Victor Lewis Smith's complete Guardian restaurant columns

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

All 29 reviews, published in The Guardian's Weekend magazine between September 2004 and April 2005, including correspondence from the letters page. Thanks to Joy Nktonga for creating the links below.

INDEX:
1. The Groes Inn, Conwy (11/9/04; p1)
2. The Black Bull Inn, Richmond (18/9/04; p1)
3. Manze's, London SE1 (25/9/04; p1)
4. Club Gascon, London EC1 (2/10/04; p1)
5. Michael Caines, Bristol (9/10/04; p2)
6. Number One, Edinburgh (16/10/04; p2)
7. Fifteen, London N1 (23/10/04; p2)
8. The Joy King, Cheshire (30/10/04; p2)
9. Fishworks, Bath (6/11/04; p3)
10. Harry Ramsden's Express, Glasgow (13/11/04; p3)
11. Fredericks, London N1 (20/11/04; p3)
12. Biagi's, London W1 (27/11/04; p3)
[No column on 4/12/04 – Weekend was an Xmas food special, not featuring VLS]
13. Quince and Medlar, Cockermouth (11/12/04; p4)
[No column on 18/12/04 due to Weekend having 'Look back on 2004'theme; Guardian not published on 25/12/04]
14. Arkle, Chester (1/1/05; p4)
15. The Three Fishes, Whalley (8/1/05; p4)
16. Morangie House Hotel, Tain (15/1/05; p4)
17. The Gaucho Grill, London W1 (22/1/05; p5)
18. Bettys, Harrogate (29/1/05; p5)
19. Restaurant Jules Verne, Eiffel Tower (5/2/05; p6)
20. Lanes, London W1 (12/1/05; p6)
21. Cross Hands Hotel, Bristol (19/2/05; p6)
22. Roka, London W1 (26/2/05; p6)
23. Masala Craft, Mumbai (5/3/05; p6)
[Arabella Weir stood in for VLS on 12/3/05]
24. Green's, west Didsbury (19/3/05; p7)
25. The Crown at Whitebrook (26/03/05; p7)
26. Little Chef, Clapham, Lancs.
27. L'Enclume, Cavendish Street, Cartmel, Cumbria
28. The Trouble House, Tetbury, Glos (16/04/05; p8).
29. Audrey's Fish And Chip Shop, Bridlington, East Yorkshire (23/04/05; p8)

[DJ One Record]

And apparently Chris Morris is opening his own restaurant to celebrate.

[alan strang]

Getting Charlie Brooker to make him cheese on toast does not constitute 'opening a restaurant'.

[DJ One Record]

No, but I'm sure VLS will review that anyway, just 'cuz.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

The first person to mention the food being 'bitter' gets a tweak from me.

I love Vic, but restaurant critics infuriate me. I don't know why, since my arguments in favour of comedy criticism should also apply to food. It's probably part jealousy, part sympathy for the waiters I think. Fat fucks guzzling away and sneering into notebooks.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

1. The Groes Inn
Telephone 01492 650545
Address Tyn-y-Groes, nr Conwy

Victor Lewis-Smith
Saturday September 11, 2004
The Guardian

I'd arranged to have lunch in Wales with a German acquaintance, a gourmet who once (very briefly) owned a Sino-Teutonic restaurant called A Wok In The Black Forest. As we drove towards Conwy, he confided that he'd now lived in this country long enough to conclude that the British are preoccupied with regulations, and are far more authoritarian than his own supposedly law-obsessed nation.
In particular, he was appalled by the number of "forbidden" signs he saw everywhere (No Parking, No Waiting, No Sitting, No Standing, Keep Off The Grass, Keep Out), and by the hostile negativity of our service industries, with their unwelcoming "wait here to be seated" placards in restaurants, and waiters who delight in smugly responding "It's off" when you give them your order. "Give a Brit a clipboard and a shred of authority," he told me, "and they all turn into traffic wardens, because saying 'no' is your national sport."

He proved his point when we arrived at The Groes Inn (it rhymes with Joyce), and immediately drew my attention to the child-unfriendly "No Prams" and "No Pushchairs" signs on the door (euphemisms for "You're welcome to enter but, do us a favour, please just go away"). From the moment we stepped inside, I regretted that there wasn't another sign saying "No Bibelots or Knick-Knacks", because the place was crammed to its fake half-timbered rafters with clutter and gewgaws, some of which looked as though they'd been there since the place was awarded its licence in 1573.  Gaudy trinkets dangled from every beam, with military hats, old cooking utensils, and Victorian postcards jammed tightly against glass-encased cricket bats, and even a huge trout in a plastic frame. I also caught sight of a Welsh dresser sandwiched between a pouffe and a tallboy. God bless the Prince of Wales.

On reaching our table, I thought nothing could be more refreshing than the "Caesar salad with classic dressing and croutons". And nothing would have been more refreshing, because what arrived was an even more dismal travesty of possibly the greatest dish ever to have originated in the US (well, just across the border in Tijuana, anyway) than those wretched supermarket box kits that also masquerade under the name. No heart of a romaine lettuce, no subtle whiff of garlic, no egg, no anchovy fillets, nor even a dash of Worcestershire sauce to impart an anchovy flavour. Just a few limp, wilted leaves sprinkled with too many damp croutons, and some nondescript bits of old cheese (which I ate Caerphilly), all covered with a thick coating of gunge. More of a seizure salad, really.

My German colleague's potage was slammed down precariously on the table, and one sip confirmed that it was "underseasoned, like most British soups". Worse, its frothy sabayon texture suggested a recent brutal encounter with an electric food processor, and I pined for the good old days when soups like this would be tammied on a kitchenmaid's leg. The service was equally frothy, with a disingenuous faux-urgency that reminded me of those meaningless "on hold" telephonic phrases ("Your call is important to us"), but we eventually received our wine, though not the parsimonious half-bottle of Chablis we'd ordered. Germans love puns, which may be why he looked at the label, then inquired, "Mcon for lunch?" just as the soup was being sloshed down.

When the main courses finally arrived, my companion's Manx kippers in butter (with added bread and butter) didn't require a lemon so much as a tub of industrial-strength Trico. Well, only a proprietorial degreasing agent could have cut through all that added fat, its cloying texture further exacerbated by the superfluous presence of mounds of bacon.

As for my "fisherman's pie in a creamy cheese sauce, topped with crushed potato and served with fresh vegetables", it fell foul of my golden rule: if I can make a better fist of a dish than the chef, then the chef has clearly failed. The allegedly wild salmon had the flabby texture of the cheap, farmed variety (I blame overcooking), and was taking its final desultory swim in a vapid sauce that resembled either a split hollandaise or school custard; and where were the contrasting tastes of smoked haddock, or cod, or prawns? Bizarrely, the self-same croutons that had marred the potage and the seizure salad reappeared in bloated form in the sauce (creating a disagreeable mulchy texture). When you find yourself glancing enviously at a trout in a plastic frame, you know you're sitting over a whole bowl of wrong.

To be fair, the bread-and-butter pudding (made from bara brith Welsh bread) served with ginger ice cream was faultless, the more so when accompanied by a glass of jobbing muscat. But to be fairer, lunch was a bleak and forlorn affair, thanks to a farinaceously obsessed chef who had achieved a sort of gastronomic alchemy. He'd made a pig's ear out of a fish pie.

· Open: All week, 12 noon-3pm; 6.30-11pm (Saturday, 6-11pm).
Menus: Lunch from £11.90 for two courses.
Wheelchair access (no WC).

[Bill Oddie]

LOL seizure salad.



He's no AA Gill, although he has found a restaurant outside of London, a feat Gill has never managed.

[kidsick5000]

As long as he keeps going to crap eateries he'll be great.
He wont be so entertaining if he enjoys the place.

[Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer]

Will Self's resturant column was good, and I've always quite liked Michael Winner's too for sheer fun.  I hate the pomposity and self-indulgent vitriol of some critics. The vitriol and venom is dispensed too freely and willingly to have any effect - thus you get some critics who will just despise anything, with no wit or purpose. I think the best critics - really of any field - have a self-deprecating humour about the dubious purpose of their job, something which I think Self and Winner had. It's pointless saying '...the soi-distant Chef's special, tomato and caper sauce looked like a puddle of damp turds left by a troupe of ill-behaved children at an inferior prep school, and tasted just as disgraceful. The fig and goat's cheese tart stank the place out like an oaf's nappy and clung to the roof of the mouth like an over-excited French whore I once had an encounter with in Marseilles. Meanwhile, the Keralan fish biryani reminded me of my former Matron at Winchester, a large unsightly beast called Mrs. Harrenhauser with dumplings like sandbags and a penchant for smutting the new boys'  because there's no real criticism in it, objective or otherwise, just a bunch of words which only make sense to the critic. If you're going to be just unpleasant and sneering, then fine, but at least have the manners to admit what you're doing, rather than pretending it's some higher level of journalism. Saying that, I'd quite like to be a restaurant critic.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

This week's column:


2. The Black Bull Inn, Moulton, Richmond

Victor Lewis-Smith
Saturday September 18, 2004
The Guardian

Telephone: 01325 377289.
Address: Moulton, Richmond, North Yorkshire.
Open: Lunch, Mon-Fri, 12 noon-2pm; dinner, Mon-Sat, 6.30-9.45pm.
Price: Prix fixe lunch, £17.50; dinner, starters £3.95-£14.95, main courses, £14.75-£22.
Wheelchair access, no disabled WC.

Now that just about every desert island on the planet has become the personal fiefdom of some reclusive billionaire or other, how am I ever to fulfil my childhood fantasy of becoming a latter-day Robinson Crusoe? Easy. I shall maroon myself not in the South Seas but on a large, beshrubbed traffic island on the A1. There, while juggernauts whizz by in the fast lane, I'll listen on my wind-up radio to the wind-up presenters on the Today programme, and sleep in a hammock fashioned from the truckers' discarded condoms, skilfully knotted together. As for food, I'll survive by foraging on road kill and the little salty bits in the corners of old crisp packets, while sucking precious moisture from jettisoned cartons of Um Bongo fruit drink, and spend my leisure hours hurling abuse at any passing motorcyclists, who will soon come to speak of the legend that is a latter-day Robinson Crusoe.

The huge traffic island at Scotch Corner would suit me nicely, I thought to myself when I passed it recently. I had just fled from a pretentious dump off the A1 (I won't name it, but I simply couldn't get past its menu, which offered absurd dishes of the "pan-fried ostrich on a bed of mangetout engrossed in a rich coulis of diesel oil surmounted by a Cumberland sausage with a noisette of sperm sabayon" variety), and was circling the roundabout, wondering where to go instead, when suddenly inspiration struck. Three miles east (past St Michael and All Angels Middleton Tyas) lay the gastronomic Orbiston Parva of Moulton, which is home of one of Yorkshire's most reliable culinary treasures, the Black Bull Inn.

Run by the mother-and-daughter team of Audrey and Sarah Pagendam, this old country pub has been serving excellent food since 1963, and I originally discovered it years ago by trusting to the only truly reliable restaurant guide there is: one's own nose. Loitering in the car park next to the kitchen's extractor fans (which never lie), I identified the odours of fresh and salubrious cooking, and a quick glance through the door revealed head chef Paul Grundy and his staff darting about efficiently in traditional whites. Surprisingly, the place makes little attempt to advertise itself, but then again, I suppose it doesn't need to. Because, while most restaurants have to search for their clientele, in the case of the Black Bull it's the discerning customers who do the seeking.

Not having booked, I'd expected to dine in the first-come-first-served fish bar, where the local oysters and langoustines are invariably sublime, and the seafood plate a triumph. But luckily there was a spare table in the Conservatory, a light and airy section bedecked with early locomotive memorabilia and resembling the board room of Rhodesian Railways circa 1930. That train motif is carried to its logical conclusion in The Brighton Belle section, an original 1932 Pullman Carriage that serves as a dining car, but sadly goes nowhere at all. Rather like most of our present-day trains, in fact, except that here the mussels and crabs are on the plate, rather than on the surly railway stewardesses.

Forty years ago, the Black Bull's five-courses-for-a-guinea suppers were quintessentially English, but nowadays its extensive three-course menu is shot through with French influences. My companion and I decided to go rich with the starters, then plain with the mains, so her lavish warm salad of foie gras, lobster, pancetta and chanterelles with pineau dressing was followed by a simple, succulent grilled lobster with seafood linguine, while my warm salad of squat lobster and bacon gave way to the unpretentious honesty of good old grilled Dover sole, served in its prime (did you know that sole has the best flavour a day or two after death?). And for those of us in the know, what better way to conclude dinner here than with their sublime Black Bull crunch, a classic brown-bread-and-raisin vanilla ice cream that's more addictive than heroin (though arguably not quite as slimming)?

Over port, we discussed the only question that really matters when evaluating a restaurant: what makes you pleased to be here? The ambience is agreeably rural, the well-trained staff have no airs but plenty of graces, the clientele is grand but unaffected (everything from rugger buggers to elderly colonels with cataracts from Catterick), and although the wine cellar could do with a few more half bottles, it's pretty comprehensive and reasonably priced. But, above all, the Black Bull has escaped from the nervousness that afflicts so much British cooking, ignoring the silly fads, the PR hype and the kowtowing to Michelin that plagues more fashionable restaurants, and holding fast to the Anglo-French traditions that they've long excelled in. Eating here would certainly be a revelation for any foreigner whose only previous experience of our native culinary heritage has been an encounter with a "full English breakfast", that disgustingly fatty and indigestible meal that's only ever consumed in hotels, mostly by crapulent businessmen in plastic suits with halitosis that can bubble paint off a window sill at 50 paces.

[Hornet]

Even worse are the citics who are (allegedly) paid to write glowing reviews and I am thinking particularly of reviews of a certain restaurant, possibly manned by 15 trainee chefs, overseen by some kind of wanky mockney type who had glowing, arse-licking reviews from a certain london-based newspaper.

I suppose also retaining a PR firm at £25k per month also helps to keep you in the public eye.

This same restaurant I understand now has beans on toast at £7.50.  Pukka!

[Joy Nktonga]

True Hornet, but the last review I read of the un-named place you mentioned (I really can't remember where it was or I'd provide a link) panned everything about it thoroughly, from the service to the food itself, so I guess no-one's buying off the critics anymore.

[Bean Is A Carrot]

True Hornet, but the last review I read of the un-named place you mentioned (I really can't remember where it was or I'd provide a link) panned everything about it thoroughly, from the service to the food itself, so I guess no-one's buying off the critics anymore.

Well I heard he'd almost bankrupted himself setting up the restaurant, so that'll be why he's had to ditch the PR firm. Except a few more cringy supermarket ads soon.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Yesterday's:

3. Manze's, London SE1
Telephone: 020-7407 2985
Address: 87 Tower Bridge Road, London SE1

Long, long ago, back in the days when Danniella Westbrook's nostrils hadn't yet got divorced, when sausages weren't 80% bread, 17% fat and 2% eyelid (don't ask about the other 1%), and when high court judges were assuring us that Mary Archer was fragrant, that Robert Maxwell was honest and that Liberace wasn't homosexual, the merry tinkle of a Wall's ice-cream van approaching the neighbourhood was a sure sign that the outside temperature must have plummeted to minus 3.

"Stop me and buy one" was the Wall's motto, and my favoured purchase was always their Zoom ice lolly, which came in three flavours (red flavour, blue flavour and yellow flavour), unless you were colour-blind, in which case there was only one flavour. Incidentally, although the Wall's name has become synonymous with lollies and ices, the company actually started out in Victorian times in the sausage and pie business, hence (I suppose) the expression: "Walls have ears." Damn and blast. Now you know what was in the other 1%.

Many of the Italian families who migrated to London in the 19th century did a reverse-Wall's, by opening ice-cream stores that eventually transmogrified into pie shops. Honest east London folk were confident that nothing untoward would be lurking in their low-priced mince pies (ironically, cockney rhyming slang for "eyes"), and a century later these establishments still exude that same air of thrift and unpretentious reliability. A friend in Walthamstow introduced me to these underappreciated treasures many years ago, when he took me to the Wood Street Pie and Mash Shop (they're always "shops", never "restaurants" or "cafes"), and I've been on the lookout for them ever since, especially in the east and south of the capital. Well, they're something of a cock-er-ney tradition in those parts, like visiting the Blind Beggar (commonly known as "the Tardis pub", because there must be at least a million East Enders who all claim to have been drinking there the night that Ronnie Kray shot George Cornell).


The oldest surviving example of a pie and eel shop is the wondrous Manze's in Tower Bridge Road, which has barely changed since it opened in 1891. (How many shops, cafes or restaurants could make that boast?) This family business has other outlets in Peckham, Deptford and Chapel Market, but this is the holy grail for aficionados, with quaint tiled surroundings, white marble tables, ornate mirrors and hard, narrow wooden benches that play havoc with your Chalfonts (St Giles = piles) and were clearly designed with the emaciated, toasted-whippet physique of the Victorian worker in mind. There's a pre-first world war schoolroom feel to the interior, which may explain why half of the clientele it attracted while I was there were astonishingly elderly types who resembled extras from a Fellini film (one with so many missing teeth that his tongue looked as though it was in jail), gratefully sucking stewed eel off the bone. And the other half? Tourists seeking out authentic London experiences, along with pinstriped City types, price-conscious office workers and a couple of loud and self-important merchant bankers (I forget what they're rhyming slang for).

The recipe for the pies is a closely guarded family secret, but I'd bet my testicles that they're made with cold water pastry and baked in the traditional style. As with the best feu de bois-cooked pizzas, the perfect meat pie should be slightly burnt on the outside and slightly doughy on the inside, to the point that the uninitiated might think that it should have been cooked for longer at a lower temperature. Served with lumpy mashed potato and parsley liquor (a green sauce based on a crude, floury roux), the contrast in flavours and textures is always a winner: burnt pastry, soggy pastry, stewed minced meat, all doused in bland liquor, cut through with chilli vinegar and copious amounts of the spice that spawned a famous cockney joke:

"I have an orgasm every time I sneeze."

"Really? What do you take for it?"

"White pepper."

Eaten in situ with a fork and spoon (hold the food down with the former, cut it with the latter), pie and mash is best consumed on a cold day with the windows steamed up, but it's delicious in summer, too. True, it polarises (unenlightened friends head for the hills), but if you've never tried it, then do so soon, because these unassuming and ludicrously low-priced shops are rapidly dying out (I blame soaring rents and gastronomic snobbery) at the rate of one a year. The only trouble with them is that I've only just started in this job and I'm already becoming a fat bastard, as was brought home to me forcefully when I struggled to extricate myself from the narrow bench table, having just consumed an order of double pie and triple mash, and left the premises high on carbs, filled with self-loathing. I've let Dr Atkins down, I've let you down and, most of all, I've let myself down.

Price: £6 for two, including Tizer.
Open: Lunch only, Monday-Saturday.
Wheelchair users can and do eat here (there's a slight, easily negotiated incline at the door). No WC, disabled or otherwise.

[Purple Tentacle]

I'm going to copyright a new theory called Victor's Law, where you find any random piece written by Victor Lewis Smith in the last ten years, and find a recycled joke from Inside Victor Lewis Smith somewhere inside.

Play along at home! It's easy!

(Walls have ears is this week's answer, by the way).


I hope VLS has been taking tips from Michael Winner, because he's going to ingest an awful lot of Chef's "Special Sauce" over the next few months......

[alan strang]

I'm going to copyright a new theory called Victor's Law, where you find any random piece written by Victor Lewis Smith in the last ten years, and find a recycled joke from Inside Victor Lewis Smith somewhere inside.

You're about ten years too late. Victor's 'recycling' stretches back a lot further than Inside Victor Lewis Smith. It's become more of a cliche to point it out.

I can't really get too annoyed with him for re-using old material. His working method owes more to the gag-bank humourists of another age - professional comedians who amassed a load of jokes over the years and who popped an old one in every so often to assist with the flow of a routine.

For the same reason I can't get annoyed while listening to such repeated jokes on old Captain Kremmen episodes (of which there were many - the gag-bank humourist being Barry Cryer) or Kenny Everett shows in general - a multitude of 'familiar' gags popping up all over the place.

I think it misses the point a bit to perceive Victor Lewis Smith as a mere 'comedy writer' (any more than one could describe Kenny Everett as a 'comedy sketch actor). He's Victor Lewis Smith. A genuine one-off.

Having said that...

[TJ]

Everything that alan strang said. People say he recycles joke, and in complaining about it they miss the wood for the trees. *jokes*, and not ideas or entire sketches word for word, unlike some other people I could mention. I've always found it quite thrilling when a familiar VLS one-liner turns up in a piece I've never seen or heard before; to me, it's no different to a jazz musician riffing away on their trademark musical themes.

That said, I do think he's a bitter, failed chef who endlessly recycles his old menus.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I can't work out whether he's taking the piss in that pie shop review or not. He slags off the pies, but in a way which suggests he's quite fond of them. Or fond of the pie-shop tradition anyway. His 'snobbery' often reads very tongue in cheek too, although it seems to be genuine at the same time.

I dunno, he's a strange bloke. You can never make him out. And that's why he's so funny.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

A couple of letters to the Weekend Guardian:


Victor Lewis-Smith ... what a brilliant acquisition for Weekend, and an overdue injection of humour mixed with intelligence and razor-sharp observations. Oh, and an eye for good food, too! I fell off the sofa when reading his description (Eating Out, September 25) of an elderly man " ... with so many missing teeth that his tongue looked as though it was in jail". Wonderful stuff.
David Lloyd
Ty Nant, Conwy

Much as I hate to nick the Flake from Victor Lewis-Smith's 99, the Zoom ice lolly was produced by Lyons Maid, not Wall's. Wall's started the fashion for rocket-shaped lollies with their own creation, the Booster, but its mere two flavours (orange and red) prompted the rival firm to introduce its three-flavoured counterpart in a gesture of one-upmanship worthy of the space race of the period. In fairness, the Booster had much better fins.
Roger Thomas

And here's yesterday's:

4. Club Gascon, London EC1
Telephone: 020-7796 0600
Address: 57 West Smithfield, London EC1

I was supposed to be at Club Gascon in London by 8pm, but was running late due to an incident with security staff at Manchester airport. Having failed to find a bomb in the soles of my shoes or in my navel, they'd delightedly confiscated a miniature corkscrew from my keyring, whereupon I politely pointed out that they were nevertheless still prepared to let me get on board armed with a bottle of my favourite Château Musar, a potentially lethal weapon (and Middle Eastern to boot), which I could smash in half in the aircraft's lavatory before hacking off the pilot's head and seizing control of the plane. Authority seldom responds well to sarcasm, and they kept me waiting until the next flight, but then I always seem to get delayed at airports. I put it down to all the offal I eat doing this job. It must be my iron-rich blood that sets off the alarms.

It's the job of a good maître d' to spot a late diner in distress and calm things down. So alarm bells started ringing the moment I reached the restaurant because, having fought my way inside (past potential diners spilling out into the street), I encountered no welcome from anyone, let alone the maître d'. When my existence was eventually acknowledged by a staff member, it was done so grudgingly, and when I asked to be moved from the table he'd seated me at (because an adjacent diner in the throes of pulmonary convulsions was giving a one-man recital of Great Expectorations), he curtly told me, "I don't take orders, somebody else does."

"Are you my waiter?"

"Yes."

"May I move from this table?"

"No."

So far, I was enjoying my interaction with this club about as much as the average seal pup does.

Twenty minutes later, nothing had arrived, nor been offered. Even a first-year catering student knows to put bread, water or a glass of wine on the table, but not here. But that did at least afford me plenty of time to survey the clientele. The assorted braying pinstripes, tourists and gastronomic neophytes had little in common with each other, or with me, so this certainly wasn't a club (in the sense of "an association of persons of like sympathies"), but was it a taste of Gascony? Well, up to a point. The south-western French province has a tradition of hearty peasant food, of tripe, eels and maize-fed chicken; but what I encountered here (served on plates that resembled slabs of slate from a Lake District tourist bibelot shop) was more paltry than poultry, and much of it was portentous, overly fussy coq. Indeed, the thirtysomething miniature tapas-style dishes on offer didn't constitute a menu so much as a symposium, so eclectic that it was well-nigh impossible to select a half dozen that amounted to a coherent order.

Eventually, some dishes did arrive, and now is perhaps the time to mention that the wife in the couple I was eating with takes no prisoners (she once told Harold Pinter that "The Caretaker is a bloody boring name for a play"). She hated the grandiloquent surroundings and demeanour, disapproved of the lilliputian portions (costing on average a tenner apiece), and pronounced the kebab of farthing-sized queen scallops and snails with juicy aubergine "vile ... it tastes of less than nothing". The old-fashioned cassoulet Toulousain that I tried was better, though short on Toulouse sausage (which, classically, should constitute one-third of the dish), and where was the golden crust? As for the cappuccino of black pudding, lobster and asparagus, that underwhelmed us all, and although the casserole of girolles, green beans and fresh almonds worked well, when do those small but intensely flavoured mushrooms ever fail?

Above all, Gascony is noted for foie gras, but does chef Pascal Aussignac have to use it so incontinently (it featured in at least eight dishes)? The stuff is perfect as it is, so don't ruin it with fashion-victim combinations such as foie gras popcorn (I kid you not), especially when it's overpowered (and ruined) by cumin seed. As for the sorbets that spasmodically appeared, may I explode the myth that these "cleanse the palate"? They don't. First they freeze it, then they gum it up (which here, admittedly, was a mercy).

What was it that made me pleased to be here? Absolutely nothing. Nobody seemed concerned about our wellbeing; nobody greeted us, showed anything but the most perfunctory interest in us, or even said goodbye. I'm told that when it opened in the late 90s, this place was wonderful, and doubtless it was. But now it's resting on its laurels, so pleased with itself that it's neglecting the basics that any restaurant should provide. Incredibly, it received a Michelin star in 2002, an award that just reinforces my growing belief in the lack of genuine knowledge that those self-proclaimed arbiters of gastronomic taste really possess (a subject to which I intend to return).

Need any further convincing? Well, Salman Rushdie and his wife Padma Lakshmi often eat there, so don't ask for a window seat if they're in. Because if someone shouts out "duck", you'll never be sure if it's an urgent instruction, or merely a menu suggestion.

Open: Lunch, Mon-Fri, 12 noon-2pm; dinner, Mon-Sat, 7-10pm, (10.30pm Fri & Sat)
Price: Small tapas-style dishes ranging from £5.50-£38 each. My dinner for three, with wine: £181.97.
All major credit cards. No wheelchair access.

[Ambient Sheep]

This is all great stuff (the seal clubbing line was brilliant), but isn't there a teensy problem here?  Once word gets round that VLS is the new Guardian restaurant critic (which after this review of a trendy London place surely it will), won't that skew the treatment he receives?  He is, after all, very recognisable.

Which would be a pity.

(Glad he's not JUST been doing negative reviews, by the way.)

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Restaurant reviewers aren't supposed be incognito though - most restauranteurs make it their business to find out what they look like so they can be given special treatment.

Ditto theatres. Or anything really.

[Ambient Sheep]

Restaurant reviewers aren't supposed be incognito though...

What would be the point of that then?

...most restauranteurs make it their business to find out what they look like so they can be given special treatment.

To be honest I know that at least some restaurants do know who the critics are, and that a lot of complicity goes on in such relationships, but I suppose what I was getting at that in the case of a celeb reviewer such as VL-S even the *lazy* restauranteurs might notice.

Clearly this lot didn't though.

Ditto theatres. Or anything really.

No, not ditto theatres...surely a theatre company doesn't treat a critic any differently from the rest of the audience?  Or am I being naive in some way?  I suppose they might try a bit harder during the performance if they know one's in...

Sorry, this post came across as very confrontational; it wasn't meant to be, but I can't quite figure out how to reword it.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Or do you mean that they'll recognise him and therefore give him an atypical meal/service? Yeah, that's true.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Surely a theatre company doesn't treat a critic any differently from the rest of the audience?  

The first night is usully critics' night though, and you'll see the producers/mamangement in the foyer greasing up to the critics. Obviously they try and make the play itself excellent every night, but when the critics are in they take special care over the hospitality etc. Anything to get them in a good mood.

[Almost Yearly]

Still don't find his jokes (1½ per week-page) clever or funny, nor his personality likeable or in any other way compelling.


Food wit: it's a matter of taste.

[Ambient Sheep]

The first night is usully critics' night though, and you'll see the producers/mamangement in the foyer greasing up to the critics. Obviously they try and make the play itself excellent every night, but when the critics are in they take special care over the hospitality etc.

Ah true, that makes sense.

Or do you mean that they'll recognise him and therefore give him an atypical meal/service?

Um, yes!  What did *you* mean?  <confused smile>

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Victor Lewis-Smith
Saturday October 9, 2004
The Guardian

5. Michael Caines Restaurant, Bristol
Telephone: 0117 910 5309
Address: Marriott Royal Hotel, College Green, Bristol
Open: Lunch, Tues-Fri, 12 noon-2.30pm; dinner, Mon-Sat, 7-10pm.
Price: Starters from £7.95, main courses from £17.50, desserts £8.50. Wheelchair access and WC.

We all know what Larkin said about your mum and dad, and the first time they "fuck you up" is when they name you. Romeo Beckham is going to be tormented throughout his schooldays simply because his parents wanted to display their single scintilla of classical knowledge, and he's by no means the saddest case I've come across. Think of the childhood hell that must have been endured by the TV reporter Nina Nannar, the radio announcer Fenella Fudge, or the journalist Michaela Wrong, and years of cruel playground jibes were surely the reason that Big Daddy (originally Shirley Crabtree) took up wrestling. Even at university, a clarinettist I once knew called Richard Bauwels was always sniggeringly referred to by fellow students as Dicky Bowels.

When I told my guest (a Vivian Stanshall lookalike) that we would be lunching at Michael Caines Restaurant, he nodded and said, "No wonder he changed his name from Maurice Micklewhite." I was referring, of course, not to the film star proprietor of Deya, but to the West Country's finest young chef, who lives in the Bristol Marriott Royal Hotel, adjacent to its Champagne Bar, where I tried to con the Viv-alike into ordering a fashionable new cocktail. "Ask the barmaid for a 'Hands up and give me everything in the till - now!' " I advised him (a ruse that sadly is seldom successful).

On the wall was a photograph of Archibald Leach sipping champagne, a picture that puzzled me until I recalled that the actor better known as Cary Grant hailed from Bristol (not a lot of people know that). And I also remembered that he'd once received a telegram from an impertinent (and tight-fisted) hack asking, "How old Cary Grant?" to which he'd replied, "Old Cary Grant fine. How you?"

The restaurant itself was formerly the hotel's main lobby, and has all the imposing formality of the Royal Courts of Justice. There's something almost intimidating about the Georgian neoclassic vaulted atrium with its Bath stone pillars, arches, balconies, stained glass and faux-Greek statues, which may explain why nobody else had dared to venture inside when we entered at 1pm. As we sat down, a man sporting a garish jacket that made him look like a children's entertainer (or possibly molester) walked in, but lost confidence and quickly slunk out again. He should have stayed, because what Caines and his head chef, Shane Goodway (who studied under Michel Roux), have created here is a gastronomic experience of exceptional intensity.

Like the crab bisque, with globules of basil oil floating beneath spume. And the risotto of wild mushrooms in a Gewürztraminer sauce with asparagus, far better balanced than the more commonly encountered version with vermouth (which tends to drown the delicate flavours of the vegetables). The pan-fried scallops wrapped in pancetta with an aubergine truffle purée and a lemon thyme jus had Viv-alike raving about Goodway's lilliputian-style cuisine. "There are hundreds of things in here," he mused. "Bonsai ... not things that have been chopped, just tiny things that have stayed tiny." So there were. The first sproutings of a lettuce here, courgettes that never turned into courges there, carrots that never went through puberty. Vegetables that were the victims of infanticide.

The lilliputian theme continued into the main courses, such as my pan-fried fillet of Pembrokeshire cod with broad bean purée, peas, wild mushrooms and a broad bean sauce. In particular, the tiny wild mushrooms had been steeped in some sort of fruity wine vinegar, and had turned into miniature squibs, detonating in a series of controlled explosions in the mouth.

As for Viv, his fillet of sea bass with vegetables à la niçoise and a rich gazpacho reminded me of how they used to prepare this percoid fish as a speciality at the Carlton in Cannes. Only the mashed potato was a disaster. Had it been near a machine, which invariably turns honest mash into either wallpaper paste or potty putty?

The corpse of milk was overpriced at £10 for the selection. But what a selection, including Keens cheddar and le Troupeau (a handmade Roquefort, and there are precious few of those remaining). Viv, meanwhile, munched through the "homemade macarons (sic) with a selection of ice creams and sorbets", which were served in a line, and looked as though (like Monty Python's mouse organ) they should be played rather than eaten, while lecturing me (amateur botanist that he is) about the wild chanterelles I'd just eaten. Apparently, mushrooms have as many as 36,000 sexes, which might make blind dates a bit risky.

As we stood up to leave, someone approached him asking, "Are you Viv Stanshall?" "Yes," he replied without missing a beat, "and I have been dead for nine years. But I still find that a good lunch sets me up for the day." Not just a good lunch. It was "perfick", as the other Mr Larkin once said.

[Munday's Chylde]

Anyone else find these really dull?

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I normally find restaurant reviews horribly dull (people with too much money droning on about the intensity of a fucking radish or whatever), but I find VLS's column entertaining and funny. He's also incredibly unpredictable about what he likes and dislikes - you can't say that of many critics.

It probably comes down to whether you consider food to be an artform like music, film, comedy etc. if you do, it's good to have a reviewer with high standards who knows what he's talking about. Wouldn't it be great if new comedy shows were given the same 'grilling' (ho) as new restaurants?

[Gavin]

Anyone else find these really dull?

It never actually occured to me to read them.