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Doesn’t this just kill the restaurant reviewing trade?

Jay Rayner:

Telling people what they should be eating, based on nothing but absurd self-confidence, self-importance and the ability to Google unalloyed cobblers, isn’t clever. It isn’t kind. And it certainly isn’t helpful. It’s nasty and it’s dangerous. And if you’re thinking of emailing me to argue differently, please don’t. You won’t like the reply.

10 thoughts on “Doesn’t this just kill the restaurant reviewing trade?”

  1. As always with the nauseating ‘Guardian’ columnists, the unspoken rule on anything they pontificate about is ‘but of course, I’m exempt’

  2. Not really, writing a restaurant review is not akin to the dietary bollocks espoused by zealots on social media. AA Gill and Rayner describe the experience of eating in certain places: they don’t prescribe diets based on weird foodstuffs. As Mr Rayner himself says

    But there are people with serious and life-threatening medical conditions who, understandably, can be desperate for any sort of glimmer of hope; who will be susceptible to dietary gibberish which won’t do anything for their condition but may leave them hungry, desperately carb-deprived and, as a result, even less well.

  3. It does seem all the gyp’s pushing Jay into grumpy old man territory- which i quite like, but not sure its the G readership’s preferred fodder.

  4. And if you’re thinking of emailing me to argue differently, please don’t. You won’t like the reply.

    Was that an admission that he (?) sends threatening or abusive emails? Has anyone told the feminist grauniad columnists?

  5. The Meissen Bison

    A few good chuckles in that piece and the central tenet is entirely valid but, like Hallowed be, I doubt whether it will find favour with guardian readers who probably have progressive dietary theories which they promulgate tirelessly.

  6. For a Grauniad article, I actually found this one amusing rather than anything else (clearly a reason for having Jay escorted from the premises post-haste).

    There were those who emailed to tell me I could seriously do with losing body fat. Really? You think? Because I’ve always assumed I was the perfect weight for a man of my height. I constantly give thanks for the fact I’m 8ft 7in. Who reads about somebody else’s injury and thinks “You know, what I really need to do now is send this stranger an email telling them they’re fat”? What weird spasm of self-congratulatory joy does someone get from sending an email like that?

    So, not fat so much as “under-tall”. That explains everything. 🙂

  7. Quite amusing. He’s always been a miserable bastard of course and his reviews of rubbish restaurants are his best. He is right about the ‘faddy diet as solution for life’ brigade too.

  8. I can’t help thinking the Graun is on dodgy ground there; have they not espoused the nonsense of the virtues of organic food amongst other fads?

  9. the best food critic ever was (imho) johnathan meades. his review of the hard rock cafe used 99 percent of the article explaining suspended motorbikes, etc. the last sentence was “by the way, the food was crap”

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