A menu for the tough times

New Zealand Herald, New Zealand - 10 Oct 2008
4:00AM Saturday Oct 11, 2008
By Paul Thomas

Great cooking, they say, is all in the timing. English TV chef Rick Stein mightn't miss a beat in the kitchen but his claim in last weekend's Canvas that New Zealand restaurants are too cheap was as untimely as a cold snap in lambing season.

Stein argues that restaurants here and in Australia aren't profitable enough but one assumes that survival rather than maximising returns will be the primary focus in the buyer's market ushered in by this week's economic train wreck.

You'd think the last thing on restaurateurs' minds, as they contemplate the bleak commercial landscape, would be jacking up their prices.

Restaurants come and, more often than not, go. That's the nature of the beast.

Some of Sydney's most celebrated establishments - the likes of Tetsuya's, Claude's and Buon Ricordo - are into their third decade.

Others, whose openings generated giddy excitement in foodie circles and many column inches of free advertising, have flourished briefly and then disappeared, the gastronomic equivalents of passing fads or one-hit wonders.

The comparison is apt because the restaurant business increasingly seems a branch of fashion and entertainment, notably in the celebrity status given certain chefs whose culinary skills are more than matched by their talent for self-marketing.

Then there's the increasing prominence given to restaurant reviews which used to languish back with gardening columns and amateur dramatics. I'd like to think I played a small part in this development by hiring Renaissance man Hamish Keith to review restaurants for a short-lived and long-forgotten Auckland newspaper.

There were no advance expenses for contributors in those days, so Keith had to carry the cost of his weekly outings for as long as it took the paper to reimburse him, which was generally far too long. I fear my inability to extract money from the accounts department was a constant source of exasperation.

Elsewhere, the grandees of the genre are spared such indignities. Even after almost four decades, the expenses of the late R.W. "Johnny" Apple could still generate shock and awe among his colleagues at the New York Times.

By his admission, Apple was a gourmand as opposed to a gourmet; rather than dither over a menu he simplified what could be a terribly difficult choice by telling them to bring everything.

American restaurant reviewing tends to be respectfully earnest, with a disconcerting tendency to approach what's on the plate with the probing inquisitiveness of a forensic pathologist.

British practitioners generally take a breezier, more personal tack, to the point that some reviews read like an extract from an autobiography.

The big dog of the British pack is the Sunday Times' A.A. Gill.

He was once booted out of one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants for having described him as "a wonderful chef but second-rate human being".

This seems precious and perverse of someone who built a brand on reducing underlings to tears.

Some years ago, Vanity Fair unleashed Gill on New York's hottest restaurant, a nouveau Chinese monument to pretension, 66.

He produced a vituperative tour de force which, in addition to making the food sound repulsive, caught the snobbery and bogusness that so often surrounds supposedly cutting-edge projects.

"Tell me," he wrote, "what two attributes should hot and sour soup have? Take your time. It was neither ... the memory of the rest has been elided into one long, bland, watery compost that could barely incite flatulence."

Vanity Fair didn't get where it is by mercilessly taking the p*** out of Manhattan's smart set, which is essentially what Gill did.

Who, after all, had made 66 New York's hottest restaurant? So it's not surprising he wasn't given a regular gig.

I'm sure all concerned are more comfortable with the piece in a recent issue which ends thus: "I am comforted by the idea of a place more beautiful than Earth, where the anxieties of worldly life vanish and all you feel is bliss. Does such a heaven exist? If not - or until we reach it - there is La Grenouille."

Last week, a friend and I conducted a whirlwind sampling of restaurants in the Wellington region.

Most passed the value for money test which I still find the single best measure.
Some - the French Bistro in Martinborough, Bella Italia in Petone, Simply Paris in Cuba Street - passed with flying colours.

The big disappointment was the much-touted fish and chips at the Lake Ferry hotel on the South Wairarapa coast.

They were half as good as those on offer a stone's throw from the Beehive and, at $10 a pop, twice as expensive.