At the GQ Men of the Year party at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden last month (where I didn’t win anything due to a logistical hiccup) a man loomed out of the crush of well-groomed, middle-aged lotharios and staggeringly appointed young flopsies, jabbed a finger into my chest and said: “Are you Giles Coren?”
Tricky. For a start, it is a question to which there is no honest answer. Yes, I am the only male issue of Alan and Anne Coren, born in Paddington in the summer of ’69 and unaccountably given a Christian name which had previously been attached only to mustachioed cads who lived upstairs in sitcoms, making me, at least according to Google, one of those rare chaps of whom one might sing “there’s only one…” and it be literally true. (Not than anyone ever has sung it. Nor, I think I now have to accept, ever will.)
But, on the other hand, no. I am not that bloke in the papers who writes about restaurants and other assorted trivia. Nor do I feel it incumbent upon me to account for his actions in public. He is a joke. A chimera. A smug, potty-mouthed, verbally incontinent glove puppet worn by that other Giles Coren (the only male issue, etc), who is really a novelist, poet and full-time Eton Fives player, but has to pay the bills.
The guy was a little drunk, though, so I spared him the theory of the Holy Duality. And, anyway, he might have been a fan. They do exist, you know. Not in vast hordes. They are by no means as the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea (although with the tragic ongoing decline in natural fish-stocks I fear they soon might be). But they do exist. Although they don’t usually poke me in the chest at parties.
Turns out he was a sommelier. Wanted to know if I remembered what I wrote about a wine he served me in 2003. Ye Gods, man, I thought. I don’t even remember who my girlfriend was in 2003.
“You didn’t read my letters?” he asked. I had to be honest. I had to tell him that letters from angry sommeliers jostled hard with scientology pamphlets and novels by Henry James for top place in the list of things I never read. And so I asked him to refresh my memory with much the same diffidence, I can only imagine, as I had once asked him to refresh my glass.
“It was at Brian Turner Mayfair,” he said.
Ahhh, Brian Turner Mayfair. That I remembered. In my review I had thrashed it like a mangy dog (why did I write that? I’ve never thrashed a dog in my life. I wouldn’t even move one off a pub sofa if I thought it was asleep). But what had I said about the wine?
“You said that it was an ordinary New Zealand Pinot Noir which you were surprised to find charged at £48,” he said. And then launched into a meandering drunken spiel about how soul-destroying it is to have one’s work criticised and how I probably didn’t know what it felt like. And as he did, so I drifted off into my own thoughts, which went as follows:
“Don’t know what it’s like, pal? I absolutely do. You may trot around with a silver bunch of grapes on your lapel, peddling intoxicants to expense-account tosspots and huff when I quibble at the mark-up but I have just published the novelistic fruit of 35 years of miserable introversion. And I have been criticised. Boy, have I been criticised.
“I had to suffer a review in The Observer by a girl I snogged at a party six years ago and never got around to phoning which announced that ‘Coren can only fail to live up to Bellow, Roth and Bashevis Singer’ – which was gutting news, since I had rather planned, at my first attempt, to far outreach the piddling efforts of two Nobel prizewinners and the greatest living author in English.
“And then there was a woman having a first crack at literary journalism (and possibly also at reading) declaring in the Daily Mail that ‘Coren’s high-minded narrative justifications cannot dispel suspicions of gratuitous nastiness’ (hard to know which of the two crimes – superfluous filth or literary ambition – rank more heinously in the Daily Mail weltanschauung). And then there was the fellow in The Daily Telegraph who asked whether ‘Giles Coren, rather than trying to be the new Philip Roth, would accept the challenge of being the new John Betjeman’ – which was a nice thought, except that certain accidents of birth make a lecherous, bipolar Jew obsessed with masturbation a slightly more realistic role model for me than a gay Anglican poet.
And just then I caught sight of Pierce Brosnan and called out, “Hey, Pierce, loved you in that film about the man with the expensive suit…” which offered, I felt, a brief masterclass in how to do work assessment interactions at parties, and created a diversion that allowed me to slip away from my tormentor.
I found my critical self a little chastened by the experience nonetheless, and so to my next restaurant I took with me Richard and Peter Harden, co-editors of those excellent, pithy little Harden’s guides to eating out, which comprise simply the gnomic aperçus of thousands of devoted reader/observers, and are probably as economical, democratic and unponcy as restaurant criticism gets. Apart from mine, obviously.
Suffice to say that the chaps were “charming company”, “full of beans” and “well-worth the trip”. Sorrel is a new Italian restaurant in the “relatively uncharted gastronomic waters” of Minories down by Aldgate, which the boys judged “a bit too good for the City”.
“Pity it’s in a basement” was one cry, but “at least it’s quite light” was also remarked. A charcuterie plate was “better than average fare” while the ham hock and ox-tongue terrine was “correct”. I had char-grilled gold-rush courgettes, poached duck egg, bottarga and parmesan which I found “a bit of a tart’s window box” but “rather tasty nonetheless”. You should also note that “nobody had a clue what gold-rush courgettes are”.
There were five “appealing-looking” pasta dishes but the risotto of cauliflower and sorrel with langoustine was, for some, “a bit underdone”, for others “plain gritty”. Monkfish wrapped in speck was “I don’t know, you try it” but at the same time “hmm, I’ve had tougher”. Pan-fried organic salmon was “beautifully done” with “a goodly heap” of wilted spinach. Roasted pork loin was free-range, the chicken organic, the beef aged, the lamb English, for all of which “Hip, hip, hooray!”
Puddings, including bitter chocolate and hazelnut torte, lemon and thyme crème brûlée and chocolate-coated roasted figs were “the best part of the meal”.
The wine list was “surprisingly Frog-heavy for an Eyetie gaff” but a £27.50 Gavi di Gavi was “excellent”.
Prices were “really rather good value”. The atmosphere was deemed “excellent for business”. Staff were “friendly and well-presented” and one brunette in particular was “hubba, hubba, hubba, don’t mind if I do”.
Meat/fish: 9
Cooking: 6
Other: 5
Score: 6.67
Price: starters, £6; pastas, £7; mains, £13; puds, £4
J. Sheekey
28 St Martin’s Court, WC2 (020-7240 2565)
Can’t express how “perfect this restaurant is in every way”. Last week I had a little copper dish of gambas from La Rochelle (which had been foolish enough to loiter around the oyster beds) which were zapped in butter with garlic and coriander and “knocked my blooming socks off”.
Click here to book a table at this restaurant
Joe Allen
13 Exeter Street, WC2 (020-7836 0651)
Went in for supper on a whim the other day for the first time in three or four years. I’d forgotten “how bloody nice it is”. There’s “no mucking about”, the way it looks “just can’t help making you happy”, and the food is “perfectly fine”.
E-mail feedme@thetimes.co.uk if you
know somewhere good and maybe we’ll go there together
