272. Diners.

 

  Dining out is a great pleasure - in the main - chefs crucify themselves to invent, design, prepare, present and come up with excuses such as sustainability and “respecting the entire animal” for using ever cheaper ingredients in their dishes in order to keep themselves solvent to provide dishes to customers; Maîtres  D’Hotel - the very best at least - schmooze and smarm charmingly and convincingly (who doesn’t want to feel loved by the maître d’, feel picked out for special attention and to be congratulated that the dish or wine just chosen was “an excellent choice”?); the usually young front of house staff, soft voiced and often not fully conversant in English, struggle to remember the detailed descriptions of what they’re bringing out to their diners and to enable old blokes like me to understand what they’re whispering and precisely what is on the plate set before one  ….. aaah! the pleasures of dining out. There are many more.

  But then there are the other diners who are generally horrible. And not one of the pleasures of dining out. The problem is that the younger middle classes now just have too much money and while being useless to society and self absorbed, they are able to make themselves seen in decent restaurants though it would be better that they were never seen by anyone apart from their fellow self-admirers and ‘selfie’-takers.

  This diatribe, not yet finished, was set off by a recent visit to Weston super Mare’s The Ginger Pig Kitchen (which really does deserve a mention in The Good Food Guide given the guide’s new approach to sites of dining out that caused it to allow hipster neighbourhood restaurants such as Eat Vietnam in the Stirchley Socialist Republic to be admitted to its august pages). I was pleased (and surprised) to see how busy the restaurant was at 6PM on a Thursday evening but I noticed that there had been a paradigm shift in the clientele dining there - the Brummie and West Midlands elderly holidaymakers had made way for a younger, scruffier (sorry, more casual) collection of diners with middle class West Country accents. And a lot of them spoke very loudly.

  My table was unfortunately positioned next to that of the loudest man in the room where he sat with his three dining companions. One of the females had a loud repetitive inauthentic laugh - ha ha ha - which advertised her presence to everyone else in the restaurant and filled in for the periods of a few seconds when the male, a large man of about 40, unsuccessfully doing his best to look cool and admirable, gave his tongue a rest. The group behaved as though they were entitled to ignore the presence of any other diners in the room or, conversely, to inflict their dull conversation on the other diners whose presence they were treating with indifference. In truth it is likely that they were indeed unaware of all the other diners except that they provided an audience for them.

  The previous evening I had dined at an Indian restaurant and again was unfortunate enough to be sat next to a table of excruciatingly loud mid-twenty year old men whose conversations were carried out by what could only be described as shouting with respite only being obtained when they paused, which they frequently did, to pose for ‘selfies’. 

  Diners, especially those from the middle class which feels empowered to use foul and filthy language on social media about anyone who does not share their outlook on life, live self-righteously and sanctimoniously, are relatively well-educated but are often vaguely thick and foolish, adept at manipulative behaviour, seem to be running riot even in fine restaurants. Apart from the question of loud speech there is the question of dressing to dine.

  I found it hard to believe that male diners at Adam’s restaurant thought it appropriate to turn up to dine in shorts when I ate there one evening a few weeks ago on a not particularly warm night. What was the staff to do? Adam’s is not a cheap burger joint and diners should be expected to respect the nature of the restaurant and fellow diners. I really don’t want to have the sight of hairy male legs inflicted on me while I’m dealing with my mackerel ceviche. 

  It’s all about middle class entitlement. This is the section of society that allows its children to rampage around other diners in dining establishments which have embraced the concept of child-friendly restaurants. They speak to their brats in ways designed to broadcast to those unfortunate enough to be around them that they have very bright and forward children. If only they would understand that no-one finds their children to be any where as charming or as interesting as they think they are (though there is usually some old middle class biddy sitting somewhere nearby ready to engage the horrors in a silly question and answer conversation). Advice to restaurateurs - don’t be child friendly (unless you sell burgers and hand out free plastic toys) - be dog friendly instead - dogs cause far fewer problems, are much better behaved and are far less likely to spread disease than human brats do.

  The worst gastronomic product of the new socialist middle class is the blogger/self-proclaimed food expert -  usually aged in the range 25 to 49. These are self-publicists, rapidly approaching, or having already arrived at, a feeling of lost youth and who are unsuccessful in a career that is useful to society. They think that chefs and important restaurant figures love them whereas they are in fact rather disdainful of these sad people, often alcoholics, but humour them just in case a potential diner does take notice of a negative review sparked off by any perceived slight they receive in a restaurant. Notably these people are never offered a job as a food reviewer for a respectable organ of any type and they haunt the internet tweeting like there’s no tomorrow. By the time they arrive at fifty they have run to seed looking prematurely aged, have established alcoholism but have been unsuccessful in overcoming their insecurities and have developed even more severe personality traits than they had one or two decades before.

  Earlier this year, I was dining in a restaurant belonging to a celebrity chef and had the dubious honour of witnessing one of these ‘influencers’ - a woman - preening herself over an expensive plate of fish and chips and self-consciously drawing attention to herself. I had no idea who she was but was interested that chef himself brought her meal out to her - I’m not entirely sure that he wasn’t taking the mickey - but I searched around the internet and found that this individual - her literary skills clearly somewhat limited - had recorded her day visiting this particular restaurant and I was pleased to have identified this particular diner though I have long since forgotten her identity and I doubt that I would recognise her again. Oh, how  short are those fifteen minutes of fame.

  It is remarkable to me that these middle class, so casual, so self-aware, so self-entitled diners are spending hundreds of pounds on consuming expensive meals out while proclaiming the financial distress of the country. It seems that the government they blame for the financial disturbances has not been so disastrous for them. 

  I dislike dining in the presence of the smug diner or the diner who doesn’t understand the privilege they are experiencing when dining out in fine restaurants or why they should have a little consideration for their fellow diners - not just those at their table -  in keeping the sound of their voices down to a level where everyone else is not having to hear their conversations and braying laughter. I dislike the way those who feel self-entitlement are wholly indifferent to those around them. 

  I wonder what old Nathaniel Newnham-Davis would have made of it all? - “Tut tut. None of that sort of behaviour in my day, yer know”.

  By the way, on the day of writing this, I record that it’s Escoffier’s birthday (28 October 1846 - 12 February 1935). Happy birthday to a giant of gastronomy and a failed fraudster.

146. A Brummie In Paris And At The Savoy.

 

  Of course we are all very familiar with Celebrity Chefs. They have been popping up everywhere - particularly on television of course for several decades. I can remember Fannie and Johnny Craddock (we shall not see their like again) and Galloping Gourmet Keith Floyd whose programmes are being rescreened piecemeal on Saturday Kitchen and others. 

  To hover over Keith Floyd for a second, he really is an immortal as the Saturday Kitchen snippets show. And some of the interviews he conducted during his world-ranging tours are gastronomic history in their own right. Just two or three weeks ago an interview with Jeremiah Tower at his Star restaurant in California was screened - an amazing opportunity to see this major culinary figure talking and preparing a dish from three decades or so ago. Great stuff.

Keith Floyd and Jeremiah
Tower

Jeremiah Tower

Tower’s Californian cuisine

 

 Television ‘cookery’ programmes proliferated. Ready Steady Cook brought a range of chefs to the public’s attention including Brian Turner, Gary Rhodes and Anthony Worrall Thompson who represented the Central region in the first ever season of Great British Menu and famously burned his faggots and then Birmingham’s own Glyn Parnell turned up on GBM and got a dish to the banquet for two consecutive years and made appearances irregularly on other programmes subsequently. If Gordon Ramsay was not known by many before he began his television career it was not long before he was a household name.

  So that’s celebrity chefs. They go back further than we think. When Auguste Escoffier was working at the Savoy from 1890 to 1898 he too was a household name. The anticipation of Col. Nathaniel Newnham- Davis, early English food critic (of whom more in an upcoming Blog) at the prospect of eating his way through a meal fromEscoffier’s kitchen is fascinating to read about in his article for the Pall Mall Gazette. But Newnham-Davis also draws attention to then famous front-of-house staff as well, which we do far less often in these modern times though bad service can still ruin a happy meal as much as an underseasoned dish.

  Of course experienced waiting staff then played a much greater role in the preparation and theatre of a dish than they do now. Now we may chat nicely to and be pleasingly schmoozed by the restaurant manager whom we’ve come to know from our visits to a favourite restaurant but apart from presenting the dish and taking away the empty plate at the end of the course they may do nothing more than pour some of the sauce on to our meal or do something with liquid carbon dioxide or fiddle around folding up our napkin if we have cause to leave the table. Perhaps that is why, as key players on the stage of the restaurant’s theatre, front of house staff, as we may now call them, had their own celebrities as exalted as some of the chefs.

  And now we come to the point of this piece and the relevance to the subject of Birmingham Food. I have been intrigued by a character identified by Newnham-Davis as M. Joseph whom N-D reveals to have been born in Birmingham, presumably in the mid-19th century, of French parents. After Escoffier was sacked by The Savoy in 1898 in a fraud scandal (he confessed to taking kickbacks from food suppliers) along with César Ritz and  the Maître d’hôtel, Louis Echenard,  Monsieur Joseph was brought in by the Savoy’s owner, Richard D’Oyley Carte, to take over as Mâitre d’hôtel. Joseph had previously been employed as the Maître d’hôtel at the Marivaux restaurant in Paris and in Newnham-Davis’ and Algernon Bastard’s book, The Gourmet’s Guide To Europe (published 1903), Joseph who had died by then, was described as having “brought the Marivaux to such a high pitch of fame  before he emigrated to London” and was identified as having worked prior to the Marivaux (which still survives serving Savoyard cuisine) at Paillard’s (described in 1903 as then being “type and parent of the present up-to-date restaurant”). Joseph - let us call him, hopefully not disrespectfully, purely for the pleasure of identifying him with our city and making him relevant to this blog and claiming our little piece of attachment to this great fin de siècle gastronomic figure - Joseph The Brummie - took up the reins at The Savoy from Echenard pretty smartishly and was obviously well-established there, no doubt his reputation travelling with him from Paris, by the time N-D interviewed him apparently in 1899.

  So we have a Birmingham-born, albeit of French parentage (or so he claimed) super-star Maitre d’hotel, being head-hunted by D’Oyley Carte to take charge at The Savoy at short notice and arriving in London with a remarkable amount of recognition among those who knew about food and service in fine restaurants. Newnham-Davis was clearly very admiring and went to the trouble of organising a special interview with this accomplished Brummie during the course of which he was able to discover that Joseph was an “adept at la savate” (French boxing) and had a single “amusement” in his life which was “pigeon flying”.

   N-D described him as being, “A little man, with rather long hair, bald on the top of his head with very dark brown eyes looking keenly out from strong brows, with a little grey moustache”. He added that “Joseph arrests attention at once, and his manner is just the right manner. In a short black coat, white waistcoat, and dark trousers ....”. I have not yet been able to track down a photograph of Joseph The Brummie but fortunately N-D’s book, The Gourmet’s Guide To London (published 1914) includes a cartoon titled Joseph carving a duck from a drawing by Paul Renouard which gives us a fine impression of the physical appearance of M. Joseph. I wonder how many of our present-day Maitre d’s might carry off carving a duck or preparing a crepe at the table today with the panâche of Joseph The Brummie. It would certainly bring back the theatre of dining out and be a worthy substitute for the whispered detailed dish descriptions which leave us none the wiser to which we are frequently subjected by front-of-house staff at this present time.

  M. Joseph brought with him to The Savoy, the chef from The Marivaux, M. Thoreaux, as well, according to Newnham-Davis, “his system of management” by which he “liked to take a personal interest in each dinner that was progressing in his restaurant and to give it his personal supervision”. N-D however felt that the Savoy restaurant was too large for Joseph’s preferred method of service. He certainly strove for perfection, N-D remarking that Joseph was “wrapped up in his profession” and that “he looked at his boots the whole time that he took his afternoon constitutional walk, that he might think of new dishes. Whenever any novel idea occurred to him he tried it at home in his own little kitchen before asking M. Thoreau to make experiment on a larger scale. To see Joseph carve a duck was a very splendid exhibition of ornate swordsmanship, and his preparation of a canard à la presse was quite sacrificial in its solemnity. There was in his day a dinner given at The Savoy at which Madame Sarah Bernhardt was the chief guest, and most of the other people present were “stars” of our British stage. Joseph cooked before them at a side table most of the dishes of the dinner, and told me that he did so because he wished to show actors and actresses, who constantly appeal to the imagination of their audiences, that there was something also in his art to please the eye and stimulate the imagination”.

 When asked by N-D why he never went to the theatre, Joseph replied that he would “sooner see six gourmets eating a well-cooked meal than watch the finest performance that Madame Bernhardt and Coquelin could give”. Well, I’m sure there’s drama enough in observing six gourmets comfortably installed around a well-served dinner.

  N-D wrote that Joseph “had a pretty wit and a facile pen. This was the jeu d’esprit that he once wrote in a young lady’s album - “C’ėtait la prèmiere côtelette que coûta le plus cher à l’homme - Dieu en ayant fait une femme”. N-D was delighted to report that, “And he wrote for me a little essay on the duties of a maître d’hôtel that was very sprightly in style. He was even a greater believer than M. Ritz in the short dinner, and declared that we in England only tasted our dinners and did not eat them. Three dishes he considered quite enough for a good dinner [good Brummie common-sense I say to that one] and this was a tiny feast he ordered for me on one occasion when I took a lady to dine at The Savoy:- 

Petite marmite

Sole Reichenberg

Caneton à la presse  Salade de saison

Fonds d’artichauts à la Reine

Bombe pralinée. Petits Fours

Panier fleuri.

  The panier fleuri he carved himself at table for me.”

  Newnham-Davis wrote, regret and sadness evident in the simplicity of the sentence, “Joseph became homesick, for he was a thorough Parisian, and went back to the Marivaux, but soon after he died.

  The dating of Joseph’s departure from the Savoy can be made from the evidence of advertisements of that time, one from 1899 enthusiastically broadcasting that “The Restaurant is under the direction of the famous Maître d’Hôtel “Joseph” of Restaurant Mariveaux Paris. Chef Maître Thoreaux” but the second dating from 6 October 1900 with no mention of the great Celebrity Maître d’ who, one assumes had returned to France by then.

  Joseph was clearly still in London in January 1901 as he was also interviewed by the reporter Horace Wyndham with an article being published which was titled “A Maître d’Hôtel and his Methods”. Wyndham wrote, “...the cook in question happened to be one of the eminence of M. Joseph of the Savoy Hotel. Indeed, the ruler of the roast at this establishment is more than a cook; he is an artist, and a master of his art, to boot”.

  Wyndham was surprised to learn of Joseph’s English origins, though he does not mention that Joseph was born in Birmingham, and concluded that it was therefore not surprising to “find that he speaks English with remarkable facility” The interview revealed that Joseph was still “a child when he was taken by his parents to their native France, and, as soon as he was old enough to be of use, he assisted his father in the management of a restaurant that he had set up near Paris. In 1868, he had blossomed into a fully fledged cook, and as such obtained a situation in a restaurant at Brébant. Here, “though the remuneration was but little ... Joseph remained for five years and “ soon had the whole gamut of the cuisine at his fingers’s ends”. He then moved on and worked at the distinguished Paillard’s restaurant in Paris.

  From what I have discovered so far it seems Joseph died in 1903. 

  While accepting that M Joseph’s links with Birmingham ended at an early stage of his life, we can claim him at least as being a Brummie-born and as such he is one of the greatest names in Birmingham’s gastronomic history. Bon appétit!

The large restaurant of The Savoy, c.1900.

 

3. Birmingham Food - Will The Stars Shine Next Week?

  It was really the BBC television programme Great British Menu that brought me to the new stage of my life where I like food. Before, I liked going out to eat as one of the things you do for social interaction and also because I liked going to south Asian restaurants to have curries - but I didn't go because I found food to be (a) interesting and (b) enjoyable.

  And I now I do like food and find it to be interesting. For some years I'd been aware of food - after all there were enough television programmes on the subject which were impossible to miss and you couldn't be ignorant of nouvelle cuisine, the hoohah about sustainability, the tiresome utterances from Jamie Oliver, the stuff about Delia Smith teaching everyone how to boil an egg, the foul-mouthed antics of Gordon Ramsey, the exhaustingly suggestive theatre of Nigella Lawson and so on. But nothing really caught my attention. Well Nigella's programme was, er, quite good fun to watch I suppose.

  But Great British Menu brought real, and often quite accomplished, British chefs to our screens sometimes bringing us fabulous new, previously undreamed-of, dishes (and sometimes some preposterous rubbish). Glyn Purnell was still on his way up when he scored "the perfect 3 tens" for his egg custard surprise which I knew, when I saw it, that I would have to go and try myself. And so I did. And then I discovered that I really did like food.

  And now Great British Menu is back again and I am and shall be riveted for the next few weeks to see what comes along. I like the Friday episodes when Oliver, Matthew and Pru (plus hanger on) squabble and dither about their marks for the contestants' exhausting efforts and never cease to marvel how regularly they disagree with the opinion of the chef judge from earlier in the week. 

   Sometimes I think we are gradually getting away from all that French cuisine stuff on which British chefs have been fixated since the end of rationing. Of course it doesn't help that they all dream of a Michelin star and it really does seem hard to achieve the goal without giving a respectful nod in the direction of those historical characters, Escoffier and Careme. Michelin is a bastion of French chauvinism that continues to judge British chefs on the conventions of a century or two ago which first of all sought to render the vaguely vile food of French peasants at least edible and then give some order to the way a meal was served. And of course the British public is just as bad - mention that a restaurant has got a Michelin star and the punters will flock to pay extraordinarily high prices for the cheapest cuts of meat or the tiniest pieces of fish.

   And of course, in a couple of days time on 3 October, we will know the verdict of the Michelin judges for 2017 and Birmingham chefs and restaurant business owners will either be wringing their hands or leaping in the air cock-a-hoop (that sounds like a good name for a dish - "Coq a hupe"!)

  Will the status of Turner's be affected by his change of direction? - hopefully not - his food seems as wonderful, and expensive, as ever.

  Will Purnell's finally make it over the line to a 2 star status? I had lunch there yesterday - Glynn Purnell's  autumn menu was full of a thousand tastes and surprises and pleasures and had a suspiciously French theme to it - a gorgeously unctious tarte tatin, poulet au lait and spectacularly tasty mushroom duxelles and sauce Abufera but there were also some wonderful British touches to it such as the Brixham cod with a lime pickle and various preparations of cauliflower and gravlax cured sea trout, delightfully pink-orange coloured  with tastes of fennel breaking out all over the dish.  And all (and more) for £45. What else does the man have to do to get the recognition of 2 stars? - move to London or Cumbria, I suppose.

  And then there's the immaculate Adam's. I know the new restaurant hasn't been going for long but, honestly, can it get any better? Smart, chic, spot on and fabulous food - some highly original, some rather more classical and again, such good value. I'm not sure for how long you have to show consistency in the quality of your dishes before that second star comes twinkling out but the restaurant deserves the celestial bodies' to shine on it sooner rather than later.

  Will Simpson's, where a mild service chaos seemed to exist on my last visit along with a sense of the food not really being in the top flight any more (even though "The Good Food Guide" placed the restaurant in its Top 50 UK Restaurants" list only quite recently) lose its star?

  Will Cheal's of Henley receive it's first star?

  

  All will soon be revealed after the weekend.