Jay Rayner on the Curious Life of a Restaurant Critic

Hello.

 

Being a restaurant critic is a little bit like being an Mi6 intelligence officer, only without the pressing national security issues. While I can’t claim to be anonymous, I can at least make sure not to give restaurants prior-warning that I’m coming. And that means the knotty tradecraft of booking under a pseudonym. Over the years, for example, I have had to train myself to react positively when a number I do not recognise calls on my mobile and asks whether they are speaking to, say, Marc. Back in 2004 I published a novel, The Apologist, about a restaurant critic called Marc Bassett who decides to apologise for everything he’s ever done wrong. He becomes so good at it he’s appointed Chief Apologist to the United Nations, employed to apologise officially for colonialism, slavery and so on. I liked the idea of my fictional restaurant critic emerging into the real world and so I started booking tables in his name. Hence the regular confirmation calls for Marc. Well yes of course this is Marc, and yes, I’m very much looking forward to dining with you.

 

Later, when online booking became de rigeur, I started using my wife’s name. She’s called Pat which is pleasingly androgynous. I could use her email address, she could forward replies to me, and nobody would be surprised if they phoned my mobile and got a male voice. It worked for a while. The problem is Pat is the lead singer with the Jay Rayner Sextet, the jazz outfit I lead. (Check my website, jayrayner.co.uk for dates; you know you want to.) Smart restaurants would google the bookings they had, search up Pat’s name and discover she was married to me. Word got around. So that one had to go. I now have a set of fake email addresses. I haven’t quite got to the point of applying for credit cards in different names. But the fake card thing might happen.

 

Such is the curious life of the restaurant critic, a job I have been doing now for 25 years. I’m marking that milestone with my first cookbook, Nights Out At Home: Recipes and Stories from 25 Years as a Restaurant Critic. Alongside 60 recipes reverse engineered from or inspired by my favourite restaurant dishes – the tandoori lamb chops from Tayyabs, a version of the Ivy’s famed crispy duck salad, even my take on the steak bake from the mighty Greggs -  there’s lots of stories from my time as a professional eater, and inside stuff on the complications of the job. 

 

One of those is, of course, anonymity, or my lack of it. Long before I became the Observer’s restaurant critic in 1999, I already had a picture byline. My face had been gurning down from alongside the headline on the general features I wrote, for many years. After that I started appearing on TV, first on MasterChef and then for a while on the One Show. I also love a game show. Have I done Pointless, you ask? Just four times. I kept going until I won it. As a result, I am very much not anonymous.

 

But as I explain in Nights Out At Home, that’s less of a hindrance than people might assume. Restaurants are like theatre productions. When you go to see a show, the script is already written and the actors cast. The set has been built and the play rehearsed. It doesn’t matter who is in the audience. Nothing will change any of that. Similarly, when you go to a restaurant the recipes have been decided, the ingredients bought, the staff trained and the dining room designed. There is very little the staff can do to change the fundamentals of the experience. Or, as one wise colleague once said, ‘I am yet to find a bad restaurant that becomes a good one just because I walk through the door.’

 

Ah, people say, but can’t they show you a better time? Well, they can try. They can be extra nice to me, but I’m a cynical old sod and will notice if I’m getting preferential treatment. There have, for example, been times when waiters have attempted to take my order before that of the table next to me who were already seated when I arrived. I tell them to deal with them first. They can try sending me freebies, things the chef thought ‘you might like’ that I didn’t order. I send every one back. They can even try to increase my portion size. It does happen. I will notice. In short, after 25 years I may not have anonymity but I do have experience. Of course, none of this is exactly the stuff of James Bond. No strategic national interests are protected. But I do like to think that, like the legendary spy, I am working to keep you safe, if only from terrible dining experiences.