The reporter from the Dudley News was very nice. She just needed to ask me a few questions about my review of the Dry Dock in Netherton, and the small matter of the locals' response, which amounted to 'string the bastard up'.
My, how my attack on the Black Country made you cross. I received more than 50 emails, many using language ripe enough to make a navvy blush. Interestingly, many of those defending the Black Country came from people who had moved away from the area, while a significant proportion of my supporters were people who continued to live there. Many of my detractors made the same accusation: that I was just another London-based journalist who blindly presumed the capital to be the centre of everything. In one regard, the charge is clearly false. Regular readers will know that my reviews have taken me from the Isle of Wight to Edinburgh, from the west of Devon to the eastern most tip of Norfolk.
They are correct, however, about what that travelling has taught me: London really is the best place in Britain in which to eat out, and I refuse to pretend otherwise. There are so many more restaurants here. The food is better. The variety is better. The inventiveness is greater. The service is more accomplished. I'm not claiming it is always the best value - it isn't. Pricing can sometimes be appalling. Nor am I claiming there are no good restaurants outside London. Obviously there are. Certain cities - Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh - are serious contenders. But still, nothing matches the capital's range.
One virtue of a crowded city like London is that it forces everyone to raise their game. I suspect that chef Jason Deason, for example, could benefit from a little of that competitive spirit. I am not arguing that he can't cook. The food at his eponymous Bristol restaurant carries the mark of a man who has been through a number of top-flight kitchens. But it suffers from being strained and over-wrought.
The custard-yellow building is equally divided. Outside, it looks like a seaside B&B, complete with Torquay-style palms. Inside, it is all pale walls and cosmopolitan blond wood floors.
The main problem here is a surfeit of ideas, which is better than the opposite. My starter of a competent wild mushroom tart with crisp griddled asparagus, came with an unnecessary truffle sauce. My companion, Kim, a fine actress currently playing Miss Dinsmore in the National Theatre's touring production of Singin' in the Rain (next stop, Manchester Opera House) had the herb seared tuna.
Unsurprisingly, for someone who does the splits every night on stage, Kim is a girl who likes a bit of punch and kick. But the vicious white pepper overload in the herb crust was too much, even for her.
Equally her roast fillet of beef on a stroganoff sauce with new season carrots, brought two huge pieces of beef where one would have done. They could then have reduced the price from its vertiginous £19. And why deliver a side dish of vegetables including carrots when they are already on the plate? It was as if they were trying to justify the prices by providing more than it was possible to eat.
The same veg also turned up alongside my roast suckling pig with Toulouse sausage, creamed choucroute and peas. This seemed to be a reinvention of the classic choucroute à l'Alsacienne, in which the sauerkraut is layered with great solid cuts of pork. Done well it's a fabulously earthy dish and, while the pork was accurately cooked, this attempt to deconstruct it did nothing to improve the finished product.
The extra vegetables attained their goal in one way, though; we were too full to attempt pudding. The shame about all this is that Deason's clearly has the potential to be a very good restaurant. It just has to learn that less genuinely is so very much more.
