The Higher Criticism and The Good Food Guide

The Good Food Guide is a peculiarly British phenomenon, founded in 1951 by one Christian socialist classical scholar, Raymond Postgate (1896-1971), and edited for many years by another, Christopher Driver (1932-1997).  More accurately, Postgate (who was also a crime writer) and Driver (a journalist and CND supporter) compiled the GFG, as it was, a bit like Zagat guides, put together from readers’ contributions. Their GFG was useful for keeping in the glove box of your car, so that – should you find yourself in an unfamiliar place – you might find another reader’s recommendation of a decent place to eat. The entries were chatty, so more informative than the entries in the (later) rival Michelin Guide, and, because the writers usually (if unwittingly) made their prejudices or biases known, reliable, unlike the Egon Ronay and AA restaurant guides of the period. Of course the GFG, as it grew, had to change from an amateur to a more professional operation, and this meant employing at least a few inspectors, as did the other guides, to provide a bit of continuity and consistency.  This loss of the virginity of the amateur did not have much effect on the virtue of the GFG, I’d say, as the inspectors were a pretty good bunch. The few I knew were better judges of food, service, ambience and all the rest than, for example, the late Mr Ronay.

Now the newest, GFG 2017, has landed on my desk, and a handsome piece of work it is, in its flexible red canvas binding embossed with silver letters, which tell you that it is published by Waitrose, every middle-class Brit’s favourite supermarket. I’m not sure when it ceased being published by the high-thinking Consumers’ Association, though I see from the preface that Elizabeth Carter has been its “Consultant Editor” for ten years.

Though my most recent gig was as the now-defunct Wall Street Journal Europe’s all-purpose critic of the performing and visual arts, I’ve been a restaurant critic in my time, first for The Observer in its Golden Age from 1980-91 and then for some years for Travel + Leisure, as well as writing the odd dining-related piece for the Journal. Readers of The Official Foodie Handbook (1984) will remember that my co-author, Ann Barr and I, guyed the whole genre with our cod list of “The 18 Best Restaurants in the World,” which included one where I’d eaten in Suzhou and another in Chengdu, just to be certain no one could contradict us.

Ms Carter notes the growing dislike of tasting menus, and the resurgence of à la carte offerings, while a few places are – commendably to my mind, if it helps their cooking and their profits –  narrowing the number of choices for each course. She only once uses the nasty, obscene expression “fine dining,” and her heart seems to me to be in the right place, near her stomach.

Restaurant criticism is so easily corrupted. Even now I get a couple of emails most days from PRs trying to persuade me to accept a free meal at their client’s beanery. But in principle, this branch of criticism seems to me as legit as any. After all, when reviewing a play, opera, exhibition or book, it always seemed to me that the purpose of my publishing the notice was to tell my readers what I thought it worth their while to see, hear or read – rarely to advise them to eschew or ignore a bad play, book or show. And people who read restaurant columns do so on the whole because they want to find a place where they will enjoy eating, not to learn where not to eat.

While I served my time in the ranks of these Higher Critics, the lack of paid expenses and my age mean I can’t claim to eat out often enough now to be an authority – even on local eateries in Oxfordshire. However, the very last meal I had in a restaurant – this week, in fact – was at a place that’s been in Oxford for years and years, though it and its several sister restaurants are all apparently shunned by the GFG 2017. It claims that “The restaurants included in The Good Food Guide are the very best in the UK,” but my twice-baked cheddar soufflé was both crusty and light as a puff of air, my rare Cornish rump steak was aged, rich and surprisingly tender for this cut, my wife’s bavette ditto, the chips (french fries) with them were crisp and clean-tasting, and our bottle of Chave Hermitage 2010 (the reason for choosing red meat) was sublime. I can say with confidence that this simple meal could not have been bettered (unless you prefer grain-finished American beef to British grass-fed, which I do not). But you won’t find the place, Oxford’s Brasserie Blanc, in the GFG 2017. I don’t want to make too much of this, as we were dining with Raymond Blanc himself, and I was formerly a consultant to him (though not for this restaurant). But as Christian Millau said to me once at dinner at Joël Robuchon’s in Paris, no matter who is ordering, the chef can only cook with the materials he’s already got and do so to the best of his personal abilities. In any case, I’ve had the same good    experience quite a few times without the presence of the man for whom the place/chain is named.

Pleased as my wife and I were to see a few local favourites honoured by inclusion in the GFG, she feels I should cavil at giving the cooking at the locally sourced-food Magdalen Arms a mere 2/10, while the Killingworth Castle at Wootton, another of our stand-by places, 3/10, and a paltry 5/10 for the ambitious Nut Tree Inn at Murcott (the same as London’s River Café, which figures in most other judges’ Top Ten). Oh well. The numbers are really only there to annoy.

And the GFG really does award merit wherever it finds it: on p. 277, nestling next to the 8/10 Le Champignon Sauvage at Cheltenham, is, at Brookthorpe, an entry for “Gloucester Services” on the M5 Motorway, between Junctions 12 and 11a, “an independently run motorway pit-stop…committed to locally sourced food.”