Smashed #55 Review of the restaurant reviews

The UK restaurant scene digested

David Baddiel, The Observer
Mana, Manchester

Last Sunday saw the publication of the first edition of The Observer under its new owners, Tortoise Media. As you might imagine, they took the opportunity to make radical changes to every aspect of the paper. I was like, whhaaatt?! Is this, like, even a newspaper anymore, man? It’s crazy, like some 22nd-century futuristical vision of what a newspaper might possibly be in the next different future to come. Do I need to be a robot to even read this now? Well, do I? It’s like you should apply to the government for a licence just to hold it, it’s so subversive and out there.

It’s the same old shit, basically is what I’m saying. I know half the newsroom was sacked or walked out or took redundancy or whatever it was they did, but from a food and drink perspective at least, not much has changed, except they’ve given Nigel Slater even more pages. He knows where the bodies are buried you can be bloody sure of that. So we’re still having to witness the seemingly never-ending procession of ‘celeb’ restaurant reviewers. Next week Simon Callow goes to Trinity. I like Simon Callow. I like Trinity. Will I like Simon Callow writing about Trinity? Not if he’s just rounded up some theatre luvvie chums for Sunday lunch or evening sups.

This week, David Baddiel has gone to Mana in Manchester. Although it doesn’t appear that Mana has been reviewed in The Observer before, it was reviewed by Grace Dent in The Guardian in August, 2019. In October of the same year, it won a Michelin star. Nearly six years later, not much has changed. So why is David Baddiel reviewing yesterday’s news Mana for the brand spanking new Observer newspaper? Not a fucking clue mate. But the great thing is, nobody cares. Hurrah! So lets just find out what he had to say about the place.

David Baddiel is on record as saying that, ‘All posh food, at some level, tastes the same’. A bit like how all children’s books written by celebrites, at some level, read the same. Baddiel is therefore the ideal person then to review posh food-serving Mana. It’s going well so far. But don’t worry, Baddiel is a professional. He can write and he’s obviously read a few restaurant reviews and pulls off a decent enough impersonation of a Giles Coren-type. For example:

‘two quisquillas (prawns from Motril in Spain) arrive raw, wearing what appear to be wigs of orange butter. They have a profoundly smooth, sea-bound taste that is only slightly undermined by looking like Muppets.’

That’s alright, isn’t it? Quite smart-alecky, quite fuuny, quite informative. He uses the word ‘liminal’ which proves he studied English at King's College, Cambridge. He doesn’t drink, which makes him better than you. Baddiel opines that Mana deserved to retain it’s Michelin star ‘because a lot of thought and care and love and invention and detail has gone into these dishes’ and then announces that he’s off the the pub next Sunday. You can take the University-educated boy out of 90s lad culture but you can’t take 90s lad culture out of the University-educated boy. Or something.

Best line: ‘the first of these amuse-bouches was named Iron Age Coppa. If I Google that, I discover that Alfredo Coppa is an Italian researcher into cranial trauma in the Iron Age. All I can tell you is that his thinly sliced flesh is delicious.’
Worst line: ‘I’m a fan of the full English breakfast . . . . I am also a fan of the Traditional Sunday Roast. Which made it a complicated thing for me to have Sunday lunch at Mana, in Manchester, where they don’t serve breakfast and there are no Yorkshires on offer.’ Oh, fuck off.
Did the review make me want to book a table: Is it still 2019?

Charlotte Ivers, The Sunday Times
Himi, London (4 stars)

Anthony Bourdain once wrote that if you think about how much really good sashimi costs for even an second you’re a goddam pussy motherfucking son of a whore who isn’t worthy to lick clean the goddam asshole of a horse mackerel. It was something like that anyways. That’s how he wrote wasn’t it? Just like that, all the time. When he wasn’t eating the still-beating heart of a grizzly bear that is. God I miss that guy.

Subscribe to keep reading this weeks edition, including my take on reviews by Tom Parker Bowles, William Sitwell, David Ellis, Grace Dent and Giles Coren. It hilarious, even if I do say so myself and the soundtrack this week is great.