Restaurant reviews by Justin Tanner, our retired food critic who believes an independent Boris-and-Nigel party would win in a landslide
WHICH dickhead decided barbecues are macho? Standing around outside burning food over fire? Pretend you’re a caveman if you like but you look like a Boy Scout to me.
There’s no call for acting like a primitive to reclaim your culinary manhood. A real bloke gets his wife to do it.
Obviously I’m at a divorce disadvantage there, but I’ve got new neighbours. Invited me around for a housewarming in the garden. I might as well be sociable because I might need to borrow a hedgetrimmer and never return it, like with the last lot.
We get off to a poor start when I turn up and they’ve got one of these fucking gas barbecues. I point out that it’s not a proper barbie and they might as well have just dragged the cooker into the bloody garden. They’re only speechless because I’m right.
My patience exhausted by politely waiting for the host to pour drinks, I help them out by getting myself a bottle of Riesling and wave away offers of a glass. ‘Less washing-up,’ I explain between swigs.
As the meat chars, I try making conversation, but it’s all about kids and schools. I bring up the atrocities of the Burma Railway – just read a book about them – and nobody wants to know.
Anyway I’m here for the food, and thank fuck it’s free. Barbecues are beefburgers, sausages, red sauce, and bread buns. End of. So what’s all this bollocks? Chicken souvlaki, corn on the cob, and endless fucking salads.
Not to mention the culinary abomination that is veggie burgers. Rusk and sawdust pretending to be meat for thin-blooded dickheads pretending not to be carnivorous. You might as well grill air for ghosts.
They run out of booze early, or at least I can’t find any, and my offers to pop to mine for a crate of Red Stripe are firmly rebuffed. Welcoming them to the neighbourhood, I stagger home.
There’s no call for cooking outdoors when you’ve got a kitchen. Barbecues are for wankers and show-offs. Still, I’m full of meat and booze and piss in my own garden, as a mark of courtesy. Next door can hear me though.
