Eating Crow by Jay Rayner Page B

into the caramel-browned meat. It yielded softly to the knife, folding back to reveal its glossy purple innards. It was a fantastic steak. Finally the cow had been given a reason to die.
    “See?” I said, carving happily. “I knew this place could do good.”
    “It’s a steak. They grilled you a steak and you want to give them a medal?”
    “The simplest things are the hardest to get right.”
    “No they’re not. They’re the simplest to get right.”
    “That’s just cynicism, Luke.”
    “I’ve had enough. I’m going to call for the bill and a straitjacket.”

Nine
    L ater, back at the flat, I emptied the Vice Drawer of its brittle store of Manjari and poured myself a large vodka. Lynne was out, hosting a reading by a bunch of gloomy Czech writers, and wouldn’t be home until much later. The place was mine. I stoked up the computer, finished the chocolate, and swilled the vodka around my mouth to strip away any residue on my tongue. It was time to write.
By Marc Basset
    Once, in this column, I claimed that a dish I had eaten had tasted like dog food, only without any of the grace notes. I said of another that it would probably taste better coming up than it did going down. I have used words like “effluent” and “slurry,” “contagion” and “toxic scum.” I once called for a chef to be tied to a pole in a market square—any pole, any market square—and pelted with platefuls of his own glutinous mash. I suggested another might like to try grilling one of his own kidneys, to see if he would then treat the poor, maligned organ with a little more respect. Most recently I argued that a chef should face the death penalty for the crimes against cooking of which he was guilty.
    I said all of these things partly because I really did hate the dishes I had been served, but mostly because I believed that my job as a restaurant critic was to serve you, the readers, not necessarily by providing information but by presenting you with something readable and entertaining. To judge from my mailbag I had good reason to believe that like the Parisians who crowded about the guillotine, you appreciated these sudden outbursts of violence.
    I see now that I was serving you badly. Cruelty may entertain us for a moment, but it is a transitory and, ultimately, feeble pleasure; a tiny one compared to the pleasures of a good meal easily taken. I have concluded I should be finding you fewer cruel jokes and more good meals. And so, from here on, you will no longer find anything negative in this column. If I tell you about a restaurant it is because it is good. If I mention a dish it is because it is worth eating. Life is too short to be wasted on the substandard. I shall, instead, seek out for you only the diamonds in the rough. Which brings me, rather neatly, to the Hanging Cabinet in Smithfield …
    I finished with a few rapturous words about my steak and Luke’s oxtail. I printed it out, scribbled Lynne, if you’re sober enough, have a look at this across the top, and went to bed. It was to be the last restaurant review I would write for a very long time.

    “He’ll sack you.”
    “No he won’t.”
    “I’d sack you.”
    “You’re not Hunter.”
    “No, I’m your girlfriend and I’d still sack you.”
    “It’s the hangover talking.”
    “It’s the girlfriend talking with assistance from the hangover.”
    “Why will he sack me?”
    “Because your columns will be boring.”
    “What’s boring about good restaurants?”
    “Nothing. It’s reviews of them that are boring.”
    “Not necessarily.”
    “Yes, necessarily. It’s the way you are. You write better when horrible things happen to you. Happiness makes you gauche, at least in print.”
    “Maybe that’s the way I was. Maybe I have woken up to nice experiences.”
    “This isn’t you, Marc. None of it’s you.”
    “Maybe it’s just that you don’t like the idea of me moving on—”
    “And what? Discovering yourself? Finding the real you? Listen,