When Jews gather over food you will hear the occasional shout of "enough already!", especially from those of us who have watched too much early Woody Allen and are not afraid of self-parody. Where Jews and dinner are concerned "enough, already" is, of course, a dirty lie, for "enough" was passed a very long time ago, sometime around breakfast. On the day of our barmitzvahs. Twenty years ago. Overeating is what we do a) because we are sociable, b) because we are greedy, and c) because the Cossacks are coming. Probably. It might be our last meal. It never is but we tell ourselves that it might be our last, just to be on the safe side.
Spare a thought, then, for the restaurant critics who are Jewish, and many of us are. We are forced, by dint of our paid employment, to indulge a genetic compulsion. (This is a first: a genuine reason to feel sorry for Giles Coren.) We each of us deal with it in different ways. I go to the gym, where daily I fight a battle against the side-effects that loiter with intent about my waist. On the one hand this makes me feel virtuous. Look! I'm sweating out dinner! On the other, I know there's something obscene about needing a gym membership to mitigate the effects of overeating. After all – and here it comes – while I am overfed others are starving.
My job now is to muster some killer, steel-enforced argument with which to justify my behaviour. Those arguments exist. As aid agencies will tell you, famines are caused by human failings – civil wars, economic incompetence – and not by Jay Rayner scarfing all the pies. Me telling Heston Blumenthal that I'll forgo courses 11 to 14 and jump straight back in at dessert is not going to ensure a single hungry child gets fed.
But even I know that would be an act of self-delusion; that, while I need not feel responsible for others going without, that does not make my behaviour OK. In his new book, Medium Raw, chef-turned-food writer Tony Bourdain tells of the horrors that befall top-flight chefs visiting the restaurants of colleagues and being pelted with extra dishes on top of the 15-strong tasting menu. This happens to me regularly. Once I went to a serious restaurant in California with a big-name food blogger. Eager to impress her, the chef sent out 26 courses. Some were marvellous: the foie gras crème caramel, the crisp croquette with a liquid centre of truffle and chestnut, the sea urchin sabayon. But 26 bloody courses? At the end the chef came out and said "Did I win?" as if eating were a competitive sport, which in America it sometimes is, though not usually at restaurants which charge $150 for dinner.
Occasionally the memory makes me shudder. It was much too much of everything. But here's my confession: I also loved it. Each dish was so damn good, each flavour so clean and clear, that saying no just because I was full felt like the act of an idiot. Fullness could be overcome; these dishes, these sensory pleasures, could only be enjoyed now. And I've always been a sucker for a sensory pleasure. So that's it. No excuses, just self-knowledge. In the words of the great Gloria Gaynor, I am what I am. It's why, if you ever hear me shout "enough, already!" it will, purely by coincidence, be just after the very last dish has been served. So shoot me.
jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
