One of the hallmarks of a good restaurant critic is that they avoid describing every last mouthful of food in boorish detail. They let us know they have found somewhere we might like to spend our hard-earned cash (or not) and we learn to trust their judgment. The most entertaining critics also seem to be the ones who regularly go off piste (not to mention the ones who regularly go off pissed) and simply amuse or infuriate us as well as telling us about what they ate. In short we value the writing as much as the opinions.
With this in mind, we thought it might be fun to send five of the world's best writers to Restaurant magazine's top five restaurants in the world. So we posted Irvine Welsh to The French Laundry in the Napa Valley, Peter Carey to Jean Georges in New York and Sebastian Faulks to our own Gordon Ramsay in London. Their reports make the most entertaining restaurant criticism you will find anywhere.Still on a literary theme we have asked Brazilian Paulo Coelho - the world's second biggest-selling author - to let us know the secrets of his shopping basket. He pulls no punches about what is happening to modern eating, so foie gras haters should get their green Biros and little brown envelopes ready (I've already sent mine).
One guy who might just fancy a decent meal right now is illusionist David Blaine. I must admit I have been tempted to toss him a sausage more than once over his long and frankly rather pointless fast. Personally I think he's just trying to lose those love-handles without resorting to the gym or, heaven forbid, the so terribly pass¿ Atkins diet. Polly Vernon has been making a bit of study on the way men diet. Read her conclusion on page 7. It seems that Blaine is the word.
The epithet 'celebrity chef' is now as much a term of derision as it is of endearment, but it hasn't always been so. The first true celebrity chef was Antonin Car¿me, a chef so prized that in 1820 he was paid the equivalent of £125,000 by James Rothschild, just one of his clients. This month we have an extract from his biography, Cooking For Kings by Ian Kelly, and follow the celebrity cook's family tree from Car¿me's crown to Kerryann's scrunchie.
And thank you for all your entries to the Observer Food Monthly Awards. We appreciate them all. But please keep sending them in, don't keep the country's best food a secret. That's what we are here for, to celebrate the wonderful, glorious thing that is food.
Nigel Slater is The Observer's cookery writer
My Favourite Table and Anthony Quinn's Hot Date return next month
