No, we’re not talking about some local food blogger who gets off on being nasty to everyone they come across.
We are referring to Jay Rayner, who we’ve written about a few times in the past.
He had a whale of a time taking down the flagship Michelin three-star restaurant of the George V Hotel in Paris, and if you didn’t read that do yourself a favour and stop in here.
This time around he focused his crosshairs on Farm Girl Café in Chelsea, London, and it doesn’t take long to work out that he isn’t a fan.
You should know that the restaurant markets itself as “A holistic and healthy yet comfortingly simple approach to Australian Café culture”, using “nutritionally nurturing ingredients”.
Here’s how he kicks off his review on the Guardian:
The menu at the Farm Girl Café features lots of initials. There’s V for Vegan. There’s GF for Gluten Free. There’s DF for Dairy Free. I think they’re missing a few. There should be TF for Taste Free and JF for Joy Free and AAHYWEH for Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.
That’s it, Jay – he’s just easing into second gear there, because the jibes keep on coming:
It fills quickly on a cold winter’s evening, with blonde-tressed Chelsea women just bubbling with intolerances. They are fizzing with them, these dairy- and gluten-fearing dietary warriors, seeking sanctuary from the terrifying world of modern food. With them are their pink-cheeked, anxious-looking boyfriends, who clearly fear they are just one more rugby club, traffic-cone-on-your-head piss-up away from being chucked.
Hang on, is he in Chelsea or the Southern Suburbs?
A woman arrives clutching her Yorkshire terrier. They are given a corner table. The dog is offered a bowl of water and a plate of food and disappears on to the floor for dinner. At least somebody gets to eat well.
From the small plates we order the whole (completely out-of-season) globe artichoke, which apparently is gluten free. It’s tough to see how it would be anything other. It has been prepared by someone who either hates globe artichokes or has never met one before: boiled until it is as soft and rank as Grandma’s cabbage, only with none of the glamour…
The damn thing could be disposed of without the aid of teeth or, better still, using a composter. That would remove the middle man, which in this case happens to be me.
I told you he was good.
Jay manages to get the last little plate down, but he can’t get that tasty Yorkie off his mind:
Each of these dishes costs about £8. After this vegan calamity, this extraordinary display of dismal cooking, I find myself eyeing the Yorkshire terrier, greedily. Just hand him over, give me access to the grill, and five minutes.
Mercifully, he decided to skip dessert. That didn’t mean he took his foot off the pedal:
We do not stay for dessert, because we have suffered enough…
It’s not just the dismal cooking that pains me here. It’s the squandering of ingredients and of people’s time and the tiresome narrative of “wellness” with which it’s been flogged. I feel especially bad about our waiter. Tom is a good man. He is charming, on point and utterly wasted here; he should do something more socially useful, like fly tipping or nicking cars.
We also think you’re a good man, Tom – wherever you are.
I know the old saying says ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all’, but we’re kinda glad that Jay often wakes up on the wrong side of the bed.
[source:guardian]
