F Word - Series 1 Giles Coren Q&A

Date Published:

06/09/2007

Coren lets loose

Our resident F Word food critic, Giles Coren, claims to have eaten in over 8,000 restaurants. So when he gives his verdict on the delicious tucker served up by Gordon Ramsay in the F Word kitchen, he knows what he’s talking about.

He’s also been lucky enough to be sent on some special F Word missions – rummaging through bins for his dinner and investigating how diet influences sperm count. We chatted to him about eating croc in Australia, donkey in Italy and why he thinks chefs are just like bricklayers…

What has been your most unusual restaurant experience?

One visit that sticks out in my mind was in Lombardy in Italy. It was a very posh, Gordon Ramsay style restaurant. I speak no Italian whatsoever so thought I was safe in ordering the beef. It was raw, which was fine, but also had a very tangy, unusual flavour, which wasn’t so fine. I called the waitress over but she couldn’t understand a word I was saying. In the end I pointed at my dish and said “moo..moo…” in a questioning tone. She laughed and said “Ah, no…Eeh aw”. It was actually donkey. And this wasn’t a really crummy village where the locals shoot donkies when they get hungry. It was really posh.

What’s been your best restaurant experience?

That would be a toss up between carnival time in Nairobi where I ate giraffe, zebra and hippo, and on holiday in Kakadu, Australia where I had a crocodile Caesar salad.

Have you ever regretted giving a restaurant a particularly bad review?

Yes, every week. I once ate in a really posh Italian and wrote a really mean review saying their risotto was just like rice pudding without the jam and that all Italian food was rubbish and Italian chefs were 40-year-old mummies’ boys in string vests. The chef was very annoyed and I felt very bad, but now we’re great mates.

How much influence do you think a food critic has in determining the success or failure of a restaurant?

I think I can determine the success, but not the failure. One new London restaurant recently had to hire two extra fulltime receptionists on the back of my and other rave reviews.

Are you secretly a wannabe chef?

Good God no. Why would I want to be a chef? I’ve got a degree! Being a chef is just like being a bricklayer; it’s simply not a thing that anyone normal should want to be. Gordon Ramsay is the only chef in Britain making a living. There is no point in being a chef. It’s hard, unrewarding work.