‘Give me a minute to do the tables and I’ll be there.’
2–3 p.m.
It takes me a good ten minutes to get out of Le Restaurant as I give the place a quick table-hop on the way through. There is an art to this, which I am still trying to perfect. It takes years of practice, as the last thing you want is to get caught at the table and be forced to sit down and have a drink. Jeremy King is perfection in motion – all those years at The Ivy have paid off and he’s like a knife though butter at The Wolseley as he skewers the stars in the inner circle and then moves on to the agents and publicists around the edge. I have watched Nick Jones do Dean Street Townhouse a few times with slacked-jawed admiration: a slap on the back here, a hug, a shoulder squeeze and he’s out on the street off to another meeting. Gordon always used to do it in his whites, whether he’d been cooking in the kitchen or not. He’d pop on the jacket and walk through, making his presence felt, mainly so everyone could say they’d had dinner at Claridge’s/Restaurant Gordon Ramsay and they’d seen the great man himself.
I walk through saying hello to a few regulars. Tony and Bill, a couple of sixty-somethings who always have the same lunchtime corner table of a Friday. These two are the last of the lunchers. They’ll have a couple of stiff gins before they move on to the wine, but even these two have cut back on the liqueurs. There’s Stephen, an entertainment lawyer who works a few streets away. He entertains in here a few times a week, always at his client’s expense. Opposite him, and always with his back to the room, sits a rather rotund plastic surgeon who lunches here a couple of times a month. He is obviously very good at his job because the women are invariably pneumatic and he is never with the same lady twice. I check up on the family with the dead grandpa; they appear to be happily ordering pudding. I say hello to the table of PAs and offer them a bottle of champagne; it’s the least I can do since I am also comping their bloody lunch.
This little scheme of Caz’s had better work. I do trust her. She does know her job and she’s up there in the top five or six along with Maureen Mills, Anouschka Menzies at Bacchus PR, Tanya Layzell-Payne, Jo Barnes and Jori White. But I could really do with a little less outlay on my publicity just at the moment. I am not sure I can pull my metaphorical belt much tighter.
I have a brief chat with the Formula One bloke and his three other companions. I have to say I’d be very surprised if the brunette with the lips and the off-the-shelves tits was in fact his wife. However, he introduced her as his ‘Mrs’ and it’s amazing what sort of woman a thick, fat wallet can attract.
Finally I am out into the street, for a fag, some fresh air and a brisk stroll to check up on Adam and Le Bar. I must also pop in to see Pippa and La Table at some stage today because there are so many things I need to discuss with her. I turn left out of the door and pass two of the PAs who are now using my olive trees as ashtrays. I would put some of those silver ash stands out by the trees, only the last lot we had were pinched. They lasted five days, four more than the ones we had before. Quite why anyone would want to pinch them is beyond me, but there is, in my experience, zero logic in the mind of the drunken klepto; they appear to have all the sartorial sensibilities of a magpie.
The weather has perked up. The sun has managed to claw its way through the clouds and it’s turning into one of those bright blue winter days that make people think it’s practically summer and they can sit and drink wine outside. Were it not for the endless Christmas tunes being piped out of the snow-smeared windows of every retail outlet I pass, you could mistake this half-out sunshine for the first early days of spring. The street itself is mainly full of middle-aged woman with their heads down, credit cards at the ready, focused on shopping. By some weird migratory force they are drawn to Fenwick, with a list, an agenda and a train to catch by five at the very latest, otherwise the commuter supplements kick in.
‘What do you think?’ grins Adam, meeting me with a fag in hand at the door of Le Bar.
‘What?’
He waggles his wrist in front of me; the bright shiny new watch face flashes, catching the sun.
‘Cartier,’ he sniffs, exhaling out of the side of his mouth. ‘Fucking A.’
‘Very smart.’
‘From the bloke whose office party we did the other day.’
Talk to anyone who runs a hot bar, or who is, more importantly, the maître d’ of a hot restaurant, and you’d be amazed by the amount of stuff they get given. As guardians to the coolest places in town, they get their palms so regularly crossed with little gifts that they’ve got drawers full of stuff. An old mate of mine who was maître d’ for a number of years at one of the capital’s swankiest establishments has a box full of Mont Blanc and Cartier pens. He’s also got four designer watches, three Gucci key rings and two Prada bags and he used to get invited absolutely everywhere. Royal Ascot, Wimbledon, Silverstone – he gave me a couple of Cup Final tickets once because, being a single boy in the restaurant trade, football wasn’t his thing.
Stay running one of these places long enough and the celebs who frequent them cease to become clients whose numbers you recognize on the restaurant phone system; their digits find their way into your own mobile and they become your friends; your number becomes the secret number. They call you instead of the restaurant when they want a last-minute table for them, plus six of their friends. They give you their George Michael tickets by way of a little thank-you, or invite you to meet Madonna at a private gig she’s doing downtown. It’s presents for access. It’s a case of Dom Perignon at Christmas. It’s a lovely bottle of claret on a Wednesday and occasionally it is a weekend away on someone’s yacht. Sometimes it’s cash. But not that often, a £50 here, a £100 thank-you, a £200 tip, although a pal was offered £5,000 the other day to book a table for eight on New Year’s Eve. They have a restaurant that faces the river with a good view of the fireworks. He says he didn’t take it, but I don’t see why not. Your celebrity moment in the sun can often be quite brief. If the restaurant loses cachet, they stop calling. Somewhere else hotter opens, they don’t come. Worst of all, you lose your job, they employ someone else, someone younger and more glamorous, and then no one calls at all.
The trick is not to get too caught up in it. The temptation is to grab the ride, take the drugs, burn the candle at both ends. You always end up doing drugs. Drugs are what keep you going. Drugs are what keep it interesting. Drugs are what bind you all together, partners in crime. Invariably, you end up snorting coke around a kitchen table, while some desperado celebrity talks endlessly about themselves till dawn, and while they roll over and curl up in their duvet, ignoring their agent’s calls, you have to go home, shower, get dressed and pull another twelve-hour shift at work. I know of guys who’ve got so involved in the celebrity night-owl culture that they used to regularly not go to bed for days at a time. Then, Saturday night, they’d crawl into bed only to wake up on Monday morning, having missed a whole day to sleep. But you can see the allure. Everything is fabulous and fabulous fun and you are at the fabulous epicentre of it all. In fact, so much at the epicentre of it all that my mate was offered £25,000 by the National Enquirer just to confirm that Kate Moss was pregnant. He didn’t take it, more fool him I say, but he stayed loyal to his friend.
Except they are not really your friends, although perhaps he and Kate still might be. Mostly they move on and so do you. Neither of you are that useful to each other any more. I remember once being invited to Cannes, as part of some massive piss-up freebie. I was working somewhere hip and happening and very film at the time and I was invited along to make up the numbers. Now, if you think we are debauched in the restaurant world, then you’ve never been to a film party in Cannes. There was so much champagne and cocaine it was de rigueur to walk around with your nostrils frosted like a margarita glass. Rather wonderfully, a gang of errant boys couldn’t be bothered to go to the lavs to take their coke, opting to chop out on a tree outside in the garden. You could tell who they were because the rest of the evening they had small, furiou
s, little black ants crawling out of their nostrils. Fortunately their noses were numb with drugs so it was only the ants who were at all put out.
But I know a few who have played hard and fast with the A-list and ended up, not in rehab, but in Wormwood Scrubs. There is an inherent problem about living a champagne lifestyle on lemonade money and that’s the cash. This old friend of mine was a lovely chap who was pretty and fun and easily led and just wanted to keep up, so he started to rip-off the place where he worked to keep paying the bills and scoring the cocaine. Naturally, he was discovered, and they prosecuted. I think it was too much money to ignore, and off he went. For over a year, I think. None of his glamorous so-called friends came to see him behind bars. He’s come out the other side of it all now. But you can understand why he was so tempted and beguiled by the bright lights in the first place.
Adam takes a swig of what I presume to be a Bloody Mary and admires his watch. ‘It was a good night,’ he grins.
‘Excellent.’
‘We’ve got a big one tonight. The second Christmas party of the week.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Some computer company – you should come down.’
‘Not if I can possibly avoid it. Anyway, was it just the new watch you wanted to show me? Only I’ve a dead body to deal with back at Le Restaurant and I really should try and see Pippa at some point.’
‘Obviously the watch, but I wanted to talk through this party and how much you want out of it?’
‘Right,’ I nod. My phone goes in my pocket. Mission Impossible again. I am ditching that after today, I can’t bear it any longer. I look down. It’s Le Restaurant calling me. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi,’ comes a very quiet whispering voice down the line. ‘You need to …’
I can’t make out what she’s saying.
‘Anna?’
‘Yes?’
‘You’ve got to speak up.’
‘I can’t,’ she whispers. ‘He’s right here!’
‘Who is?’
‘Caz sent the photo.’
‘What photo?’
‘The photo.’
‘What fucking photo!’ I am now shouting.
‘The new restaurant critic from the Evening Standard, Jason, Jason Stone!’ She hisses it so loudly I presume half the restaurant can hear.
‘Five minutes!’ I hang up. I look at Adam, who sees the panic in my eyes.
‘Laters,’ he says and nods towards Le Restaurant up the street.
I set off at a brisk pace and am met two doors up by Anna, who comes towards me, wringing her hands and biting her bottom lip. She looks immaculate in her red shirt and black skirt, almost a little overdressed for the street.
‘He asked for a table, said he hadn’t booked, but I told him I could squeeze him in, then he says he heard that Oscar was starting today, which I thought was a little odd. So I checked the critic photos but he’s not there, and then I remembered Caroline’s email at midday and there he was. It’s him! The new critic, Jason Stone, from the Evening Standard.’
‘Did you tell him that Andrew is still cooking even though he’s handing over to Oscar?’
‘No, because I thought I wasn’t supposed to know who he was. And if I did, he would know that I know, if you see what I mean.’
‘What table is he on?’
‘Three,’ she says.
‘OK. On his own?’
‘Yes.’
I am furious; the critics always do this. They’re like bloody teenage boys: they come far too early. They are always so desperate to be ahead of each other, ahead of the bloggers, or whatever bloody curve they want to be ahead of, so they’re always reviewing in the first week, when the service is shit or the kitchen hasn’t found their feet. It’s very unfair. It’s like being a bride: all that work, all that effort, all that planning, only to be caught with your pants down having a pee. Some of them are so bloody keen they review even before the place is open. Charles Campion and Fay Maschler are famous for it – they like a soft opening. I always think it’s like a theatre critic turning up before the first night and telling everyone how crap the play is, before it’s even had its premier.
In the old days critics were eminently corruptible. The stories about who was in whose pocket are everywhere. Certain magazines and organs were easier than others. Indeed, organs often played a part. There was one chap who used to boast that if the PR took him out to lunch and gave him half-decent drugs, and sucked his cock in a hotel room, he’d happily give the place nine out of ten for the food and a possible ten for the ambience, although he would need a receipt to claim it back on expenses.
Others were less keen on being noshed off and more keen on free nosh. There were some restaurants that kept their legendary five-star status by basically wining and dining the critics for free. They could turn up whenever they fancied and scoff down a three-course lunch with 1948 Petrus just so long as they mentioned it was their ‘favourite place to dine’ whenever they were quizzed by any magazine or newspaper.
One of my favourite stories is about one top chef accusing a hack of accepting a £50,000 bung from his arch-rival. It’s an interesting idea and a generous amount of money, although in the grand scheme of things, not quite enough. It’s not worth losing your job for £50,000 – and what was the £50,000 buying? Good press? You could probably get that for £5,000. Journalists are always broke, that’s why they fiddle their expenses.
I know of two who lost their jobs because of false accounting. With one, it was the classic double-invoicing scam. This journalist was invoicing his paper for hugely expensive restaurant meals which he had the receipts for but wasn’t actually paying. So he was making money on his free meals as well as getting paid for doing the job.
The other scam was a little more problematic. The critic booked to stay in one of those posh country restaurants with rooms above the shop and his wife called up and demanded extra rooms and extra days for their children and the nanny. The small country place said it was rather a lot, what with two double suites and everything, to which the wife replied, ‘Do you want a good review or not?’ Needless to say, the country place called the newspaper to complain about being bullied and the critic was fired forthwith. We all know that it’s standard practice for the critic to drive to the place and charge the newspaper for taxis, earning a quick £3,000 a year extra, but threatening a place with a bad review for not shelling out on free hotel accommodation is something else.
All of which begs the question: just how powerful are the critics? Restaurateurs always say not at all. We always say that they are leeching pariahs with no charm or palate who know absolutely jack about food. And yet, give us a few drinks and we can tell you verbatim what so-and-so said about our place, or how many stars we were given, what our score was, how sustainable we were, what our service was like, how many sodding little knife and fork symbols we got. Not only that, we can also tell you exactly what everyone else got. We know exactly what they said about the competition and, at the same time, we all avidly read what they said about the big boys as well. The reviews of Balthazar, The Colbert, Brasserie Chavot, Jason Atherton’s Social Eating House, The Clove Club and Story were finger-read with moving lips in every kitchen in town.
Fiscally, critics can make a huge difference. I heard one bloke complain that Giles Coren was a total turd the other day and that the shitty review he gave his place south of the river cost him over £250,000. Equally, Chris Galvin always says Coren put his children through private school because his glittering review of Galvin at Windows meant he had to hire another three staff to answer the phones and the place was booked solid for the next three years. And just ask Ollie Dabbous how powerful the critics are! He was lauded from the skies as the new Heston and you can’t get a butt-cheek in his place on Whitfield Street for the next ten months.
That’s not to say there isn’t a whiff of the old boy network about the scene. It’s a small industry and it’s an even smaller group who go around reviewing. We bump into ea
ch other, we become friends, we go out, we get drunk. Christ, I’ll be the first to admit critics can be excellent company. Some of them are right pompous bores who I’ll actively cross Old Compton Street to avoid, but the likes of Coren, Gill and Matthew Norman are as witty and amusing in the flesh as they are on paper. But there is a problem when everyone lives in everyone’s pocket: some people’s pockets are tastier and more glamorous than others, so they become untouchable. No one is ever going to give Chris Corbin and Jeremy King a bad review: they own The Wolseley, The Colbert, The Delaunay, Brasserie Zédel – and we all want to eat there, the critics most especially. On their days off, they want to get tables, they want the good service; in short, they want to be their friends. In fact, let’s be honest, everyone wants to be Chris and Jeremy’s friend!
‘Which one is he?’ I ask now.
‘There.’ Anna nods. ‘Small and dark in the corner.’
I turn around to take a good look. Thank God for Caz, because Jason Stone looks more like an accountant than he does a restaurant critic. Wearing a blue and white striped shirt tucked into his jeans, he is hunched over the menu, laboriously checking each dish and jotting things down in a notebook. A notebook! The only critic to use a notebook is Jay Rayner. Oh, and Matthew Norman. Michael Winner used to bark into a dictaphone, but then he loved everyone knowing he was there. The others try to blend in as much as they can. Staring at Jason Stone, I have to say he is making me more than a little irritated. There is something rather annoying about his stealth tactics and something deeply irritating about his coming here right at the tail-end of a lunchtime service, when everyone is more likely to be a little irritable and off their game.
I walk through the room, passing Luca with a tray of nicely risen rice-pudding soufflés and Michelangelo trying to tempt a table of businessmen with a super dessert wine. The family with the deceased grandpa are on to coffee and petit fours, which is where most of the diners are at. I can’t believe Mr Stone has just turned up expecting to be served.
Restaurant Babylon Page 10