It's time for restaurant reviewers to sharpen their knives, Trevor White tells Tom Doorley
You don't often see restaurant critics eat together, except on television. We don't hunt in packs. So when I arranged to meet Trevor White, publisher of the Dubliner magazine and its spin-off guide to the capital's 100 best restaurants, for lunch at Eden, in Temple Bar, I felt rather sorry for the kitchen. To have one critic may be considered a misfortune. To have two at the same time must look like a conspiracy. But it soon became clear that we were off duty. We ordered the same things. That's the giveaway.
We were there not only to have lunch - which was very good, by the way: asparagus and poached egg to start, fillets of plaice to follow - but also to talk about White's new book, Kitchen Con. The US rights have just been sold, following a three-way auction.
"It started as a kind of guide for punters," says White. "I had a list of things to look out for, ways in which restaurateurs pull the wool over your eyes, and it just grew from there." Subtitled Writing on the Restaurant Racket, the book mixes memoir, some very funny anecdotes and a somewhat rambling account of how the author's view of restaurant criticism changed as he wrote it. "I started off quite liking the idea that restaurant criticism is not really about food, that focusing on food is old hat," he says. "I was thinking of [ the Sunday Times reviewer] AA Gill's famous claim that if the food is the best thing about a meal, then you're obviously eating with the wrong people."
Despite having been brought up with good food - his parents ran White's on the Green and regularly brought their children to eat in the great restaurants of France - White maintains that he knows little about kitchens. "I say in the book that I last cooked a meal at the end of the 20th century," he says. "In fact, I still occasionally do a roast chicken, with decent vegetables, but that's my limit. And sticky toffee pudding, of course."
White's expertise lies in writing and publishing. Gentle, mild-mannered and reflective in person, he can have a pretty acerbic pen, and his magazine thrives on the assassination of sacred cows. Beneath that rather charming and sometimes vague exterior is the heart of a tough publisher.
Brought up in a well-heeled home, and expensively educated, White is peculiarly unmoved by material things. "I don't have a television and I don't drive," he says. "And I've never worn a watch. Eventually, the dream is to live in the country and just write for my own amusement."
White's magazine owes a great deal to its annual restaurant guide. "It's meant to be the 100 best restaurants in Dublin," he says, "but, to be honest, when I get to 50 I have to struggle with the rest. But I think people know how to read between the lines."
We fall to discussing restaurant critics, and agree that Matthew Fort of the Guardian, Jonathan Meades of the Times and the science-based food writer Colin Tudge are all sound. I surprise White by admitting my undying devotion to Jan Moir of the Daily Telegraph and my admiration of Jay Rayner of the Observer, the only two critics whose work I read regularly. I also admit that I don't read other Irish critics unless the restaurant under the spotlight is one that I've already reviewed.
I then ask him to name the five best restaurants in Dublin. Not his favourite five, note. And five is an interesting number. Anyone can name four. Five is a different matter. "Guilbaud's, L'Ecrivain, Thornton's and Chapter One," he says. So far, this is my best four. What about the fifth? "This one is very different," he says. "For a start, it's relatively cheap." "L'Gueuleton," I say. He nods. Bloody hell, it's my top five, too.
And in which of them do you feel most comfortable, I ask. "Chapter One, no question," he says. "Declan Maxwell is one of hell of a maitre d'. Although I like Chapter One a great deal, my choice would be L'Ecrivain. "Actually," says White, "the place I feel most comfortable is Shanahan's. Provided someone else is paying. The service is as good as the Four Seasons. There's a sense of being really spoiled." But, I say, the prices are outrageous. I reckon a whole lot of rich people defected from Shanahan's on the Green to Town Bar & Grill, around the corner, because it's bloody good and is a fraction of the cost. "As I say, I only go there when someone else is paying," he responds. "And maybe the fact that it was once White's on the Green has something to do with it."
What is it, I wonder, that makes a good restaurant, given that "good" covers a multitude of styles, from cheap and cheerful to expensive and ultra-smooth. White, in the introduction to his book, remarks that the best restaurants make us think of ourselves as more attractive versions of what we really are.
We remember a story about "cakeage". It seems that one of our commercial moguls, having concluded a very advantageous deal, brought 30 of his colleagues and advisers to lunch at a rather ordinary but very expensive establishment in Dublin. They hit the wine list very hard and ran up a bill of €30,000 or more. And then someone produced a cake, made for the occasion. The proprietor, who clearly believes in killing golden geese, added a charge to the bill for serving it.
The conversation meanders on over coffee. I find myself saying that Thornton's is a great restaurant but that it lacks soul. White admits that one of his favourite dishes is sticky toffee pudding. I rejoin by saying that it's hard to beat my own Victoria plums, simply stewed, with Bird's Custard. And I feel unbearably smug saying that.
We conclude by agreeing that our next lunch together will be at Town Bar & Grill, because Temple Garner in the kitchen and Ronan Ryan out front run one of the best places in town. "And yet it wasn't on our list of the best five," says White. That was, oh, 30 minutes ago, I say.
Kitchen Con: Writing on the Restaurant Racket, by Trevor White, is published by Mainstream, £16.99
WAITERS' WORST LINES
"I recommend the plaice" - whispering - "next door."
"Who's the veal? Oh, I see. I thought you ordered the veal."
"To be fair, it does look like a fingernail."
"Jesus, I said I'm sorry. Give me a break; it's my first day."
"Look, I've already explained. Your card has been declined."
WHITE'S CAST OF RESTAURANT CRITICS
The Gourmand is the sort of person who steals the menu from a very good restaurant and returns to it in moments of quiet gloom.
The Celebrity is drafted in to provoke and prance for his nubile companion. He thinks writing 600 words about a meal each week is hard work. Likes the words "me" and "historic".
The English Impatient shocks readers, and rarely flatters restaurateurs. When a new place opens, he rushes like judge and
jury as if to the scene of a poisoning. The fact that he clears his plate with unusual celerity does not console the mature chef.
The Roue is a man with a violet proboscis. When he dies, an obituary will record this fact with recourse to the standard euphemism: "There never was a finer judge of claret."