about it business (2464 ‘excellent’ reviews on Tripadvisor, for what that’s worth and Gary Usher on X saying ‘Can I just say (as Jay said people would) UATG is a fantastic restaurant run by some of the most passionate hospitality people in the UK. It’s a huge part of the Chester food scene & deservedly so’). The meal sounds far from perfect it’s true but reading a high profile media figure, who is combining his reviewing gig with one of his other side hustles for the sake of convenience, moan about waiting 50 minutes for his starter and bellyaching about the marinated anchovies in his Caesar dressing is the height of middleclass privilege and rather sticks in the craw.

You’ve been out for a post gig meal with your mates and sadly it’s not really worth telling anyone about. So shut up, eat your steak, don’t claim it on expenses, put it down to bad luck and then go somewhere that’s not on your gig list that might actually have a restaurant with some relevance to your readers and that actually deserves to judged, good or bad, in the national press. But given Rayner’s no doubt hectic schedule there probably wasn’t enough time to do that, so the editor, readers and restaurant owner get what their given and have to like it or lump it. It’s a shame we don’t get to elect restaurant reviewers. Maybe then we could vote in someone younger who hasn’t got too many other jobs that could give the column their full attention. But at least we’re getting rid of the Tories in a couple of months. That’s a start.

What a relief not to have to write about Jay Rayner’s review of Upstairs At The Grill and instead focus on Arabic Flavour in Aberystwyth (I wonder what he was doing there). Oh no, I seem to have run out of enthusiasm space. Just click on the link in the title to read it. It’s a small restaurant run by a young Syrian refugee called Ghofran Hamza. It sounds alright. As with Upstairs At The Grill, the food took a while to arrive but Rayner doesn’t get his knickers in a twist about it this around. I have no idea why not.

Best line: ‘the meat-free moussaka . . . .is stratified with layers of potato, aubergine, courgette and comfort, like someone wants to put a knitted blanket across your knees and tell you everything will be just fine’
Worst line: N/A
Did the review make me want to book a table: La shukran

Jimi Famurewa, Evening Standard
Roe, London

Roe, a found poem by A. Paul Lynes
(all words by J. Famurewa)

Veteran Londoner, reflexively befuddled
surveilled ghost town of shuttered Prets
fragrant gardens, mirrored waters
sci-fi utopia magicked out of thin air

unfathomably huge
slick ruthless flintiness
meticulously wrought unearthly undercroft
vigorously blistered, oiled

tumble of greens, crunch of buckwheat
polyphonic riot of pork; deranged brilliance.
Delirious grin ravishing,
drenching another flex, another show.

If there were blots they were faint:
meat fruit-level trickery
accessorised with sticky tendrils
is not what it first appears.

Best line: N/A
Worst line: ‘Breaded nubbins of garlic mushrooms hit like a freight train of moreish, kombu-dusted umami’
Did the review make me want to book a table: Sort of. I’m not sure I want to eat my dinner in an aircraft hanger though.

Giles Coren, The Times
Oma, London

Oma God! Oma God! Giles Coren loves Oma, a new greek-ish restaurant in Borough Market where all the good restaurants in London are these days. Love is too weak a word for what he feels. He luuurves Oma. He loaves Oma. He luffs Oma. Two F's, yes. He loves Oma as much as Alvy Singer loved Annie Hall, and look how that ended. But do happy endings matter? Let’s just think about the here and now, and right now, Coren can’t get enough of ‘Dave “Smokestak” Carter’s Greek schtick. Coren might even actually love Carter who he describes as ‘hot stuff’, but then adds that ‘he’s a bit old for me’. Phews all round. It’s just Coren being his usual manically enthusiastic self, although the ‘charming, beautiful staff’ might like to take note.

Let’s talk about the food. Mamma Mia, it’s good. Look, if Abba can get away with nonsensically mashing up Italy and Greece, so can I. And how Greek can a restaurant be when, as Coren points out, there’s a ‘Barbadian at the top and an Ecuadorean guy on the pans’. Literally none of this matters, I could have saved myself the effort of typing all that because there’s bread. Not just any old sliced white, but ‘the puffiest flatbread I’ve ever known’ that ‘makes your mouth want to hand in its notice to your face and come here to live alone with Bajan Dave and his crazy mates for the rest of its goddam life.’

Coren is very good at getting himself worked up in print. It’s especially impressive as he does all his writing in the morning. I know this because he’s written about his writing habits and also because I interviewed him once. I missed our scheduled afternoon slot and then called him the following morning and he really was not very happy about it at all. He agreed to speak to me but only after making it very, very clear that I had disturbed his routine. I don’t think I could work up sufficient excitement about the second coming of Jesus Christ to write a review as vigorously passionate as this one if it was before midday, so hats off to him. What’s his secret? We’ll never know. There almost certainly isn’t one.

The review carries on in a similar tone, including some ‘stop all the clocks’ spanakopita and a name check quite possibly for the first time ever in a restaurant review for Fergal Sharkey who is thanked for his part in helping to save chalk stream trout. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Sharkey for his incredible performance with The Undertones in March 1983 at the Portsmouth Guildhall.

Coren pauses; ‘I find myself quite breathless’. I know how he feels. He finds it in him to pronounce Oma ‘monumental. . . .There is nothing else like it.’ The tireless search for another restaurant that serves bread, dips and some grilled stuff is on. I’m kidding. Oma does indeed sound terrific. How good does a bone ‘sliced in half lengthwise and roasted with the marrow inside, spangled with crackling beef fat pangrattato and chopped fresh parsley, then laid on a bowl of oxtail giouvetsi, which is a sort of casserole of the meat with an orzo-like pasta that gives you a rich, deep, rancher’s rice pudding of the kind that Desperate Dan would have eaten by the barrowload’ sound?

Reading this review I thought of that old joke, you know, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken." And, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" And the guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much how how I feet about Giles Coren’s reviews. You know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd but I guess I keep reading them because I need the eggs.

Best line: ‘The acma verde was described as a sort of Greek bagel. Which is true in the sense that the Parthenon is a kind of Greek shed’
Worst line: ‘I have just been swept off my feet by a standout, hands down, pants off, run around screaming, slam-dunk best-of-the-year-so-far joint in central London, where I ate so well it damn near blew my head off, and I am still picking up the pieces’.
Did the review make me want to book a table: Oma God, yes!

The review of the reviews and For Old Dine’s sake continues after the paywall.