Goldeneye is the house in Jamaica where Ian Fleming wrote James Bond, and spanked his wife; that is why Fleming created Bond I think, even as he ran the Sunday Times foreign desk and (some say) spies — to spank the Russians, who have very big bottoms. Ah, for the days when hacks could afford houses in Jamaica and lived exquisite fantasy lives in which they got loads of sex, and killed people (usually foreigners) to pay the mortgage. (As I never tire of pointing out, James Bond was a civil servant.) Goldeneye is a hotel now, smooth, twinkling and monetised, with a line of wooden villas stretched along a raked beach, dotted with flippers, because tourists love, for some reason, to impersonate fish. Fleming’s cold white house stares over it, open to those with $5,500 a night to spend — that is, presumably, Bond villains.
Goldeneye is only semi-themed, because anything else would be tasteless; there is nothing as frightening as Rosa Klebb’s arse, or even face. There are photographs of Ursula Andress, who was a very improbable fisherman in Dr No (she was a fisherman like Karl Lagerfeld is a fisherman), in the Bond Bar, and there is a pool in the shape of an eye, which is prettier than the people who paddle in it, but none of this amounts to themed leisure, being too subtle, and lacking guns and cars that do strange things, such as swim or write books. The room key wallet, however, is thrillingly suicidal; it suggests you burn after reading. A says this message is written in the font used by the diplomatic service. (He failed an interview with a certain government department, being so discreet that he neglected to speak.) But there are neither sharks nor lairs here, although we never entirely lose our fear of the lagoon — just a processional of fragile American tourists, tanned into latte, aching under their own expectations of pleasure.
The restaurant is in Fleming’s gazebo; it is dim and almost silent, and it faces a wooden bridge over the lagoon, which bounces, in a very non-spy way, when you walk across it. (It’s hard to creep when you are bouncing.) There are honeymooners in pools of light (the honeymooner is native to Jamaica) on $900-a-night Licence to Chill breaks. A is wracked the gazebo does not serve Dr No Burgers or Nick Nack butter pats, although there is a cocktail called Bond’s Dirty Banana, which morally may be the last word on James Bond, who was, among other things, a most terrible slag. A decides the gazebo should be a pie shop, because the puns demand it. ‘Live and Let Pie,’ he says, ‘The Pie Who Loved Me. Tomorrow Never Pies. For Your Pies Only. Pie Another Day. Piefall.’ Nah, I say, if the gazebo is themed, it should be fish, because this is Jamaica, and the puns demand it. Fishfinger. Octopus. Licence to Krill. A View to a Krill. Thunderbass. A swiftly sidesteps to pastry: The Man With the Currant Bun. Stalemate.
The food is a calm (that is, rich) version of Jamaican fare which is, essentially, meat smeared in a paste called jerk, which tears your mouth off in fury; it’s a revolt of its own; its very name means ‘poke’, as in ‘poke’ the spice into the flesh. Jamaican food is not subtle (why should it be when this island is so lush it is rotting?) and so A’s jerk lamb is a bit of a monster, dense and angry, while my sweet-and-sour chicken is gloopy, messy, violently orange, like a stabbed Mr Man. Somehow I think Bond villains like to eat nouvelle cuisine (they may have invented it) — tiny pieces of meat, or fish, or just coins.
So Goldeneye should be a French restaurant. It is like Fleming and his fantasy spy — smooth, glossy, cold.
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