Word of Mouth blog + Restaurants

• Friday 27 August 2010

• The 'cannibal restaurant' and other themed eateries

  

  Shaka Zulu restaurant, London, where the menu is most definitely nothing to do with cannibalism.

  To my gallows amusement, rumours abounded early this morning of an alleged "cannibal restaurant" soon to open in Berlin and based on the Wari culture of endocannibalism, the respectful consumption of a member of one's own society after they have died.

  According to this video interview with the restaurant's supposed owner, it was to have been his second restaurant, the original, Flimé, being located in Brazil near a Wari reservation. The illusion was bolstered by this website where members are presented with a health questionnaire and asked to decide which body part they want to donate.

  Despite laying themselves wide open to accusations of crass insensitivity, the people behind it have scored a major publicity coup around what would have been the ultimate theme restaurant. In fact, whether there's any substance to this story or not, the reality is in many ways even worse. Just what is it about this curious subset that appeals to restaurant-goers? Continue reading...

  Posted by Marina O'Loughlin 13.30 BST

• Right on queue

  

  A queue outside a restaurant. Photograph: Simon Reddy/Alamy

  A couple of weeks ago we went out for dinner at a well-reviewed, newish restaurant. Though we arrived at a reasonable time, we were forced to queue for just over an hour, packed shoulder to shoulder with jostling punters. I had to fight my way to the bar while busy staff forged their paths through the crush. We drank quite a lot of their wine and at no point did I receive anything even resembling apology.

  Am I, you're probably asking, going to use the next seven hundred words to publicly revenge myself for this outrage to my dignity? Am I hell - I had a bloody marvellous time and I'm going back next week to be treated just the same.
  Continue reading...

  Posted by Tim Hayward 10.40 BST

• Thursday 22 July 2010

• The paywall comes to food criticism

  

  Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. Would you pay just to read another review of a 3 star restaurant? Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

  Since the first web user publicly sneered about a meal online, the demise of the restaurant critic has been loudly forecast. Like many such predictions of death, it has proved to be premature.

  Working on the rough calculation that there are seven web years to every normal one, the big guns of UK reviewing have hung in there for a Methusalan term and their influence shows few signs of weakening. It has been suggested that the Times paywall has reduced the audience for the brilliant Coren and the magisterial Gill to that of a couple of mid-weight food bloggers(a fact which, given their public antipathy to bloggers must gall them immeasurably) but, in general, none of the various attempts to shake up the world of restaurant reviewing have truly done so. Continue reading...

  Posted by Tim Hayward 13.30 BST

• Monday 19 July 2010

• The Restaurant has shut down – but were you hungry for more?

  

  Sarah Willingham, Raymond Blanc and David Moore prepare to offer another grilling in The Restaurant. Photograph: BBC

  Stuart Heritage: Raymond Blanc's TV show is not returning for a fourth series. I'll miss this guilty pleasure

  Continue reading...
  Posted by Stuart Heritage 17.01 BST

• Tuesday 13 July 2010

• Many happy returns, Heathcotes

  

  Chef Paul Heathcote in his kitchen.

  Bluff Lancastrians don't have much truck with daft superstition, but when, on Friday 13 July 1990, just nine days after opening, fire swept through Paul Heathcote's Longridge restaurant even he must have felt that the fates were conspiring against him. Not that there was any time for self-pity. To help raise the £250,000 to open the restaurant, Heathcote had cashed in his pension, sold his house and even flogged his golf clubs to buy a fridge. That kind of financial outlay concentrates the mind, and, two days after the fire, Longridge was back open.

  In the intervening 20 years, Heathcote has built a restaurant group with a £10m annual turnover. More importantly, his influence has transformed the north of England's restaurant scene. In the 1990s Gary Rhodes may have been the identifiable face of 'modern British' cooking, but, certainly up north, Heathcote was the man putting in the hard graft. Continue reading...

  Posted by Tony Naylor 10.15 BST

• Friday 9 July 2010

• Obsidian: a volcanic reaction

  

  Goat's cheese mousse with Parma ham and peas at Obsidian, Manchester. Photograph: Gary Calton for the Observer

  My review of Obsidian in Manchester appears to have made a few people rather cross. I'm not surprised. I wasn't happy about it either.

  I went all the way to Manchester for a lousy lunch in a deserted restaurant that really shouldn't have been open. The complaints come from the Manchester Confidential website and from Dan Young, a food writer who runs the Young and Foodish blog. Continue reading...

  Posted by Jay Rayner 10.00 BST

• Thursday 24 June 2010

• Meet the chef? No thanks

  

  The kitchen at the re-opened Pétrus. Photograph: Katherine Rose for the Observer

  I went to Gordon Ramsay's new restaurant Pétrus the other night, not an entirely happy experience. But I was particularly bemused by the staff's insistence at the end of our meal that I might like to visit the kitchen and meet the chef. I declined (read: ran screaming for the hills). I have simply no idea why anyone – me, the waitstaff, the kitchen brigade – would think this is a good idea.

  I said at the time that it was disturbingly akin to the Victorian habit of gawking at Bedlam inmates; not suggesting for a second that kitchen staff are lunatics – although I've worked in enough restaurants to not deny this altogether – but more for the whole freakshow element of this curious practice.
  Continue reading...

  Posted by Marina O'Loughlin 10.00 BST

• Wednesday 9 June 2010

• Menus: malleable or immutable?

  

  Could I have my snail porridge without the snails please, Mr Blumenthal?

  During a recent off-duty meal at Sat Bains' fabulous restaurant in Nottingham, the chef showed me his new tasting menu idea. Parties for his chef's table will, in advance of their booking, be sent a list of a couple of dozen key ingredients – crab, say, or beef, or mackerel, or passion fruit – from which they will be invited to choose anywhere from eight to 13, depending upon how much they wish to spend. Bains and his team will then build the menu around those choices.
  Continue reading...

  Posted by Jay Rayner 10.00 BST

• Monday 7 June 2010

• Giles Coren's at it again

  

  Giles Coren. Photograph: Elizabeth Hoff/five

  Times restaurant critic and professional Mr Angry, Giles Coren is at it again. Who knows if it's to promote his new book or because it genuinely gets his goat, but his latest target is that harmless and slightly obsessive species, those who photograph their dinner.

  As well as taking a crack at the "pale, flabby" people he assumes are food bloggers with their "wankerish little digicameras", he continues, in trademark fashion, "I think photographing one's food in a restaurant is easily as rude, disrespectful and brutish as … dropping one's trousers in the middle of the room and taking a massive dump".

  I'm unsure why he's getting his bowels in such a twist. I asked a bunch of restaurant fans – not bloggers – if anyone had any objections to the practice, and with the exception of our own Tim Hayward nobody gave much of a hoot.
  Continue reading...

  Posted by Marina O'Loughlin 12.40 BST

• Wednesday 2 June 2010

• Now then, Sheffield

  

  Rabbit loin at The Milestone, Sheffield. Anyone know what their early bird offer's like? Photograph: Gary Calton for the Observer

  Steel, music, straight-talking, a tinder-dry sense of humour and a very good documentary festival. There are many things that come to mind, when you think of Sheffield, but, to be honest, food isn't one of them.

  Until now Sheffield's only real foodie claim to fame has been Henderson's Relish, and its best restaurants - Artisan; Nonna's; Silversmith's - remain very much local heroes, rather than regional names. That, however, may start to change with the launch this week of the first Sheffield Food Festival.

  Running from June 1-6 it will seek to shine a spotlight on Sheffield's network of good food venues. To help celebrate, over on the Travel site this month's budget eating top 10 looks at Sheff.
  Continue reading...

  Posted by Tony Naylor 10.00 BST

• Thursday 27 May 2010

• Restaurant websites: casting the net

  

  Restaurants can make food beautiful and functional - why do so many neglect their websites? Photograph: Creativ Studio Heinemann / WestEnd61/Rex Features

  Does it matter how restaurants communicate online? Industry observers clearly think so. Of late the trade press has been full of sage web 2.0 wisdom, with Restaurant Magazine even publishing a 32-page online marketing supplement.

  But then, clearly restaurants need all the help they can get. Rare is the restaurant that doesn't have a website these days. Even rarer is finding a good one. Elegantly designed and / or witty sites that deliver accurate information swiftly are at a premium. Earlier this month I had to gently point out to a Michelin-starred venue that someone had misspelled 'restaurant' in 28-point font on their homepage. That is how seriously many restaurants treat their websites.
  Continue reading...

  Posted by Tony Naylor 09.50 BST

• Wednesday 19 May 2010

• Self-assembly restaurant food

  

  Perhaps the paragon of the self-assembly dish - crispy duck pancakes. Photograph: Antonio Olmos for the Observer

  Life's all about decisions. Which bunch of dead-eyed weasels do you trust to run the country? Should I start watching Glee or put the telly on Freebay? Should I be using a comma or a semi-colon? It's a relief, therefore, at the end of the day to be able to make a pleasurable one. What am I having for tea? Sometimes, even better, we can decide not to decide by going out to eat and have all the work and most of the choosing done for us. Except that restaurateurs seem increasingly unwilling to take responsibility for their side of the bargain. Some of them seem to want us to do far too much of the work.
  Continue reading...

  Posted by Tim Hayward 13.00 BST

• Tuesday 18 May 2010

• Cardiff's cut price culinary gems

  

  The Welsh Assembly building in Cardiff. Photograph: David Jones/PA

  This month the budgets eats bandwagon that is my gob rolled into Cardiff as I went in search of superior scran in the Welsh capital's cafes, pubs, takeaways and curry houses. The deal - as you may know if you have seen any of these pieces - is that I'm looking for affordable venues in various British cities, places where you can eat and drink something of quality from a snack to a main meal, for under a tenner a head. Or thereabouts.

  You will find my Cardiff top 10 which includes the likes of Chai Street, Trade Street Cafe, Vegetarian Food Studio, Cafe Citta and Gwdihw, over on Travel, but this is where you get to have your say, not just on the places I've included, but, more importantly, on the places that I didn't. Continue reading...

  Posted by Tony Naylor 10.45 BST

• Tuesday 27 April 2010

• René Redzepi at the 50 best restaurants award

  Jay Rayner catches up with the young chef from Denmark whose Noma restaurant has topped this year's list of the 50 best restaurants in the world

  Posted by Jay Rayner, Elliot Smith 09.30 BST

• Jay Rayner at The Fat Duck

  Jay Rayner travels to Bray to ask Heston Blumenthal about that food poisoning scandal, the 50 best restaurants list and whether he is spreading himself too thin to attend to the food that started his ascent to fame

  Posted by Jay Rayner, Elliot Smith 09.00 BST

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