Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 31 January 2009

An unbiased review of the restaurant owned by my new employer at the Standard<br /> <br type="_moz" />

issue 31 January 2009

An unbiased review of the restaurant owned by my new employer at the Standard

It is what is known on Fleet Street as a ‘marmalade dropper’ — a story so surprising that the piece of toast you are eating as you read it falls from your hand. No, I am not talking about the news that a former KGB colonel has bought the London Evening Standard, but about a small detail buried in the fifth or sixth paragraph of that story. Apparently, Alexander Lebedev’s son Evgeny, who has been appointed a director of the Standard, is the owner of a London restaurant.

The reason this came as such a shock is that I am an ex-restaurant critic with a column in the Evening Standard. What if I had given his son’s restaurant a bad review? Revenge is a dish best served cold — particularly if the victim happens to be a food critic.

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