Restaurant reviews are – like recipes – an easily found form of foodwriting. Small-town newspapers usually have a writer ready to fawn over the ‘latest new place’ in well-practiced tones blending boosterism, civic pride, and desperation for a good meal. Then there are world-class restaurants . . . who draw writers capable of world-class criticism to be published in high-profile global magazines and journals. One of the best (and most biting) (yum, yum) is A.A. Gill, here writing of L’Ami Louis in Paris:
In all my years as a restaurant critic I have learned that there is a certain type of florid, blowsy, patrician Brit who will sidle up and bellow, with a fruity bluster, that if I ever happen to find myself in Paris (as if Paris were a cul-de-sac on a shortcut to somewhere else) there is this little place he knows, proper French, none of your nouvelle nonsense, bloody fantastic foie gras, and roast chicken like Bridget Bardot’s tits, and that I should go. But, they add, don’t bloody write about it. We don’t want Monsieur Yank and his good lady wife turning up in droves. It’s called . . .
Continue reading Tour de Gall at Vanity Fair.
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