When Noma, the fine-dining establishment in Copenhagen believed to be the ‘best in the world’, announced it would be closing its doors last year, many people were convinced that it was Disney’s ‘The Menu’ that solidified its demise.
The dark comedy which moulds the precision, discipline and craftsmanship of the most talented chefs in the world with the grubby consumerism of the moneyed elite puts on show how modern haute cuisine has started to eat itself by becoming a joyless experience that takes the love out of eating.
It shows, in many ways, how the art of dining has gone badly wrong.
Punters, for a start, let their camera ‘eat’ before they do while the most snobbish clientele – the ‘I’m a bit of a foodie’ type – critically examine every morsel of food they are presented with before casting an expressionless gaze as they inspect the ‘mouth feel’.
Chefs, meanwhile, serve scallops on rocks and use plumes of seasoned mist to coax the worst habits out of their clientele and then step back and tut when people invariably reach for their cameras.
But The Menu doesn’t shirk on the bits about dining that remain inextricably right, either.
Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) stole the show right from the start when he said:
“We, the people on this island are not important.
“The island and the nutrients it provides exist in their most perfect state without us gathering them or manipulating them or digesting them.
“What happens inside this room is meaningless compared to what happens outside in nature.
“In the soil, in the water, in the air.
“We are but a fragment nanosecond. Nature is timeless.”
When I think back to my best food moments, they were all special because they were anchored in nature, not emulsified, piped and plated on a bed of rocks adorned with foliage.
The quail bar in Seville, where they serve deep-fried birds on paper plates with a slice of bread to enjoy stood around tall tables, is one of them, or the time I ate ice-cold oysters suspended above the Catalonian delta or snails in a Cretan vineyard.
And that’s not to mention the greatest place I have ever eaten, which makes me feel happy just thinking about it. But more of that later.
For now, allow me to introduce our fantastic new team of food writers, who share the greatest places they have ever eaten.
The greatest place that I have ever eaten in is not a grand Michelin-starred palace or an Instagram-worthy food stall in rainy Bangkok, but a small trattoria in Syracuse called La Foglia.
It can be found on a small street, Via Capodieci, in Ortigia, the island heart of the city of Syracuse – a city on the southeastern tip of Sicily, founded by the ancient Greeks some 2,700 years ago before falling to successive hordes of Romans, Vandals, Goths, Arabs, Normans and Byzantines.
The décor captures this eclectic history – mismatched, simple, beautiful furniture, walls covered in old dolls (a lot of old dolls, it’s a Sicilian thing) and and extraordinary collection of paintings and sculptures. Nothing that would trouble a museum, but each of which provides another glimpse into this most entrancing of Islands.
1930s recordings of Giuseppe Verdi operas seep forth from a battered record player. Bitter cocktails and wines still basking in the evening light of local vineyards.
Then the food – they scour the villages and satellite islands for recipes handed down unchanged through the generations and offer them up to you like poems. orange and fennel salad, pasta alla norma, dark smoky squid ink risotto and bitter lemon cassata. La Foglia is a love letter to Sicily.
A while back I was working on a project in Tokyo and the CEO, a most erudite man who had studied medicine at Harvard, took great pleasure in giving me his culinary guided tour of the city.
I remember a lunch in a single-storey wooden house surrounded by high-rise blocks. We sat on the floor and the waitresses, dressed geisha-style, would sing each order back to the kitchen. The building and the service were so astonishing I have no recollection of the meal!
But that evening he took me to a sushi restaurant where, at that time, no gaijin could hope to obtain a reservation. As a regular, he snook me in, and how very glad was I?!
There were five or six chefs the other side of the counter and maybe as many diners perched eagerly on the stools opposite – they call it ‘kappo’ style dining. I threw myself at the mercy of my host who ordered a steady train of the most exceptional nigiri and sashimi. He then gave me my briefing: “Do not, whatever you do, ask for any condiments – Chef has applied the exact and perfect proportion of soy and wasabi to each dish. And when each arrives, eat it immediately as a sign of respect for its freshness”. I also learned that the fish used isn’t all fresh – some require a day or two to get into character.
Rumour has it, Jiro lost its 3 Michelin stars as it declined to accept reservations from the general public.
Unsurprisingly, the meal was exceptional, sublime, and ultimately ruinous.
Days before my wedding and on the fifth anniversary of being together with my fiancé and now wife, we decided we would go for a special meal. I went to see a friend and legendary food PR, Maureen Mills for a coffee at her office, and when I asked where to go, she said there was only one place to consider which was The Square.
How right she was about going.
We had a 9-course tasting menu and every single dish was a delight, with the trio of mackerel, caviar and oysters, freshly baked bread, brilliat-savarin cheesecake all being beyond delicious. But the showstoppers were a Scottish Langoustine with Parmesan gnocchi and a roasted Cod and cauliflower purée dish that I still dream of to this day.
The single best thing I have ever eaten in my life was a lot less lavish, it was in a field in Provence on a scorching hot day.
The distiller I had visited had laid on a spread for us of charcuterie, Pastis and wine. There were freshly picked tomatoes drizzled with local olive oil and coated in Thyme. Tasting it, my eyes lit up like a child trying ice cream for the first time, confusion that something could be this full of flavour, wonderment that it did and longing for some more.
I appreciate it lacks a certain amount of imagination to pick somewhere that has long been regarded as one of the best restaurants in the world as your greatest place.
It’s a bit like saying Manchester City are your favourite football team (they aren’t).
But some places have an exalted reputation for a good reason.
After spending the 1980s in Berni Inns and the 90s in Pizza Express and Belgo, the Fat Duck was one of the first truly fancy restaurants I ever went to.
It obviously did stuff with food you didn’t think possible – that was the whole point of it. The liquid nitrogen poached amuse bouche, the snail porridge, the egg and bacon ice cream, all astounded with the level of imagination needed to think of it and the technical expertise required to actually make it.
However, it was also all so damn delicious.
There was a salmon in liquorice that remains possibly my favourite ever dish. After about 3 lovely but bite sized courses, and being unfamiliar with tasting menus, I remember thinking this was great but I’d probably require a MacDonalds on the way home to fully sate my appetite. As I rolled into a taxi countless courses later, that plan was firmly shelved.
It wasn’t quite a once in a lifetime experience – I’m currently going back at a rate of about once every 15 years, but it remains the benchmark by which every other dinner is judged. To this day I struggle to really appreciate restaurants that come with the reputations, awards and stars (and prices to match) yet don’t even seem to be trying to produce food on the level of the Fat Duck. Like Manchester City, like it or not, sometimes the best are the best.
The greatest place I’ve ever eaten was sold to me as the ‘worker’s restaurant’ when I first checked in to our accommodation in Montalcino in the heart of the ‘Brunello’ wine region.
The small hill town in the province of Siena, Tuscany, offers panoramic views across the many acres of sprawling vineyards with ample places to sample the local wines among the cobble-stoned streets.
It also punches way above its weight on the restaurant front, boasting a wide pick of places to suit your budget, some of which offer the most incredible views.
But as a man who has grown up in ‘workers’ places, I have found over several trips that Osteria di Porta al Cassero is the place for me, where you’ll find carafes of local wine priced at €5 and wild boar, veal tripe, beef liver, tongue and even roasted rabbit among the dishes.
The atmosphere is wonderfully informal and the waiters are about as far from pretentious as you could get, while the food is prepared simply and served on totally normal plates so you can just… kick back and relax.
A novel concept, remarkably, in the increasingly ‘stiff’ world of food.
Related: World’s best pizza – the ‘Mistaken Margherita’ – comes to London
