Smashed #47: Into the past

The UK restaurant scene digested

Photo by Donald Wu on Unsplash

Smashed #46 recap: Last week, I was in a dark place, about to turn 60, wondering if writing less than positive things about our esteemed restaurant critics was really the best use of my time and thinking about escaping it all, if only I could get my time machine to work. Now read on…(with apologies to H.G. Wells)

(Before you do, please note, if you are not a paid subscriber, what follows is a short preview of a long post. If you want to read the whole thing then hit the button below.)

I gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle. I took the starting lever in one hand and felt a nightmare sensation of falling. Night followed day like the flapping of a black wing and I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky, leaping it every minute, and every minute marking a day. The little hands upon the dials that registered my speed raced round faster and faster. I resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged over the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over, and I was flung headlong through the air.

I landed by the front door. I was stunned for a moment. Despite the strange sensations and visions, it seemed I had travelled no distance in space or time. I cursed loudly and, as I gathered myself I noticed a pile of weekend newspapers lying on the doormat. ‘Strange,’ I thought. ‘I haven’t had the papers delivered for decades.’ I picked up The Independent and checked the date - 5 March 1994 - it had worked! I’d really done it. I was a traveller through time. Feeling an uncontrollable urge, I turned to the lifestyle pages and began to read.

Emily Green, The Independent, 5 March 1994
Fulham Road, London

According to the bio at her website chanceofrain.com, Emily Green is ‘a California-born reporter whose career has been split between the United Kingdom and United States. British publishers since 1979 have included the Independent, Guardian, Sunday Times, Spectator and New Statesman. She was a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times from 1999 until 2007 and has been a freelance contributor to a number of US news outlets including KCET, the Los Angeles Review of Books and The New York Times. Retired from newspapers, she now works as a research librarian at the California Water Library.’

Green was one of my favourite restaurant critics back in the 90s. Although I wouldn’t single out any particular critic or food writer for my decision to chance my arm in the trade, Green was someone whose writing I admired and wanted to emulate. Thirty years later, does her work still stand up? That’s an unfair question - why should something as frivolous and throwaway as a restaurant review be expected to have any lasting value beyond the week it was published? - but I’m going to put it to the test regardless.

If you haven’t heard of Stephen Bull, he was quite a big noise on the UK restaurant scene. In 1980, he was one of the first chefs in the UK to win a Michelin star at his Richmond restaurant Lichfield’s (the guide launched in the UK in 1974). By the time of Green’s review, he had eschewed Richmond for central London, although according to Green ‘Mr Bull retains something approaching folk-hero status there, especially among the people who run the cheese shop’. I can’t tell you how much that observation tickles me. Maybe Green went to Richmond to ask around about Bull for the review, or maybe she lived there. Either way, it’s a charming little detail and tells you so much about the man and Green as a journalist.

Subscribe to continue reading this edition of Smashed that includes analysis of archive reviews of L’Escargot by Fay Maschler, La Tante Claire by Tracey MacLeod, Nicole’s by Helen Fielding and One Paston Place by Jonathan Meades as well as full reproductions of the reviews.