{"id":11,"date":"2007-08-24T16:40:59","date_gmt":"2007-08-24T20:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gastropoda.com\/readings\/2007\/08\/truth-and-consequences\/"},"modified":"2007-09-03T13:46:59","modified_gmt":"2007-09-03T17:46:59","slug":"truth-and-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/readings\/2007\/08\/truth-and-consequences\/","title":{"rendered":"Truth and consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Eating Crow”<\/span>
\nJay Rayner (Simon & Schuster)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

If you think a high-profile restaurant critic should know how to cook, know how to eat, know how to articulate with some wit what makes a dish good and a restaurant worth trying, you\u2019ll be sorry when you read \u201cEating Crow.\u201d Nothing makes all those points more clearly than this sharply written, quite funny and immensely entertaining novel by a reviewer from the highest caste in the profession: British. And knowing such a character exists makes the absence here more obvious.<\/p>\n

\u201cEating Crow\u2019s\u201d plot unravels even as it\u2019s being knitted, but the basic idea is solid enough: A restaurant review is so nasty the chef kills himself and the reviewer starts apologizing and can\u2019t stop until he\u2019s gone professional. Every chapter has great descriptions of food, great insights on the people drawn to it and great lines just tossed off — on the signals napkin-folding gives off about cooking, on women who think they can cook, on newspapers and the fat guys who eat and ascend at them. Unlike so many critics these days, Rayner seems to have a life beyond the table but would never see food as beneath him.<\/p>\n

His fake reviews are rather weak, but then there\u2019s probably no way they could compete with the real prose. Referring to the doomed chef, he writes: \u201cBut what really broke me up about Hestridge was that he couldn\u2019t cook. By his choice of profession he ensured that animals died in vain. He destroyed fish. His sauces were too thick or too thin or just tasteless. His starters were too heavy, his desserts flimsy and insubstantial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rayner is also that rarity, a food writer who can describe the act of cooking without making the reader want to look away in embarrassment (or, worse yet, boredom). He has fresh ways of hitting ethnic cliches, as when he refers to a kebab place in one of London\u2019s outer suburbs \u201cwhere the meat festered rather than cooked.\u201d And he has a sure hand in mixing real and imagined dishes, especially those wacked out with chocolate.<\/p>\n

Maybe Rayner’s greatest revelation is the most obvious: \u201cA good review was a drudge, a desperate struggle for diverting hyperbole. A reliable column needs a strong narrative, and nice experiences in good restaurants don\u2019t make for good stories. . . Terrible places, and the suffering they cause their customers, make for good stories, and so I had begun to seek them out.\u201d Or, to put it the way another character does: \u201cYou\u2019re so funny when you hate.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Eating Crow” Jay Rayner (Simon & Schuster) If you think a high-profile restaurant critic should know how to cook, know how to eat, know how to articulate with some wit what makes a dish good and a restaurant worth trying, you\u2019ll be sorry when you read \u201cEating Crow.\u201d Nothing makes all those points more clearly… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-panchito","category-laffs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/readings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/readings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/readings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/readings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/readings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/readings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/readings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/readings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/readings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}