The Observer restaurant critic’s most biting reviews have now been collected in a book. Here, he defends the art of negative criticism – after all, it’s just a part of the job
Experienced journalists are rarely taken by surprise by the impact of their work. We know exactly what we are doing and why. As I trudged down the marble steps of the George V Hotel in Paris, one chilly spring evening in 2017, I knew what I was going to do and I knew what the impact would be. If I claimed otherwise, attempted to feign innocence, I would be lying.
OK, I didn’t quite anticipate the international newspaper headlines and the talking points and the outbreaks of glee. But if, in the days leading up to the publication of my review of Le Cinq on 9 April 2017, anyone had asked me what I thought the response was going to be, I would have been straight with them. I would have told them it was probably going to be the most read article of my career. So it proved.
I wrote that review because I was angry: eye-gougingly, bone-crunchingly, teeth-grindingly angry. How bloody dare they?
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