

Reflections on the role of food critics ...
Everyone has particular skills, some are more obvious than others. Most people know whether they are or aren’t dancers, singers or mathematicians but everyone having mouths and stomachs strangely believe they are skilled tasters and eaters. Yet taste, like other faculties, must be learned and developed through practice. I can certainly belt out a tune but by no stretch of the imagination am I a singer that anyone in their right mind would want to listen to, but suggest to som


Reflections on food as art ...
If restaurant publicists and chefs are to be believed there are an awful lot of artists out there baking bread, rolling pasta, making sauces and tossing salads ! The argument over whether or not food and cooking is art has been waged for many years now by people who have nothing better to do. Is a chef an artist or craftsman ? Strangely enough such an seemingly irrelevant question will often engender the hottest debate amongst a group of food professionals. It would seem to m


Reflections on the death of fine dining ...
Every few years some publication or other sounds the death knell of haute cuisine and fine dining detailing how the decline in both the desire for and standards of Michelin style fine dining and French cuisine in particular are dwindling by the passing minute. True that there are less people that seem to have the time or desire to sit in stuffy ultra expensive dining rooms and be fawned over by pompous waiters serving overly rich food at stratospheric prices. However this was


Reflections on the care & training of waiters ...
Who makes the best waiters ?........answer, waiters ! Simple enough one would think but unfortunately they are few and far between. Actors between jobs may act at being waiters, students play at being waiters and sometimes they are very good at it but in the end there is no substitute for a real professional waiter, the type that makes their life’s purpose the care and service of their guests. A ‘real waiter’ never walks to the kitchen empty handed or past his tables without