Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Foam at the mouth

Since Stephen Pollard unrepentantly posts trivialities to his blog, I feel entitled to point out the mysterious fate of his latest four hundred words, a perspiring after dinner speech apparently designed to land the portly one a restaurant reviewing sinecure:
I am lucky enough to have eaten in Restaurant's Top Three, and many others beside. I could tell you that the meal at The French Laundry in California was the most perfect of all I have ever eaten, that the butter and greens alone at Arpege in Paris made the €328 cost worth it, and that The Fat Duck far exceeded my already over the top expectations.
Oh and he will tell us. He also informed Pollard watchers yesterday that this gourmandising paean was to appear in The Times, presumably, given its length and Pollard's record, in the ever-forgiving Blusterer column. But tragically two other pieces have appeared since then in that space, and there's no sign of it anywhere else. Somehow the comment editor felt a barely coherent Tim Luckhurst rant about immigrant marriages, and an intemperate eruption regarding Dr Who from Leo McKinstry, were more important.

It's a poor substitute, but until The Times gets desperate fans can enjoy a further sampling of that between-mouthfuls eulogy here:
The ‘Tierra 2005’’consisted of a polystyrene box, with a mound of parmesan foam inside. It was as full of flavour as any meat. To add to it I was given a bag of "raspberry muesli". The combination was breathtaking.
One is reminded of Pollard's strange assertion in the Guardian that opera is better than theatre because, well... because it's got music in it, and it's, um, better. The breathless argument by assertion style is probably better suited to generic Brown vs. Blair pieces for the Mail.

Update: Commenter "delworth" points out that I was wrong -- the piece did appear, in the Food and Drink section. It was still a lousy article, however.

3 Comments:

Blogger StuartA said...

Thanks for pointing me to it -- the Times Online search facility didn't turn it up.

As for the rest... well it seems a feeble point upon which to hinge such a sweeping conclusion. Could you expand on it?

1:54 pm  
Blogger StuartA said...

A comment so good that it evidently deserved posting twice...

As I said, I conducted a search using the Times Online search facility, and checked the comment page from the day Pollard posted. Since he had never, as far as I knew, written for their "Food and Drink" section, I concluded it hadn't appeared.

As for the more general point, I quite plainly do read the newspapers. Curiously enough, that's where I get the material upon which I comment.

What else has so riled you, or are you just very keen on Pollard's food criticism?

2:06 pm  
Blogger StuartA said...

Not at all. I was factually wrong, as admitted in the posting . But part of the point of what I wrote was that the article wasn't very good, and I'm afraid I haven't changed my mind on that.

Oh, and I'll reveal, in case you were thinking of doing so, that Pollard's gastronomic spew was not four hundred words long.

All of that said, your animus would seem to derive from something other than food criticism ("you'd already made it painfully obvious"), but I've yet to hear what it is, or see any comment from you regarding anything else. Why would that be?

2:21 pm  

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