Why Tom (Sometimes) Doesn’t Eat

A ridiculous title, of course. Anyone who knows me will be aware that I couldn't have got to my present shape without regular sessions in the nosebag. What it should have read, had I had a half decent sub editor, was Why Tom Sometimes Doesn't Write About What He Eats.

The fellow scribblers whose work I read most frequently are Messrs Coren & Rayner, not to be confused with a similar sounding firm of solicitors in Golders Green. Like all good reviewers they are slow to sink the boot in. Trust me, dear reader, after weeks of trying to turn same old, same old into a golden flax of a review, that is sometimes very tempting. I have been known to do it. Why?

It may make one sound like a James Cagney-esque hoodlum to say, well, they deserved it, but in some cases they really do. The 19th century monument in Bordeaux, for example, with the worst service in the world, and food to match. Or an Italian roof top paradise with the greatest view ever, whose owner locked himself in the bar to avoid the wrath of his diners. A pleasure to give both of them a verbal kicking.

But it ain't necessarily so. In 2012 the very wonderful Josh Littlejohn and Alice Thompson set up a charity called Social Bite to help not just homeless people, but to go to the very roots of homelessness itself. It's Christmas - give them a donation. One of their fundraising schemes involved a restaurant in Edinburgh's West End. It went through a couple of incarnations and is now permanently closed. Wearing my brightest reviewer's hat and with my shiniest pen and newest notepad I turned up for lunch. It was awful. Notepad returned to pocket: not a word written. How on earth can you slag off such a good cause?

There is also one's innate sense of fairness. Any good lawyer (and I was one of these) knows two things. Justice and fairness don't always go together: but if something's not fair, it's very seldom just. And that's where today's article comes in. Take the example of one of the few chefs whom I regard as a personal friend. Over a good few years, I'd eaten his food many times, always with pleasure. When he set up on his own, I turned up around this time of year. I ate a partridge dish of consummate quality. Wonderful, but you can't write a review on the basis of two plates of food. Returned with L, and had a car crash of a meal. Had this been my first encounter with said chef, the score on the door would have been very low. Shome mishtake, I said to myself, and passed it by. I've now eaten there many wonderful times and scored accordingly.

Which brings me to Wednesday. A new place. Had had lunch. Only two choices, not enough to write home (or abroad) about. So, back for dinner. Still a slightly shortish menu. Makes economic sense, but filter in things which the assembled company doesn't much care for and the choice ends up fairly restricted. That's fine, but if you're putting just a few dishes on, they've got to be spot on. That's where the problems lay. Two starters for a table for three. The first was completely lacking in flavour. The second was a classic dish which I know well. I'm not such a traditionalist to believe that the classics can't be improved on, but adding a base of vegetable sludge, probably made by whooshing left over soup, is not the way to do it. The irony is that the component parts were there and were perfectly fine, but completely overwhelmed.

Why not tell us the gristly detail, I hear you ask? Well, the mains were pretty good; the owner and staff are delightful, and they keep an excellent cellar. Edit out the starters and a fine time was had by all. We had very much enjoyed our lunch first time out. It's a fairly new business. Busy just now, but I don't want to dissuade anyone from going to try it in the dark days of January and February.

For that reason, you'll hear nothing further, at least until I've given it another chance. Merry Christmas.

That's it from Tom Eats! this year, apart from our Review of the Year which will take up the next two weeks. We'll then be taking our usual winter break