Jacques Derrida, the man who invented the literary theory of deconstruction, got a 5,000-word obituary in The Guardian the other week. (He's dead, by the way.) Most people only get 800, but then perhaps Derrida's obit wasn't actually as long as it seemed. Maybe it didn't mean what it said. Maybe it wasn't an obituary at all.

For a man who said that words have no definitive meaning, only context, Derrida cleverly arranged to be born with a name that nobody knew definitively how to pronounce: academics would lie awake at night in flop sweats at the mere thought of having to say it. But there's one thing that Jacques D (as I always called him) never really got his froggy noggin round: the relative fact that a deconstructed truth looks very different on the page from when you say it out loud. Read the rest of this page in the voice of Maurice Chevalier looking at Gigi's bottom and you'll see what I mean, or might have meant, or may mean in relation to all the other things I've meant.

Apparently, the Chinese and Japanese are more likely to get osteoarthritis in their thumbs and forefingers than the rest of us, as a result of repetitive chopstick strain. How long, do you imagine, before the paper sleeves the sticks arrive in are printed with health warnings and a helpline number? How soon before sushi bars refuse to let round-eyes have sticks, in case we sue? And how soon before somewhere produces a padded rubber chopstick "for those who want to enjoy the sophisticated good times of oriental cuisine, but not risk the agony and embarrassing deformity of dipstick-crippled digits"?

You may laugh, but I see the divine finger in this nugget of information. You know how the Chinese and Japanese never seem to die of anything? All the good, overindulgent stuff that whacks us -heart attacks, strokes, cancer of the mucky bits -never seems to get them. They're like elephants. Elephants have no natural enemies and they break down about as often as sundials. But they have six sets of teeth and wear out one set a decade. After the sixth, that's it. Well, I reckon that's what God has done to the Japanese. They wear out their chopstick fingers and starve to death. Isn't nature wonderful?

I only mention this because I ate with Plum Sykes using chopsticks just last week.

She's working on the follow-up to her novel, Bergdorf Blondes. You can hardly wait, can you? You want to rip every new chuckletastic page from her jasmine-scented lilac Smythson's "My Second Novel" pad, just so that you can be the first to have read it.

Plum told me that the chic nubility in New York now refer to each other as "Anna" or "So Anna". This is a compliment of high respect, and it's short for "Anna-rexic", meaning, of course, that the object is fashionably and enviably thin. She also said that there was a new term, "Tanorexic", for people who overindulged in the bronzer. I rather like this new portmanteau for social observation. Try making up your own. I've got "Anno rexic", for people who slim years off their age, "Nupto-rexic", for those who can't commit to marriage, and "Rol-exic", for those who are fashionably late.

I'm told that just before he died, Jacques D was saying he thought Plum Sykes was the new Jane Austen. Deconstruction, of course, is second nature to anyone who can read a menu. One man's drizzled is another man's bathed; a jus here is a sauce there; a Frenchman's entrecote chasseur is a Rosbif's steak and mushrooms. The bald statement "service included", apparently unequivocal, doesn't necessarily mean there won't be an existentialist gap on your credit-card slip; or, indeed, that the staff get the money. A menu may just be a list of food and prices, but it has to tell you everything there is to know about the intentions, passion, pretensions and ability of a restaurant.

It's a letter from a sweaty man in a basement. We look at the menu at the door and make a decision to eat here or down the road. They're more complex than Metaphysical sonnets.

Take the menu at the Pig's Ear, a pub dining room in Chelsea. We assume all sorts of things about pub menus -pretension and salmonella, mostly -but this one was a worry. Cauliflower and almond soup. Goat's cheese, artichoke heart, butternut squash, toasted pine nuts and sage. Who do they think they are? Who do they think I am? What is the meaning of dinner?

The restaurant is a single room with kitchen furniture and old film posters. It's friendly and unpretentious. It's also the sort of enterprise that will save the occasional pub for grown-ups. In fact, this dining room probably comes with more collective goodwill than a space shuttle full of kittens. We took Dave MacMillan and the novelist Bella Pollen (who, I'm reliably informed, Jacques D called "the new Sappho, Anais Nin and Colette, only better at it").

I started with a fried pig's trotter and a spoonful of lentils. This is Italian New Year's Eve dinner, and was just okay.

The trotter had traded its defining unctuousness and warm, crepe de Chine-camiknicker comfort for a rougher, Germanic, leather-thong wurstiness. Dave said kindly and optimistic things about his foie gras on rosti, which was, I thought, perfectly okay, albeit about as overfamiliar as foie gras on rosti usually is, only smaller -a Mini-Me liver.

My main course, saddle of rabbit with white beans and savoy cabbage, would have been improved by a bunny that had seen a bit more of the world. Rabbits vary hugely, depending on where they've grown up and what they've been eating. The rest of the stuff, from a decent bit of halibut to a duck leg, ranged from nice enough to could do better. Like the whole cauliflower for four, which was as close as I want to get to eating George Best's brain.

I think I know what the problem is. I'll bet George Best's brain against a soggy cauliflower that the chef trained in a posher kitchen than this one. The menu still has too many starched-napkin pretensions. It needs to be simpler, though no less skilful -it needs to get its kit off quicker. I'm happy to deconstruct Bella, but not my bunny.

THE PIG'S EAR ***

35 Old Church Street, SW3; 020 7352 2908. Tue-Sat, dinner 5pm-10.30pm; Sun, lunch noon-4pm

***** Pig out

**** Pork crackling

*** Piggy in the middle

** Ham-fisted

* Pigswill

Times Recommends

• How to season a wok
• Chicago Rib Shack hits back at its critics
• Gordon Ramsay: Indian barbecue