Kitchen Con by Trevor White

Trevor White quotes the following formula for success “…sound Irish, dress British, think Yiddish” and reckons that, as a Dubliner with a public school education and a Jewish father, he should thus be running a media empire. Well, he’s only in his mid-thirties, and if anyone can build success on charm alone, Trevor’s your man.

Kitchen Con begins awkwardly, the introduction is jerky, and reads as if he has gone through his notes, picking out tasty epigrams, they look great but contribute nothing to the narrative. Consider “Nothing tastes as good as that which one has never eaten?” What? And why include the entire interview with Anthony Bourdain verbatim? Professional journalists edit their interviews, don’t they?

White’s much re-iterated thesis that the new home of the restaurant critic is the internet, which has democratised an activity previously reserved for the self styled elite, is sound (after all, where are you reading this?) But you can’t help wondering how much he really gets this, when he says “…how easy it is to become a judge of dinner. All you need is a pen, some paper and an appetite.”

But it’s elegantly and entertainingly written, and that makes up for a lot. As the book progresses, he gets into his gossipy, passionate and opinionated stride. The many new (to me, anyway) anecdotes compensate for the few tired old stories about Dr Atkins being clinically obese when he died, and Tom Aikens and the teaspoon. If you’re an admirer of Gordon Ramsey, you won’t enjoy “...his face, language and manners are deeply offensive to anyone with a modicum of sensitivity. The difference between Gordon Ramsey and a talking pig is that Gordon Ramsey never shuts up”. The rise and fall of Conrad Gallagher, an Irish celebrity chef with several similarities to Ramsey, is a sad and salutary story.

White’s father had a famous and fashionable restaurant in Dublin for several years, and this gave him his start as a restaurant critic. It also provided an entrée into celeb world, and White is refreshingly un-star struck and intelligent on the subject of celebrity.

His heart is in the right place, not just on celebs, but on guidebooks, Zagats, Michelin and the AA guidebook all get a pasting. He’s stoutly against tipping, and makes a convincing case for eating out in expensive restaurants as being ecologically and morally sound, And he’s a passionate admirer of Joanna Blythman, which makes him one of the good guys in my book.

Kitchen Con is a blend of memoir, gossip and polemic. While it will never become one of the seminal works of the 21st century, anyone who loves restaurant life and good food will relish it.

Penny Solomons