12 May 2016
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Their vanity exposed.
By Chin Chin
Well I’m certainly not going to Leeds. Nor indeed to Manchester where the great Yorkshire chef Michael O’Hare is opening his second restaurant, come to that. Yes, I know he has a Michelin star and that his recipe for barbequed prawn brains puts him on a level with Heston, but in the end he doesn’t quite get it. How otherwise could he suggest that diners are spoiling their enjoyment of his food by taking photographs of it before they eat?
I suppose that in a narrow Northern way he is right. The best bit about food is the taste and to focus too much on the appearance is like valuing a book for its cover rather than its contents. That’s something which I would never do, at least if you exclude that beautifully bound edition of Homer which sits ostentatiously on the living room shelves and has not been read these twenty five years. Not that it hasn’t been opened, mind you. If I have visitors I like to put the middle volume of the Iliad open on the table as though I had been disturbed reading it.
Still, looking at the matter more broadly, how could you possibly spend £75 on a twelve-course tasting menu without posting a picture of it? What a wasted opportunity that would be. Think of the Fawcetts next door who posted those pictures of themselves and their companions on that vulgar yacht. They touched up the image too to make themselves look more tanned and less porky than they really are. And they roped in an actress for good measure, although if you had seen her last film you’d realise why she has to make her living charging by the photograph.
It makes me feel sorry for them really, going all the way to the Med so that they could post photos designed to make me jealous. How sad is that? It must have cost a pretty penny too. The expense of hiring the boat is only the beginning. There is also the cost of feeding their free-loading friends. Talk about spending money on idiots! I suppose that they were worried about people refusing to come so they just asked those who would go anywhere for a free feed. I’m only glad that they realised that I wasn’t one of them and so spared me the labour of refusing their invitation.
You can’t help wondering how they managed to get that MP and his wife to visit their ghastly yacht, though. “Our friends from the neighbouring berth,” that was the caption. Well, maybe they were from a nearby boat but that “friends” bit stinks to me. They probably just came across to borrow a spanner although, from the way the MP is looking at the Fawcetts’ eighteen-year-old daughter, there could be more to it than that. I’ll do an Internet search on the paedo register to check him out.
Okay, I’ll think again about that restaurant. It would certainly be good for the Fawcetts to see me enjoying a gourmet meal but is it worth the expense? According to “The Times” the meal would only cost £75 and I could use the government enquiry into tipping as cover for refusing to pay the discretionary service charge which Mr O’Hare seems to favour. Still I’d have to get to Yorkshire and it would be a disaster if I couldn’t take photographs in the restaurant when I got there. Suppose that somebody important was there – Prince Harry, dining with a girlfriend perhaps, at the next table. An experience of a lifetime wasted because I couldn’t take a photograph to post on Facebook. What would be the pleasure in that? All I’d be able to do is to read my book at the table and that’s something which I can do at home.
Actually that “at home” gives me an idea. Obviously it makes sense that I demonstrate my appreciation of sophisticated food but why shouldn’t I do that in my own kitchen? It really can’t be too difficult. Let’s see what sort of things Mr O’Hare serves. Yes, barbecued prawns brains will do for a start. The Fawcetts won’t have a clue what those look like so any form of red or green slime will do. What about that mess that has been on the garden path since the dog was ill? Then there is octopus and squid. Mr O’Hare is expert with that. Everyone knows that octopus rings are delicious and, better still, they look a bit like onion. With a little blurring of the photograph I think I could manage to give the impression of a superb seafood salad.
That’s not enough, of course. It is one thing to photograph the plate of food but then I have to photograph the ambience. To be honest, my basement flat doesn’t look much like a Michelin starred restaurant but if I lie on the floor and take a photograph up through the window – views of the sky are more or less the same wherever you take them from. Then I need to photoshop in the image of another diner sitting in front of the window, someone who will trump the Fawcetts’ MP. A world leader perhaps, from somewhere a bit exotic. I’ve got it! Vladimir Putin. There are lots of shots of him which I could download from the Internet and in some of them he is actually wearing a shirt.
That’s done then and I must say there is some satisfaction in it. When the Fawcetts see that while they have been floating around the Mediterranean on a sea of vanity I have been eating Britain’s most sophisticated cuisine at a table next to Vladimir Putin, they will wish they had opted to stay at home. More to the point, if they go again next year they will hardly be able to bring themselves to exclude me from their invitations. I shall refuse, of course.
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