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Status anxiety

Once I was a restaurant critic. Now I must book like an ordinary person

Toby Young

Wednesday, 21st November 2007

Toby Young works out his issues

For the past five years or so, my best friends and I have been getting together for a Christmas lunch. Because I’m a food critic — or was, until recently — they have always left it to me to make the booking on the understanding that I’ll be able to secure a better table than they would. More often than not, this assumption proved to be correct and we have enjoyed memorable meals at some of the country’s finest restaurants.

Now that I no longer have a restaurant column, this year is shaping up to be very different. I had forgotten just how hard it is for a mere ‘civilian’ to get a reservation at a decent restaurant over the Christmas period. In the past, when I identified myself by name, the oleaginous Frenchman on the other end of the line would invariably say, ‘Ah! Meester Yong!’ These days, the response is more likely to be, ‘Can you ’old?’

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ian skidmore

November 22nd, 2007 1:33pm

acccept my sympathy. I too had a restaurant column and still haven't got over ringing a restaurant and getting a knock back. Fotunaely I live in a diferent pat of the country than I did then. The restaurants I used often framed my reviews in the window. To get a knock back from one of those would have been unbearable. I get a double whammy because I was a theatre critic as well

Once again

November 30th, 2007 7:36pm

Perhaps AA Gill could be deflated - he too has fattened up on fine words and free fine foods. Readers know that food critics are professional emperors with no clothes. Newspapers needing to cost cut could start right there. If these clowns paid for their own meals and were totally unknown they would still be of no use to ordinary customers who pay exhorbitant prices and aren't able to get tables because of them. Good cooks attract good customers with the aid of the spoken word. Now, IF someone would critique the lavatories and cleanliness of staff and establishment.........! No takers? Thought not.