Warm chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream
Pannacotta with spiced poached pear
If they were so minded, diners in this type of establishment could construct a meal with some territorial integrity – French onion soup, say, followed by steak frites and tarte Tatin. They might head East and feast on tiger prawn salad with mango and five-spiced duck. In an Italophile mood they could tuck into roast field mushroom bruschetta, rigatoni and pannacotta. But more than likely, most British diners will find themselves eating a combination like prawn tempura and ponzu sauce, followed by risotto, followed by chocolate brownie. In other words, it is a mongrel menu that cannibalizes world cuisine and spawns meals that do not gel into a coherent whole because they lack any sound unifying principle.
The existence of such menus might cause the trusting diner to suppose that the kitchen has mastered a repertoire of diverse skills and tastes, when, in reality, these are far beyond the reach of the average second division city bistro or brasserie. Nonetheless, many British people will turn up and pay for this type of package and go away pleased with what they are given because they lack the experience to know whether of its type it is any good or not. Once again, we are putting ourselves at a disadvantage by overlooking what is familiar and on our doorstep, instead dabbling with exotica we rarely understand. Italians have strong ideas about what constitutes a good risotto. Indians recognize a fine masala dosa when they see one. Japanese people know when their sashimi is truly fresh and refuse to settle for less. Back in Britain, any undertrained, ill-equipped outfit can trade on the advantage that if it serves foreign food, then few people – the chefs included – will be equipped to judge it. It is a case of the blind leading the blind. Bill Knott, editor of Caterer and Hotelkeeper, likened it to a game of Chinese whispers where the original message gets more and more distorted in the transmission.
‘The average menu [in the UK], even in restaurants proudly describing themselves as “modern British”, is written in a curious mixture of French, Italian, Spanish and just about any other language that doesn’t involve hieroglyphs. Even worse, many of the foreign terms used are thoroughly inaccurate and deeply misleading. Millefeuille of aubergine, cappuccino of white beans, chicory tarte Tatin … the game of gastronomic Chinese whispers, in which a modish, foreign-sounding dish goes through so many incarnations that it becomes completely meaningless, is all the rage.’
Study the restaurant reviews in national newspapers and you will notice that some 80–90 per cent consist of restaurants in central London. Indeed, restaurant critics frequently get it in the neck from readers for overlooking restaurants outside the metropolis. Claims that newspapers are London-centric in this respect do have some basis, but it overlooks the plight of the British restaurant reviewer. Although it is entertaining to read the occasional excoriating review, readers mainly look for recommendations from critics. The minute they travel beyond the M4, however, the critics have a problem because there are simply not enough establishments worth writing about, and those that are have already been reviewed ten times over. So the critic faces an invidious choice: step outside London and face the risk of having to write a negative review of the ‘elitist London critic attacks popular local institution’ variety – certain to incense the locals – or leave well alone and court criticism for lazily ignoring ‘The Regions’.
The Observer’s restaurant reviewer, Jay Rayner, attracted a large mail bag, many letters using language ‘ripe enough to make a navvy blush’, amounting to ‘string the bastard up’, when he wrote a scathing review of a Desperate Dan-style pub lunch in the West Midlands wherein he lamented the absence of decent restaurants in the area. ‘I sit down with guidebooks and scan furiously, hoping, with each new study, that somehow, something might have changed since the last time I looked. I scan the net. I beg for recommendations. But nothing.’ In response to the heated post bag, Mr Rayner countered accusations of London-centrism by clarifying that he had in fact reviewed establishments from the Isle of Wight to Edinburgh and from the west of Devon to the easternmost tip of Norfolk, and he remained recalcitrant.
‘London really is the best place in Britain in which to eat out, and I refuse to pretend otherwise. There are so many more restaurants here. The food is better. The variety is better. The inventiveness is greater … I’m not claiming that it is always the best value … Nor am I claiming that there are no good restaurants outside London. Obviously there are. Certain cities – Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh – are serious contenders. But still nothing matches the capital’s range. One virtue of a crowded city like London is that it forces everyone to raise their game.’
Such candour is refreshing. However much Britons living outside London attempt to deny it, there is a dearth of good eating places outside the capital. Londoners may well have a terrific choice of restaurants on their doorstep, but their good fortune is not shared by the would-be eating-out public elsewhere. It is no surprise that top British chef, Gordon Ramsay, chose to make a television series entitled Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares: the only surprise is that no one thought up such a project sooner since there is no shortage of ailing restaurants in Britain to provide ample fodder. Nor is it a coincidence that the establishments featured were all outside central London in places where evidence of the much-vaunted British Food Revolution is often thin on the ground. Mr Ramsay’s thumbnail sketch of one Essex Kitchen Nightmare might easily apply to thousands of other aspiring eateries throughout the UK:
‘With over 40 dishes to choose from, Philippe’s menu is global both in size and choice – everything from the traditional all-day English breakfast to Hoisin noodles and Mexican platters. And 70 per cent of the food is bought-in, ready-prepared then often reheated and not cooked to order – an expensive, false economy … The Ramsay take? Definitely more confusion than fusion.’
Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares identified the key shortcomings of too many British restaurants: inadequately trained chefs with ridiculously large, over-ambitious, globalized menus, relying on bought-in food that can be either deep-fried or microwaved. Anyone who takes a stroll past a parade of British catering establishments between 10.00 and 12.00 on a weekday morning can count on seeing fleets of ‘food service’ chilled vans delivering supplies. Short cuts for chefs are not unique to the UK – in every affluent country lesser restaurants do buy in labour-saving items such as pre-cut chips – but in Britain such companies can provide a total service for the caterer, to the extent that if you scan the public notices in local newspapers, it is now common to see catering licences that have been granted on a ‘microwave-only’ basis.
When he wrote his Bad Food Guide in 1967 – a book in which he lampooned low standards in British restaurants – Derek Cooper noted the growing trend towards a uniform blandness or ‘untaste’, a consequence of the creep of convenience food into restaurants, and he predicted more to come:
‘The era of technical development that the catering industry in Britain is undergoing will inevitably mean more standardization, less and less food will be cooked in the kitchens of small restaurants, and more and more will be prepared in factories under conditions of the utmost hygiene, and deep-frozen for consumption hundreds of miles away and months later.’
His comments proved prescient. These days, British chefs don’t need to cook at all. There is no need to do a catering course or serve your time as an apprentice in a reputable kitchen. No need to pay professional wages that will interest a serious young chef. All it takes is someone with half a brain who can be relied upon to turn up each shift and not run out of food; someone whose job it is to reheat, deep-fry, plate and assemble. Like lazy domestic cooks who pop out to Tesco or Marks & Spencer for a boxed ready meal, the chef only needs the catalogue and phone number for catering suppliers who will do all the work for him: delivering to the kitchen door every short cut from pre-balled tri-colour melon, hand-tied bundles of frozen haricots verts, olive oil mash, through to ready-poached
