The Dish (4 page)

And another for me . . .

Dear The Dish,

Your vocabulary is that of a five year old, raised by an illiterate lupine. You obviously know nothing about food or you would not review peasant fare: since when did a hamburger merit a write-up in a proper magazine? Go back to the second-rate
student rag from whence you came. I’ll be cancelling my subscription forthwith.

Yours in disgust,

An Ex-reader

Ah, adorable. Presumably by lupine you mean a wolf, not a flower – but either way, show me a wolf that can read and write and I’ll quit my job and take it to Vegas. Illiterate lupine . . . well that, Ex-reader, is what I’d call ‘tautology’– a word they taught me at Wolf School. I’d
point that out to you
if
you’d been brave enough to put your real name and contact details on this letter . . . I wonder if it’s secretly Fergus, or perhaps it’s Sandra, writing with her left hand . . . Oh well, you can’t please all of the people all of the time, I think, as I rip the letter in two and drop it in my bin.

6.40 p.m. . . . we should head off by 7 p.m. if we’re going to avoid a queue
at LuxEris. I pop my head round Roger’s door and he holds up five fingers. Just enough time for me to make myself look presentable, so I head to the ladies’ room.

Tom used to say I had many different faces. I could look
stern
and
unapproachable
, or
like a kid who’s just broken something and hasn’t yet told their mum
. With my glasses on
like a scientist
; with artful make-up
almost Danish.
Sometimes
sweet
, often
anxious.
But I just have one face: grey-green eyes, a smallish nose, regular, not very memorable features; no razor-sharp cheekbones, no Cara Delevingne signature eyebrows; nonetheless, an ideal face for staying under the radar. Even so, I try to tweak my look subtly every time I eat out. Front-of-house staff move around all the time, and I never want to take an unnecessary risk (though
I draw the line at the fake moustache Dad sent me when I started the column). LuxEris is the most glamorous of the restaurants I’ve visited this week, so I let my hair down, sweep a thin layer of black liquid eyeliner over my lids, add another layer of mascara and some lip gloss and that’s me, done.

Roger’s still working but he beckons for me to sit while he finishes up. Now March’s issue is
being put to bed, the layouts that were plastered over these walls have come down. It’ll be at least a week before April’s plans go up, and this is my favourite week in our production schedule because Roger’s walls are, once again, revealed. There are at least twenty frames hanging here but four in particular stand out. The first is a framed quote by an American writer, Elbert Hubbard, about whom
Roger is writing a biography:

Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

When I first saw that it confused me. I’m ashamed to admit I had to double-check that wheat is good and chaff bad, even though coffee beans produce chaff too. I didn’t know Roger then, and I didn’t understand why he’d have that
up there – but he has it to remind him how
not
to do his job.

The second and third frames are photos: one of Roger in the Oval Office, shaking hands with Bill Clinton. And next to it, a photo of Roger when he still had hair, in the eighties, with one arm around Jim Henson, and the other around Miss Piggy. (She’s wearing strapless pink taffeta and pearls, Go Piggy!)

And the final frame is another
quote, just three sentences long, not exactly Shakespeare:

The Foxmore in Battersea is the perfect neighbourhood restaurant: delicious food, fantastic staff and a lovely relaxed dining room combine to make this a near-flawless experience. Let’s start with the bread; in fact I’d happily start, middle and end with it. Served warm with caramelised onion butter, its springy texture and malty crust
make you realise that man could live by bread alone – if only man could get a table here . . .

Not exactly Shakespeare, but they were the first sentences I wrote for Roger.

So now, even though he’s made us late for dinner, and he’s tetchy about last month’s ad revenue, and when I finally do get him into a taxi he realises he’s left his wallet on his desk so we’re going to be even later, there
is no one in this world I would rather work for, and I can’t imagine there ever will be.

‘Lombard Street – and would you mind going via St Paul’s please?’ Roger says to the driver.

He looks tired tonight.

‘Rough day?’ I ask.

‘I could do with something life-affirming to look at, that’s all.’

‘Anything I can do to help?’

‘My daughter’s gone and booked a ticket to Thailand with this new chap
. . . Anyway, let’s not,’ he says, tracing a raindrop down the window of the cab.

‘Are you looking forward to the meal?’

‘Intrigued. The
Telegraph
came on Tuesday – by all accounts you must visit the men’s toilets.’

‘I should have brought my fake moustache after all. Apparently they’ve had a nightmare with the team. Jonn Zavragin’s had to chuck money at one of his old boys to run the kitchen;
I bet he hasn’t even done one shift there himself.’

‘Jonn with two “n”s – do you think he added the extra “n” to make himself sound more rock’n’ roll?’

‘It’s like buying a Porsche, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘It’s just a penis extension for your name.’

‘Ah, now that’s more like it!’ Roger’s face lights up as we drive past the cathedral. ‘Fifteen years and forty million pounds to restore it to glory.’

I let out a whistle. Though actually LuxEris’s launch budget is apparently £8 million, a million on silverware alone. Hope they’ve installed some metal detectors on their exit doors.

‘Majestic, is it not?’ he says.

It is utterly beautiful.

‘St Paul: Patron Saint of London, Patron Saint of Writers and the Press . . . not what you’d call a feminist though,’ says Roger.

‘No?’

‘
I do not permit
a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent.
’

‘Good luck with that! Oh my goodness, don’t tell me that’s the queue?’

A line of at least forty extends from the base of The Needle, the most hulking new skyscraper in town. As we pay, the cabbie gives us a look as if to say:
who’d be mad enough to wait outside on a filthy February night? Sucker born every minute.
More like
every thirty seconds judging by the length of this queue.

We take our place at the back, pulling our coats tight against the drizzle. After a moment, Roger turns his head sharply to the left, like a startled sparrow. ‘Is that racket coming from these paving stones?’

‘Built-in speakers!’ I say, pointing to the concrete blocks at the base of the building.

‘Laura, I don’t mean to start off on
the wrong foot, but do you think, if we are going to be queuing for some time, we might ask them to play a little Vivaldi? Some Doris Day?’

‘I thought you were a huge Jay-Z fan.’

‘I like that one he did with Alicia Keys. I just don’t like this one. “99 Problems” . . .
bitch
this,
bitch
that . . . He’s like the St Paul of rappers.’ In front of us, a couple of shiny-faced suits nod along meaningfully,
like they’re straight out of Bed-Stuy, rather than Bed-Ales. ‘How long do you think this queue will actually be?’

It doesn’t seem to be moving much. ‘An hour? Why?’

He looks at his watch. ‘We could come back tomorrow at 6 p.m. That might be better?’

‘Whatever you prefer.’

‘Ah no. That won’t work. I’ve got an Ocado delivery booked for 8 p.m. Sod it – we’re here now.’

Ocado: meet the course
of history.

It is p
ast midnight by the time we finally emerge from the Hades-like bowels of LuxEris. I have never seen Roger as angry, or as funny, as he has been tonight. Over the last five hours, we have witnessed greed, sloth, gluttony, wrath, envy, nausea, a small fire and a row of golden toilets with breasts.

‘I don’t think I can do it,’ I say, gulping down a lungful of sweet, polluted
London air. ‘It feels like too much.’

‘That’s why you must!’

‘But I can’t do it without going to town.’

‘That’s what I pay you for.’ He takes his own deep breath of relief, then shakes his head rapidly as if trying to rid himself of the horror. ‘Have you written April’s other two reviews yet?’

‘Noodles are done, I’m doing the Italian this weekend.’

‘Drop the noodles . . .’

‘And just run
this?’

‘Maximum impact. We’ll increase it from a single to a double-page spread, stick the lav in the middle. Take whatever word count you need, but nail them.’

‘Sorry, Roger, I think I developed tinnitus in there – could you say that again?’

‘I said: nail them.’

I go home and I write and I write, fuelled by outrage and coffee, until 4 a.m. when I realise the hot flush I’m experiencing is
neither a caffeine overdose, nor excitement at how brilliant my piece is, but a symptom of the onset of mild food poisoning. I creep to the kitchen for a glass of water, keeping the light off so as not to wake Annalex from her sleeping-pill-induced slumber. I end up sitting on the toilet floor, shivering, sweating and sitting vigil.

I slowly sip water, waiting, waiting.

Nothing happens.

And
still nothing.

This is the icing on the cake, or the nail in the coffin – the nail in the icing, quite frankly. I rest my arm and then my head on the toilet seat and pray for sleep or vomit, whichever comes first.

The thing is, my review should be entertaining – I hope – but it’ll be entertaining in a rude way – and it’s easy to write like that when a restaurant is so unremittingly awful. But
that’s not the reason I do this job – truly it isn’t. I’m so much happier when I can write positively about places doing good things . . . So tired . . .

Please just let me be sick, this acidic hum is exhausting. I wish this had happened while I was still at LuxEris, I can think of nothing more fitting for those toilets than yacking on them. What is wrong with this world, that someone would design
a toilet that resembled a naked goddess Venus and cover the whole thing in gold leaf?

Oh no, oh no . . . here it comes, here it comes . . . yes? No, it’s gone again. Bloody cauliflower panna cotta. Or maybe it was those eels? They tasted like a cup of sewage left out in a heatwave.

Oh God, take a deep breath. Sip some water. More water.

OK, I think it’s subsiding. 6.02 a.m.

The minute I lie
back down I feel a wave of nausea rise up so violently, I rush back to the bathroom – but by the time I’m poised over the toilet it’s disappeared again, another false alarm. This pattern repeats itself every ten minutes until 8.00 a.m. when I decide to chance a cup of black tea with honey, which seems to do some good.

I send Roger a text asking if he’s been feeling unwell – he sends back:

Only
an inflamed bile duct! Don’t come in if you’re sick, Laura!

I crawl back into bed and manage two hours of fitful sleep, then wake up and reread my review. I get as far as point 94:

To be clear: I don’t pay to leave my coat in a restaurant, I don’t pay to pee and I don’t pay for tap water.

And remember I wanted to Google those toilets . . . £5,100 for the pan? Gold-leaf seat – £2,200? £300 extra
for the flush?

Seven thousand, six hundred pounds on a toilet is obscene, it is beyond vulgar, it is plain wrong. I start typing again, fingers powered by the last savage bursts of outrage:

Eating out should not be this hard. Eating out is meant to be sociable, pleasurable and fun. Everything that is wrong with the London dining scene is on the menu here: rudeness, arrogance, greed, pretension,
joyless ostentation, vulgarity and a total lack of true hospitality.

You don’t care what people want to eat, how they want to eat it or whether they have to shout over your deafening music in order to have a conversation: all you care about is money.

One last spell check . . . My finger hovers over the mouse. Is this final part too brutal?

LuxEris: Your name, your pricing and everything you
stand for is preposterous. This is not ‘Eatertainment’: this is punishment. Stop referring to your restaurant as a brand – it’s an insult to McDonald’s.

What did Roger say again?
Nail them.

I press send.

Job done.

Roger is already at lunch by the time I make it in at noon. Sandra gives me a filthy look; more filthy than the fact I’m two hours late deserves. Roger must have told her he’s pleased with the piece.

Ah yes! He’s left a Post-it note on my screen saying ‘Withering Heights’ and there’s an email in my inbox:

Have told planning you need double the normal space. I’ll ponder the headline with
Kiki (Bad Things Happen in Basements? The Kitchen Stinks?). Have forwarded to Legal. Terrific job.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether I should reference the Jay-Z track in my first line; a lot of readers might not know the original . . . Best thing to do when I’m not sure about something is to email the family: Jess likes Celine Dion – she actually does, and Dad likes Gilbert
and Sullivan – so let’s see if either picks up on it.

Azeem heads over to my desk. ‘I’m going down Leather Lane,’ he says, taking his wallet out. ‘Halves on a red chicken curry and a pad Thai? I owe you, don’t I?’

‘No curry . . .’ I say, as a little acid reflux makes itself known in my throat.

‘Fish and chips?’

‘Honestly, Azeem, if I eat anything—’

‘Are you dying?’

‘Just staying away from
solids.’

‘They could blend it into a fish and chip smoothie? Very Heston.’

‘Azeem!’

‘Ah,’ he says, looking at me with vague concern. ‘You do look a bit green. Does this mean you’re not coming down The Betsey later?’