With eating out embedded in our DNA, food critic Jay Rayner advises restaurateurs on how to improve their game.
The Book of Exodus contains very little advice on how and what we should be eating now, if you don’t include the whole “manna from heaven” business, which frankly I don’t. No wonder my Jewish brethren are stereotyped as a greedy bunch who attempt to elicit love from their children through overfeeding. We carry within us the dismal cultural memory of 40 years in the dessert, being fed nothing but flaky white stuff. Who can blame us for overcompensating with salt beef sandwiches the size of our own head and a pronounced Danish pastry habit?
The lack of Old Testament guidance on matters culinary is unfortunate because boy, do we now need it. In the 21st century, food has been elevated from being that thing we did three times a day to keep us alive, to the status of new religion. A self-appointed priesthood of chefs, adjective-happy food columnists and wellness gurus spouting nutritional cobblers gathered from the planet “superfood” constantly assault us with advice: on what to eat when, on how to have a colon as shiny and new as Gwyneth Paltrow’s, on the correct recipes for dishes you didn’t realise you had been doing wrong all your life.
Read the full article by Jay Rayner at Good Food.