aa gill

[Ken Gargett]

for those not familiar with the acerbic mr gill (writes for sunday times in london and the aussie gourmet traveller et al), he can be very funny, unless you own a restaurant. he is a small clip from one of his latest.

The dishes are mostly ingredient blind dates, edible consequences that involve little or no technical ability. I reckon the whole carte could be made by Gary Rhodes’s hairdresser. Take my starter: sprouting broccoli, beetroot, anchovy and chilli. Actually, forget Gary Rhodes’s hairdresser, even Gary Rhodes could make that.

In fact, the only person who couldn’t make it is anyone who had tasted it. The anchovies were the hideously vinegared ones — like eating strips of soused cashmere. The tough, scrawny broccoli had the metallic flavour of a sucked bike chain, and the little gonadal beetroots would have been nice enough if they hadn’t been overwhelmed by the searing embers of minced chilli. Putting these ingredients together on a plate was evidence of a cretinous gastronomic illiteracy.

After a sturdy wait, I was brought macaroni cheese, a wizened little bowl that had apparently been kept under hot lights longer than a radioactive Italian history professor. It was hot enough to have its own mirages. The pasta — which wasn’t macaroni — had the odd consistency of crisp papier mâché and tasted, thankfully, of absolutely nothing except heat and a bubbly coating of fat.

Pudding was a brownie: a damp, brown, bitter poultice with anaemically white ice cream that slunk away into a gritty, watery effluvium. It’s time to call time on brownie chocolate inflation, the obsession that insists it should be crammed with ever more cocoa. It’s about as sensible as seeing how much salt you can get into porridge.

There is also the usual organic boast: “All our meat comes from Frank Godfrey.” I hope you get better soon, Frank. “Our fruit and vegetables are locally grown in fields just outside Guildford, and we love them because they don’t use any pesticide.” Grown in fields — what will they think of next? And if Guildford is local, then why don’t you just pop out and get a pint of milk?

This arrant waste of food is the best advertisement for the copious use of chemicals and pesticides I’ve seen in weeks.

As, indeed, were most of the customers. A couple stopped to tug my sleeve. “Don’t be too hard on them,” the man said in a stage whisper. “We like it here, don’t we?” The woman smiled, nodded, and added: “But don’t have the veal.”

[Ken Gargett]

while in the mood, i couldn't resist another snippet from a different eatery that did not impress mr gill.

For main course, I had slow-roast mutton with baby vegetables and polenta. The polenta was an emetic slurry of subsistence substance. The ingénue vegetables were midgets and dwarves, boiled so that they held their natural shape only by a collective act of nostalgia. But they were ambrosia compared with the mutton. The colour of a gravedigger’s fingernail, it was a mortified curl of muscle from some unknown extremity of ancient ovine. It resisted knife and fork, being mostly translucent, sweaty gristle and greasy fat. It was inedibly disgusting, without question the nastiest ingredient I’ve been served this year.

Anything else about the restaurant is really beside the point, because a kitchen that would — or indeed could — contemplate sending this bit of gloop out on a plate as food for a customer and demand £19 in return really has no business in the hospitality business. I can’t imagine how any chef with a filo of professional self-respect could allow such a thing to pass the pass. And any kitchen dumb enough to serve it to a restaurant critic deserves all it gets, which, in this case, is one dull star — and that’s only because it’s nearly Christmas. Perhaps they could follow it and return by another road.

[kjellfrick]

Hilarious, Ken. An admirably descriptive talent in this mr Gill. It immediately brought to mind one of my life's worst culinary experiences. Where it happened? In Britain, of course... ;-) I was on a research visit in Lancaster in the 80's and decided to try a "Scottish Grill House" one day. Had a T-bone steak. Unbelievable! No taste - I'm sure it was boiled without salt - and the sauce was a watery nothing that soaked the chips to an unappetizing melted state without giving them any help in taste. There was a vegetable there somewhere, but I can't remember which kind. Thankfully memory has lapsed on that point. For the rest of my stay in Lancaster I lived on Chinese and Indian food. :-D

I've only had one other experience to equal that and that was in the norwegian mountains in the 70's. Exchange T-bone steak for pork chop and chips for boiled potatoes and there you are. Maybe the chef had a twin?

[El Presidente]

Ken...I now know from where your writing style has evolved.

[Ken Gargett]

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» Ken...I now know from where your writing style has evolved.

i would be deeply honoured if you thought that there was the faintest similarity. somewhere i have a copy of the review he did of the connaught hotel, supposedly at the time one of london's finest. if i can find it, will post it. truly superb and i believe that there were massive staff changes after it was published.

[n2advnture]

My brother is a chef and even HE thought this was hilarious!

Too funny bro!

~Mark

[chef2275]

:-D

Tell him to stay over there and stay away from this area.:-)

chef