The Dish (15 page)

‘You’re not thinking of doing something stupid like pulling the review for his sake?’

‘Absolutely not!’

‘He served a terrible meal; your job is to hold the restaurant
to account. What are you pulling that face for?’

‘I’m not convinced he cooked it . . .’

‘Well, go back and eat there again.’

‘That’s not how we work – plus it’ll make me look flaky and unprofessional.’

‘Then stop worrying!’

I’m about to say: but if Adam suffers because of my review, and he wasn’t even cooking – that’s not fair, but I can already hear Jess loud and clear:
Who on earth told
you life was fair?

‘Anyway,’ she says, taking her phone from her bag. ‘You don’t want a man who works nights. In fact! I’m going to set you up with JPM.’

‘What’s that?’

‘
That
is James Paul-Martin. He’s a total dish, looks like Federer, incredibly dynamic, newly divorced . . .’

‘Oh right, the divorcées anonymous thing.’

‘His ex was some dreadful South African gym bunny.’ She leans forward
and lowers her voice. ‘Cheated on him with her Pilates instructor. I’ll tell him to take you for dinner.’

‘JPM’s a bank, isn’t it? Look, don’t,’ I say, trying to grab her phone. ‘I really like this chef.’

‘It never hurts to keep your options open, Thursday? Worst-case scenario, it’s a free dinner.’

There is no such thing.

After Jess has left, I walk home to unwind from the onslaught. It’s
almost mild, and I meander the backstreets of Marylebone, head down, wishing I’d brought shades, or at least an eye patch.

I do not want to go on a date with another one of her banker friends. I would like to go on a proper date with Adam – and I don’t want to have to wait a month until he gets a night off. It sounds so foolish – a week ago he was a stranger – but I’ve been thinking about him
constantly since we met. Maybe it was the random greatness of last Sunday combined with that perfect breakfast on Thursday, the lift, the kiss, the kiss . . .

The truth is, I’ve tried to tamp down the hope that’s trying to rear its head but I’m so excited about seeing him on Tuesday I can hardly wait. I fear I might have jinxed it by even mentioning him to Jess. I want to go to bed early tonight
so I can wake up and it will be Sunday and then it’s only two more sleeps till we meet. That’s how children think about Christmas: that’s because children still believe in Santa Claus.

And the truth is also this: I hate feeling this way, because it feels like I have someone – if only in my head. And if I have someone, then I also have someone to lose.

Monday is one of those days where I’m starving from the moment I wake up. By 11 a.m. I’ve demolished a lonely porridge pot, a banana, a packet of salted cashews and seven of Azeem’s Munchies, so it’s a relief when Heather summons me up to her office.

In my limited experience, I always thought a corporate lawyer’s job was easy. All you had to do was cover your arse and say no to everything
in varying shades of paternal concern:
Oooh, sorry but
there’s a risk involved;
That’s
just too big a risk; Oh no – we cannot afford to be exposed to such unknown levels of risk
. . .

But Heather has a far ballsier perspective. She never says ‘Cut this sentence out’; rather ‘How can we keep it in?’ She’ll recraft your copy so it skates just the right side of the line, allowing you to say exactly
what you intended, without the danger of someone suing, and putting our independent, not hugely well-funded magazine out of business.

‘Laura!’ she says, placing a copy of my review on her desk. ‘Can I send a copy to my husband? He works with a bunch of Vulture Capitalists, and they’re always trying to out-do each other with the most ostentatious restaurants; I’d better warn him off!’

‘I can
safely say it’s the worst three hundred and eighty-seven pound meal I’ve ever eaten. So what do you think, how much needs revising?’

‘Sit!’ She pats the chair next to her. ‘There are some specifics and then the general tone.’

‘Sounds ominous . . .’

‘Let’s see:

‘
1. Making diners queue in the rain for two hours when they could queue inside is inconsiderate. Making them queue to a single Jay-Z
track is way past inconsiderate – it’s a torture treatment devised by Kevin the Teenager.

‘2. Next time Kevin’s rifling through his iTunes ask him to pick a song that doesn’t refer to women as bitches – us bitches get uppity so easily.’

‘3. If there is a “No reservations” policy, how come the table of six wearing Deutsche Bank fleeces walked straight to the front of the queue?

‘4. And the couple
who pulled up in an apple-green Ferrari . . .

‘5. And the B-lister from
I’m A Celebrity
plus entourage . . .’

‘That’s all fine. Ah yes, points six and seven . . .

‘
6. With an eight million pound budget, I’m surprised you dress your hostesses head to toe in American Girlz batty riders.

‘7. Did I say head to toe? I meant head to mid-butt cheek, like a gaggle of low-budget twerkers.

‘Tell me,’
Heather says, her fountain pen poised. ‘What are batty riders – anything to do with Nora?’

‘Definitely not. A batty is a bottom and batty riders are very, very short shorts that reveal most of one’s . . . batty. So they’re sort of like Spanx but with the opposite intention.’

‘And how do you know these ones were from American Girlz?’

‘I was trying to convey the fact the outfits looked quasi-porn
starrish.’

‘But did you actually see inside their batty riders?’

‘I practically saw inside their batties . . .’

‘Oh great Scott. All this talk of feminism,’ she says. ‘Sometimes I think it’s a figment of the media’s imagination. OK, so you’re using American Girlz as shorthand for trashy – but you can’t
substantiate it so think of another way of communicating it. And perhaps consider changing
batty riders to something old folk like me can understand? Next: the fact they tried to charge you for the cloakroom, are you certain it wasn’t a suggested gratuity?’

‘I handed my coat over, the girl said, “Five pounds.” I thought she was joking. She wasn’t, so I kept my coat.’

‘And they refused to serve free tap water?’

‘They added twenty-four pounds to the bill for a litre and a half of filtered
tap water – we’d made it clear we wouldn’t pay for it; Roger nearly had fisticuffs with the waiter.’

‘Fine. The broad beans frozen, the strawberries not seasonal . . . ah yes, now this coffee thing: I feel embarrassed even asking, given all the lovely coffee you provide, but are you positive about this?

‘89. Spare me your three-page coffee list. I know a little about coffee, and what you served
me was Posh Instant, not in any way related to the single origin, El Salvador bean you charged £9 for.’

‘One hundred per cent,’ I say. ‘The complexity of flavour profiles in real coffee is incomparable to granules or pods. Think of fresh coffee versus instant as the difference between watching
Gravity
at an Imax, versus watching it in black and white with no sound, on an iPod mini.’

‘Because
you’re potentially accusing the restaurateurs of fraud . . .’

I shrug. ‘They’re lying to their customers and stealing from them. The fact their customers don’t seem to know or care is beside the point.’

‘OK. But if you’re wrong, it’s defamatory.’

‘I’m not wrong.’

‘Then keep it. Then your end comments – change “This is the worst restaurant in the Northern Hemisphere . . .” to “Is this the worst
” . . .
again, moves it from defamation. And then the last paragraphs are quite inflammatory, verging on ridicule.

‘Jonn Zavragin – I’ve seen you on YouTube playing guitar. I’m sure if you asked AC/DC nicely they might find you a job better suited to your mid-life crisis . . .’

‘You think I should tone it down?’

‘It worries me slightly,’ she says, tapping her pen distractedly on her desk. ‘This
is the most brutal tone you’ve taken; it reminds me of a review Fergus wrote years ago where he called Matthieu Garrigue the worst chef in London.’

‘What happened?’

‘Garrigue’s lawyers kicked up an epic stink, said it was defamatory, claimed it had put customers off and that Fergus was a charlatan. Garrigue claimed he’d served Anjou squab instead of guinea fowl and Fergus had been too drunk
to notice.’

That sounds like Fergus. One time I went for dinner with Roger and Fergus and the waiter accidentally gave Fergus my halibut, not his sea bass. It was only once the plates were cleared and I asked how he’d enjoyed my fish that he realised. He’s never forgiven me, though Roger laughed so hard he practically needed the Heimlich.

‘Did Garrigue try to sue?’

‘They sent a solicitor’s
letter but we argued Honest Comment and Vulgar Abuse.’

‘Vulgar Abuse?’

‘If you say something insulting but don’t mean it
literally
– and that’s clear to a reader – for example, “I’d rather cut out my own tongue than eat Garrigue’s langue de chat” – you can get away with it. Anyway, Garrigue’s PR firm leaked the whole thing to the papers. After that tiff you couldn’t get a reservation for love
or money. Sometimes you have to wonder if these spats aren’t manufactured in the first place.’

‘Would you rather I changed the end?’

She pauses. ‘If Roger’s happy? We’ve got this big exposé on Damian Bechdel, and the turkey piece, and if anything’s going to kick off, it’ll be those. So yes, it’s fine. It’s better than fine – you should give yourself a pat on the back.’

My su
bconscious must
have taken Jess’s warnings to heart because I find myself in my kitchen later, staring at a selection of collagen-rich ingredients on the counter. My phone rings. Panic! I’m so entirely over-invested in tomorrow’s date, I bet it’s Adam calling to cancel – but it’s Sophie, telling me she’s just missed her train. ‘The next one’s not till eight fourteen p.m., and they’re going to make me buy a new sodding
ticket. Can we eat at ten p.m.?’

‘Could we do tomorrow instead?’

‘Will the coast still be clear?’ Sophie is currently avoiding my flat, given her and Amber’s current beef/turkey.

‘She’s away all week, Gestalt-Ashtanga. Try saying that when you’re drunk, definitely don’t try doing it.’

The mackerel and asparagus go back in the fridge. Instead I look on the Leftovers website (it’s genius) to
see what to make with some old boiled potatoes, sour cream and bacon, and find a south-western jalapeño hash that’s spicy, smoky and utterly delicious. Besides, a good night’s sleep will make me look just as young as an oily fish. It’s a shame Sophie’s not around though, I could do with some distraction from thinking about Adam.

I could make a start on Second Helpings. It’s an idea I pitched
after I brought Roger a takeaway from Arrigato, off Gray’s Inn Road. From outside it resembles a massage parlour and if you realised it served hand rolls, not hand jobs, you’d be even less inclined to enter, but it’s one of the best sushi bars in London. I want to scream from the rooftops: look past the dingy walls and the green neon because THE FISH IS EXTRAORDINARY AND YOU CAN STUFF YOUR FACE FOR
LESS THAN A TENNER! But it’s the sort of restaurant that will never get reviewed – not just because Kelly Brook would never be papped falling out of its doors, but because it’s been there a decade. There are over 10,000 restaurants in London and the only ones we review are the shiny, the sexy, the new. Surely it’s far more interesting to read about places customers have stayed loyal to? I pour a
glass of wine, start writing notes and the next time I look at my watch it’s 10.30 p.m.

In the aftermath of my divorce, I decided food was the only reliable pleasure in this world – food and great American TV. Men can hurt you, friends can hurt you, butter cannot hurt you (your arteries might disagree). And so I literally do pinch myself (and I never use
literally
unless I mean it) on nights
like tonight, when time flies and I remember how lucky I am to have a job that doesn’t feel like work.

As I climb into bed, I can’t work out whether I’m more excited about this idea or my date. I have so much adrenalin buzzing round me, I feel like I’ve drunk four double espressos.

Only eight and a half hours to go!

It’s 3.23 a.m. All is silent outside my bedroom window, but inside my head it’s party time! One negative thought bumping into the next and inviting more to join them for piña coladas.

The start of a relationship is such a fragile thing . . .

Stop thinking and go back to sleep.

Fragile like that coral shell on Aunty Ruth’s mantelpiece all those years ago . . . It was an accident, I’d barely
touched its delicate surface yet suddenly I felt it lose its shape under my fingers . . .

Meditation! Focus on your breathing!

I’m great at breaking things on date three . . . There’ve been half a dozen men since Tom, to whom I’ve said something damaging on the third date and things have fallen apart before they’ve started:

Barrister Steven: I’d mentioned my divorce. He’d scrutinised me over
his roast pork belly: ‘Divorced? Already? Must be something seriously wrong with you.’ I should have told him I was divorced earlier, but it hadn’t come up
.

I try adjusting my pillows, curling the top one into a ball, then two minutes later, fling it to the floor.

Joe from Guardian Soulmates, who told me to redirect my monthly donations away from Breakthrough Breast Cancer and towards the human
rights charity he worked for. Apparently calling a guy a hectoring dick on a third date is a deal breaker . . .

If you turn the lights on now, you’ll be admitting defeat.

Marc ‘with a c’, who said a woman over thirty who refused to give head on date three was over-estimating her market value, a ‘seller in a buyer’s market’
.

Maybe the problem – now I think about it – was what those guys said
to me, rather than my death-knell responses. Maybe I shouldn’t have allowed them second dates, let alone thirds . . .