darwin, god and restaurant reviews

[Ken Gargett]

this is today's restaurant review from the london times by aa gill. i reckon he is an absolutely fabulous writer and, even though the restaurants are irrelevant to me, would not start sunday morning without reading him. have been for years. the reviews tend to have other focuses than the place itself, at least for the first half. he is at his best when not happy about things. aren't we all.

September 27, 2009

Cornhill, London, EC3</H2> (Barney Jones)

AA Gill

No stars

Five stars Skate Moss Four stars Cheryl Coley Three stars Tuna Turner Two stars David Sole One star Timmy Mullet

I've had a bit of a revelation. It's haemorrhoids. The answer is haemorrhoids. They've been staring me in the face. Haemorrhoids and sinuses. We've been coming at this from the wrong angle. Back to basics. It's Darwin year, and you've been talking about little else but archaeopteryx, Piltdown man, Galapagos finch beaks and survival of the fittest Wag. Yet there is a sizeable minority of you who think that creation is intelligent design, or that God did exactly what it says on the Genesis box: knocked up the whole thing in six days, 6,000 years ago. Or that he's a rather grand gardener, who does planting and weeding and harmonious pruning, but spends most of his time dozing in a deckchair.

function slideshowPopUp(url){pictureGalleryPopupPic(url);return false;}<H3 class=section-heading>http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_...icle6827912.ece </H3>The majority of us manage to believe in both the divine and Darwin, but we're looking at nature and diversity from the wrong end. We look at its complexity and its beauty, its inventiveness, neatness and cunning, the whole awe business. And we talk about harmony and balance and get lumps in our throats. We say nature has a delicate balance — as if it were a mobile or a pyramid of cards — and that's wrong. Balance and harmony demand stasis. They imply that there is a perfect moment where all things dance in a symbiotic virtuous circle of self-interested altruism that is self-perpetuating until someone mucks it up by, say, discovering oil, or going on holiday. And that's all nonsense. That's not what Darwin or, indeed, God said at all. The engine of natural selection is disharmony: biological assonance, an uneven playing field. Things get on and thrive at the expense of other things, so the bigger the calamity for one section, the better the opportunity for another. Ice ages, giant meteorites, volcanoes, tectonic crashes, global warming: they're all good for something. Nature is disinterested. It has no moral stance. It doesn't have a care in the world. It doesn't matter if the cause of change is men, mosquitoes or God. Mayhem is good. Chaos is progress. Things have to duck and dive to exploit a sudden gap in the eco-market, and they have to make tricky choices at a run. Maybe more strength for less speed, better eyesight but weaker jaws. Lose your arms, gain wings.

It's a gamble, and I was thinking about it at the doctor's. I am, at the moment, living in an unevolving world of fetid green snot. The doctor looked up my nostril and said: "Woah! You've got a world of fetid green snot up there." Damned Darwin, I said. "Yup," replied the doctor, "sinuses and haemorrhoids. Both are consequences of being able to play snooker and the violin. Clever tool-making hands meant we had to be bipedal. The downside of two feet is that our sinuses are designed to drain a quadriped, and the downward pressure causes haemorrhoids. The compensation was that we got breasts, the secondary sexual characteristics, and massages with happy endings."

So here's the revelation: the proof that God can't have made the world in six days. What's the one thing an omnipresent, omnipotent, infallible deity cannot do? He can't make mistakes, and our sinuses are a hideous green-slime manufacturing, eyeball-squeezing, head-throbbing cockup. As is your lower back pain. We were never designed to have a spine like a string of Stickle Bricks. We are not made in the perfect and immutable image of God, unless you believe that God has piles. Which, of course, would explain some of the more bad-tempered smiting and plaguing in the Old Testament.

What really is in need of smiting is the traffic system in the City. You know how dogs never learn not to run off hope­fully when you pretend to throw a ball? Well, I have a residual labrador gene when it comes to driving into the City. You can get in, but you can't stop. You look for the chucked parking place, but it isn't there. The Blonde and I were going to review Green's, a recently opened oyster bar and restaurant beside the Bank of England. We got close, but then I'd be whisked away to the living latrine of the Barbican, or Aldgate, or Islington. After an hour of gnashing misery, in a traffic system designed by accountants and the IRA, I was ready to give up, go home and review a baked potato. But the Blonde talked me down, and I parked on the ­Embankment and got a cab back — and even he couldn't make it. "It's somewhere in there, mate. I'll slow down, you open the door and roll out, and then zigzag for the kerb."

The City at night is a forlorn and fearful place. Not just empty, but bereft, except for the occasional man in a dinner jacket looking for the worshipful company of master speculum-mongers. This is the oldest and most venerable bit of London: it contains most of our history, but it repels visitors or inquiry. Green's is a large establishment on two floors. It must have been some financial knocking shop once. The ground floor is a hangar-like bar, entirely bereft of human beings other than a pianist. Upstairs is a restaurant. Again, moribund. It looks like... actually, I can't remember what it looks like. Its image has slid off my cerebellum, like gob off a Ferrari.

I seem to recall thinking it was like an Aberdeen Angus Steakhouse in Leipzig. The menu is the old, stoutly tum-te-tum, pre-St John's English type. Because this is the start of the oyster season, and this is an oyster restaurant, I ordered oysters. Which are your finest oysters, I asked the waiter, who apparently came from a landlocked European country. "The selection, sir." That's not really an answer, is it? Over the previous couple of days I'd had some very good Mersea natives in Scott's and Bentley's, so I ordered them. Oysters come in sizes: number ones being the biggest, number twos being a joke. These must have lied to get taken on as number 10s. They looked like the excavated effluvia from a dwarf's sinuses. The flavour was okay, but really an oyster bar needs to have better oysters than this. Next, my smoked salmon smelt of kipper and cat breath and tasted of fisherman's inner sole. I sent it back, and I rarely send anything back. The smoked haddock, named Parker Bowles, which might actually have been its name or, more likely, is a reference to the bloke who owns the restaurant, is in fact a dish that's as common as Smith and available in almost every fish restaurant in London: smoked haddock on colcannon with a poached egg.

The waiter said it came with hollandaise. It didn't, it came with beurre blanc, which was badly made, using insufficiently reduced wine instead of vinegar, but that was the least of its worries. It wasn't technically inedible — if you read Guinness World Records you'll realise it is possible to eat a bicycle, or a jumbo jet, or your next-door neighbour — I just wouldn't eat it merely to put off starvation. We can draw a veil over the Blonde's food; it was equally tortured. The one place you really want to avoid eating in is an empty fish restaurant on a Monday. This was irredeemably and inexcusably vile, but I felt a cringe of sympathy for the staff. This must be the most depressing restaurant in London, the echoes of the tinkle and croon of the mournful pianist made it sound even more evocatively suicidal, like eating in an underpass at the end of the world. As we left, the manager plaintively apologised for the salmon, saying he'd sack it. "It's better at lunch," he said. "More people."

The City rarely has anywhere that it's a pleasure to eat in because there's no evening trade, and few decent restaurants can survive only on lunch. This is absurd. Here are the richest, greediest bastards in the western hemisphere, and nobody can afford to feed or fleece them.

[kanuna]

Just one comment on the article that I see that needs a little tweaked and that is on the Genesis box mentioned and that is creation would have been about 8 thousand + years ago and as stated in article in six days, was not there at the time due to scheduling conflicts (have to laugh when possible) and I only say this due to the fact of being one of the minority that he is referencing (no offence taken from it). Not knocking the article which is very entertaining once I was able to get around a few of the words for reason known (should had furthered my education...LOL). All an all the article is quite entertaining with interesting perspectives between restaurants and body dis-functions that are both at many times quite the pain in the ass! Great post Ken and I do have to agree about being best at things when not happy, kind of ironic in away. Looks like his reviews would go good with a cup of coffee in the morning.

[Ryan]

The City at night is a forlorn and fearful place. Not just empty, but bereft, except for the occasional man in a dinner jacket looking for the worshipful company of master speculum-mongers.

Perfect description of the City in London.

I've argued for evolution on a forum or two in the past, I often end up feeling like I may as well chase my vestigial tail.

[kjellfrick]

Thanks, Ken! I really liked this article. He has a very good point about how people often misunderstand "balance in nature" and evolution. I teach science and this is one of the main points I take up. I love grumpy...

[Stalebread]

Thanks for posting this piece, Ken. I read it aloud to my wife who went immediately to the London Times site to see what else he's written.

[Ken Gargett]

Thanks for posting this piece, Ken. I read it aloud to my wife who went immediately to the London Times site to see what else he's written.

i've kept stuff he has written going back years tho my computer has buried most of it somewhere impenetrable. his best ever was a review of the famous connaught before ramsey got it. most scathing stuff imaginable. if i can find it, will post.

[Colt45]

i reckon he is an absolutely fabulous writer

I guess it must be a British thing........

[laficion]

I guess it must be a British thing........

The British have always supplied the civilized world with

the best examples of pessimism that human nature has to offer

[El Presidente]

I guess it must be a British thing........

Colt...we all know deep down that Mr Gil is what ken aspires to become

[Huckins]

Ken - hope you find the Connaught review - the "Grill" was my favourite place for several years. Like stepping back into an Edwardian novel.

[Ken Gargett]

Ken - hope you find the Connaught review - the "Grill" was my favourite place for several years. Like stepping back into an Edwardian novel.

i'll keep looking - the review was, i believe, one of the main reasons that the place effectively collapsed and they needed to bring in an outsider like ramsey (i believe that ramsey simply throws gill out of any place he owns if he spots him).

[Colt45]

The British have always supplied the civilized world with

the best examples of pessimism that human nature has to offer

Colt...we all know deep down that Mr Gil is what ken aspires to become

I took the simplistic view of the tie in - driving on the left side of the road, cricket, celebrating queen's birthday, etc.........