I don’t normally post food reviews—actually, let’s come right out and say it, I’ve never before posted a food review, and never thought to do so—and even if I did, I’d have no particular reason to post a review of a restaurant in England, seeing as I live on the wrong side of the Great Puddle; but the food reviewer for The Times of London, AA Gill, just had an absolute screaming fit in print, handing out a zero-star review that actually, if you can believe it, makes the grade sound at least one star too high. The whole thing’s worth reading for sheer unintentional comedy value (though one does feel a certain sharp sympathy for Gill for having to endure the experience), but the opening in particular is beyond price:
You’d think they’d get it. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that when the world falls on your head, you might do something different. It’s like Moses. Comes down from the mountain, still smelling of burning bush, eyes revolving, levitating with the true believer’s va-va-voom, and he bellows: “God, the God—Mr God to you—just gave me these instructions, written in sodding marble, and it’s going to get us out of here. After 40 years in this hole, we’re going home. Milk and honey, vineyards, fedoras. Listen up.”Then a bloke at the back says: “Well now, hold on. Hold on. Maybe we shouldn’t be hasty in discarding the golden calf. Granted, it’s been a bit tricky recently, but it just needs a bit of tweaking. Have you ever thought that perhaps what we need is a bigger golden calf?”And that’s when Moses loses the plot, and throws a right strop. Not only did God give him celestial sat-nav, he also gave him a proper, Old Testament, fundamental fire-and-brimstone temper. (That and a foreskin, which was something of a novelty for the Jewish ladies.) Anyway, I’m with Moses. Not only the foreskin bit, but I’m just about to have an exodus tantrum.
Read the whole thing, and you’ll understand why . . .