We took Jay Rayner for lunch at one his favourite Manchester restaurants - here’s what he had to say about the city’s food
Last time food critic Jay Rayner visited Erst in Manchester he hailed it “one of the best meals of the year” in his weekly column for The Observer. Just over a year later, as he tears into a beef fat flatbread, does this still stand?
“I won’t spoil it for you, but there’s an anecdote about getting my parents ashes into the urns on the stage of the production of Fiddler on the Roof - and that leads us into playing Sunrise, Sunset from that show,” he smiles. “It's actually a ridiculous thing to do because Albert Hall is a very complicated venue. I don't play keyboard, I play piano, and getting a piano up there - a good one - will be a challenge. are supplying one of their concert pianos, which costs as much as an upright piano would cost to buy.”
“There's a brilliant line by Brian Hanrahan, who was a great BBC journalist, and in the intro to his memoirs it says something along the lines of, ‘as a journalist, you're paid to report what you see and hear, and as a result, you see and hear some pretty extraordinary things', and that still applies.
“But then you have to put yourself in the diners' shoes too. If you've been to a restaurant and it's shocking and they’re charging you money, you should say something. Sometimes people ask how I get normal service given my face is slapped all over TV and in newspapers, but even if I book under a pseudonym, pay my own way, some places are still shocking.
The critic eviscerated The Dorchester’s rooftop restaurant, Polo Lounge, branding the offering “cack-handed food that’s a gross insult to good taste, manners and commercial decency.” While this was seen as fair game, some reviews don't go down as well.
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