AA Gill

[Ken Gargett]

not sure if any other members enjoy reading AA Gill. i wouldn't miss his sunday morning london times restaurant reviews (just check their web site and go to the 'life and style' section and go from there).

this was from this week - thought i'd share it as it was a cracker. if i owned restaurant, i'd be trrified of the bloke.

Bob Bob Ricard

1 Upper James Street, W1; 020 3145 1000

Bob Bob Ricard restaurant

AA Gill

Mon-Sat, 7am-3am; Sun, 8am-midnight

NO STARS

5 stars: Bobby-dazzler, 4 stars: Bob’s your uncle, 3 stars: Bobbing along, 2 stars: Bobbins, 1 star: Spare us a few bob?

I noticed there were fewer Christmas cards this year, so I called the family into the parlour. Perching myself comfortably in front of the festive yule, placing one elegant arm on the mantel, I began an extempore but witty homily on the economic and social implications of the scarcity of recycled goodwill. Just as I was shifting down into baritone profundity, the Blonde interrupted and said, apropos of very little, that perhaps a diminution of seasonal missives wishing health, happiness and prosperity in oh nine was down to the fact that more people hated me. That perhaps I’d managed to insult our few remaining friends, that there were few nations left whose food, customs, dearest beliefs, endearing characteristics and hats I hadn’t mocked, traduced and vilified without provocation. I thought that was a little harsh.

“Look,” she continued, “all the cards from friends are addressed to me. Yours are from businesses brown-nosing, or they’re anonymous notes from people who want you dead.” I’m not sure that’s entirely fair, dearest, I replied. “Okay,” she said, “take this one. ‘Christmas comes but once a year. But you can come whatever the season, with Dr Scolari’s Gentleman’s Erectile Aids and Medicinal Trusses. Like the Virgin Mary: discreet delivery guaranteed.’

” What about the many charitable cards, quietly acknowledging my valuable contribution to the less fortunate? Such as this one, for cancer research. “That’s not for cancer research, that’s wishing cancer might search for you in the year ahead.”

Well, children. There is a lesson here. The price of free speech, of standing out against the Gadarene orthodoxy, the soft and comforting consensus, is often loneliness. One must be a stoic sage standing atop a barnacled rock, facing down the roaring storm of wet indignation. A stentorian beacon of reason. The siren call of common sense. The water wings of wit and whimsy.

Let’s move on and play Ugly Petting Zoo. This is one of our favourite games in the *** end of festivities. We take the cards that boast pictures of friends’ children and put them on a separate shelf, called the Smug Ugly Petting Zoo. Then we judge them: most ostentatious and inappropriate holiday setting for a Christmas card; family least likely to star in an American sitcom; best cards signed by pets; the Relate award for the grinning couple least likely to be together next Christmas. In truth, the number of cards sent to all of us is decreasing. Or at least it is in America, where they tend to count these things.

In 1987, each household got an average of 29. By 2004, it was down to 20. This may just be because America is less popular. For those of you who are having to sit through interminable Christmas office quizzes, family games of Trivial Pursuit and hellish newspaper multiple-choice compendiums of the year, the answer is: the first Christmas card was invented and sent by Henry Cole in 1843. It was drawn by John Callcott Horsley, and it showed a family enjoying seasonal cheer, supported by motifs of Dickensian charity. They cost a shilling each. Cole was a civil servant who helped to instigate the Penny Post and the first stamp, hence the invention of the Christmas card. He was a good egg, but hideously ugly.

Some of you have been complaining that the season of goodwill had somehow leached into this column, that the reviews have been far too nice. One star was good enough for Jesus, you told me. So here is a little new-year treat. Bob Bob Ricard manages to nose the tape as the worst new restaurant of 2008. BBR is a stupid name. Rob Rob Ricard would have been better, but still stupid. But it’s a name that fits, because this is a stupid concept. Not just stupid, but Bob Bob Gloriously Chronically Unfixably Misbegotten. Who thought of opening this place? Was it Bob? Or Bob? Or Ricard? Maybe it was Bob and Bob, after finishing a bottle of Ricard.

I went after the office party, and took Camilla, the éminence cerise of this column, Gemma, and Mr and Mrs Rod Liddle. Less Bob Bob and Ricard, more Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. We were discussing who was so nubile, your partner should be allowed a free pass. Rod enigmatically suggested anyone, on a lucky-dip basis, but in particular Stella Rimington. She may not look like much, but the name’s deeply promising. Mrs Liddle revealed that she’d stopped Rod dyeing his hair. It now looked properly dead.

We all had the slightly hysterical good humour that leaving a room full of colleagues drinking to keep down their emotions often gives you. Having booked days in advance for a table for six, and being only five, we were offered two tables, one of four, and one of two, then, after a bit, a small one for five beside the exit.

I know quite a lot of the staff here, from other restaurants, and they greeted me like Herod in Mothercare. They’ve been dressed in uniforms of gratuitous humiliation: labial-pink stewards’ jackets that looked as if they’d been made out of smoked salmon, and astonishing tweed shooting jackets with leather patches and a streak of lamé check.

The room is supposed to be reminiscent of an Edwardian railway carriage. It’s more like Liberace’s bathroom dropped into a Texan diner. It’s been put together by David Collins, who I respect professionally and am fond of personally, but the only explanation for this room can be a bet, a dare, or a deranged marbler and paint-finisher who’s holding his family hostage.

I think it’s trying to do what the Wolseley does: serve four meals a day. But it’s difficult to tell. The dishes are bizarrely random, like the reverie of starving prisoners of war. We started with a langoustine cocktail, egg mayonnaise, caviar blinis and smoked salmon that had a name. I asked whose name it was, and the waitress said the man who delivered it, which was weird, but rather endearing. All of it tasted of the 1950s, and not in a nostalgically nice way. Most of it looked like it was made in the 1950s, and had an emetic, parsimonious shudder. Pork rillettes were served in a sealed Kilner jar and smelt strongly of bottom. There is no other way of putting this: fatty bloke’s blind starfish. I had a burger. I wasn’t asked how I wanted it. If I’d said, “I want it to be grey, tasteless, flaccid and wholly unremarkable in every particular”, then the kitchen would have got it to a T. A lobster thermidor was a shrimp on steroids, drowning in the sauce that poisoned the reputation of English food for a generation. (Gemma pointed out that “prawn” is the word for a fit but ugly bird. Good body, but you need to pull its head off.)

For pudding, a baked alaska for four came to the table with a servile fanfare. It was doused in spirits and immolated. After a single taste, the company screamed as one. Bring more alcohol and finish the hellish thing off! The waiter proudly showed us an electric button that raised the curtains, I suspect to protect the man in the street from the shock of the decor. There was another button beside the table, which was to call for champagne. Of all the gimmicky bits of fiddly twaddle the hospitality industry has come up with to entice us to tarry — the Corby Trouser Press, disposable bath caps, napkin clips — this was the most crapulently pointless. A button that called a waiter would have been useful; a button that called the waiter a t*** would have been better; a button that severely electrocuted the chef would have been amusing. But perhaps the most sensible and useful would have been a button that called Domino’s Pizza.

This restaurant is the last turkey standing. In the basement, there is a cocktail bar that was entertaining a lone bouncer with a looped tape of what sounded like the runners-up for Latvia’s song for Eurovision. Bob, Bob and Ricard have missed their calling. I can’t imagine what it is, but it certainly isn’t catering.

[anacostiakat]

The room is supposed to be reminiscent of an Edwardian railway carriage. It’s more like Liberace’s bathroom dropped into a Texan diner. It’s been put together by David Collins, who I respect professionally and am fond of personally, but the only explanation for this room can be a bet, a dare, or a deranged marbler and paint-finisher who’s holding his family hostage.

Pretty good! I love the Liberace reference.

[Ryan]

I like him a lot. He writes some very entertaining travels pieces too.

[El Presidente]

The piece below struck a cord as Smithy purchases the Sunday paper for the two page spread of Saturday wedding photo's. He goes through each one to determined which guy has overchieved and or/which girl must be pregnant

"Let’s move on and play Ugly Petting Zoo. This is one of our favourite games in the *** end of festivities. We take the cards that boast pictures of friends’ children and put them on a separate shelf, called the Smug Ugly Petting Zoo. Then we judge them: most ostentatious and inappropriate holiday setting for a Christmas card; family least likely to star in an American sitcom; best cards signed by pets; the Relate award for the grinning couple least likely to be together next Christmas."

[Ken Gargett]

my fave line was "they greeted me like Herod in Mothercare".

[bolivr]

He's a cracker. have saved as a favourite.

Same website has Jeremy Clarkson, perhaps not as erudite as AA but pretty funny sometimes.

He may even have panned the Jeep similar to El Prez' vehicle.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/jeremy_clarkson/