My heart goes out to the compilers of the 2009 Michelin Guide to Great Britain and Ireland which was published earlier this week. Not since 1929, the first year of the Great Depression, can an edition of the famous red handbook have been looked forward to less. In the current climate, the prospect of going out for an expensive meal is about as appealing as buying a new house.
I spent five years working as a food critic and some of my most miserable evenings were spent in Michelin-starred restaurants. A typical experience would begin with being put on hold when I called to make a reservation and end with the arrival of the credit card slip on which the waiter had helpfully left room for a ‘tip’ even though the total included 12.5 per cent service. In spite of the difficulties of booking tables, Michelin-starred restaurants are almost never full. Indeed, I remember one place in which I was the only person in the dining room. Even when operating at full capacity, they are notoriously lacking in atmosphere — the inspectors would do better to award tumbleweeds rather than stars. They are holy places in the gastronomic universe and the customers dare not raise their voices.
As a general rule, Michelin-starred restaurants cater to the rich, the famous and the beautiful and if you don’t fall into one of those categories, you will be treated as a nobody. I’ve been told by maître d’s that I have to be in and out in 90 minutes and then made to wait over an hour for my starter. I’ve been seated so close to the kitchen that when I sneezed I was worried that the whole restaurant would catch a cold. And I’ve spent 45 minutes cooling my heels at the bar while a succession of D-list celebrities have walked in off the street and been shown to a table.
Non-VIPS are generally seated in one of two specially designated areas: Siberia and Outer Siberia. The way to tell the difference is simple: if your dining companion keeps craning her neck to look over your shoulder, you’re in Siberia; if she excuses herself to go to the bathroom and then doesn’t return, you’re in Outer Siberia. I have only ever been shown to a top table once and that was a mistake. I knew it was a good table because shortly after my three friends and I had been seated the manager appeared and asked us to move. He explained that some ‘regular customers’ had just walked in and we were sitting at their ‘usual table’. Sure enough, these ‘regulars’ turned out to be Matt Dillon, Uma Thurman, Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Assuming you are not asked to make way for someone more important, a waiter will appear and hand you a menu and a wine list. As he does so, he will ask you if you would like any ‘water for the table’. Don’t be fooled into thinking he means tap water. The owners of Michelin-starred restaurants may pride themselves on sourcing all their food from local producers, but they will import water from Fiji if it means they can charge you £7.50 a bottle.
Do not expect your food to arrive any time soon. Often, a waiter will appear at your table with what you hope will be your appetiser, only to plonk down a morsel of something in an eggcup. I’ve often wondered what the difference is between an amuse-bouche and an amuse-gueule and the answer is…there isn’t one. But why would a pretentious restaurateur use one French word to describe something when he could use two?
French grammar is also popular. In Gordon Ramsay’s Chelsea flagship — still the only restaurant in London deemed worthy of three stars — the tasting menu is described as ‘Menu Prestige’. Isn’t the adjective supposed to come before the noun? It was typical of the garbled Franglais that passes for English in posh restaurants. When the waiter appeared I was tempted to launch into a Yoda impression: ‘Menu Prestige have I will.’ Of course, all of these absurdities pale into insignificance next to the bill. Damon Runyon once asked whether there was a ‘laughing room’ in the basement of New York’s ‘21’ Club — a soundproof chamber where the proprietors convened to set the day’s prices. Every time I emerge from a Michelin-starred restaurant I ask myself the same question.
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