The Return of the Reviewer

In which the author plans to dip a toe, once again, into the reviewing of restaurants...

I started reviewing restaurants back in 1994. I remember meeting Roslyn Dee, then features editor of The Sunday Tribune, in Goggin’s pub in Monkstown for a post-work drink when she asked me would I take over from the legendary Helen Lucy Burke. I didn’t hesitate.

As to the reasons for the offer, I think it had to do with HLB having declared that she would like her “mantle to descend” on me. I had been her occasional dining companion over the years and a fellow columnist in the Tribune, my contributions being about wine but often featuring food by way of context.

I remained with the Tribune until 2002 when I walked out over a disagreement with the late Paddy Murray who had just become editor. The money was truly terrible, so it was no great sacrifice. I said at the time that if I added the time taken to travel to the restaurant, the time spent eating, and the time it took to write the review, I would make considerably more money stacking shelves in Tesco. I was not exaggerating.

I spent 18 months or so doing some restaurant consultancy and then got The Irish Times gig in 2004 when Trevor White hung up his boots. I remained there until 2010 when the then editor, Geraldine Kennedy, decided that she had an issue with my doing wine-themed events in restaurants for - heaven forfend - a fee! Foregoing The Irish Times slot was no hardship, although I was sorry to lose the audience, as the pay and conditions were not much better than at the Tribune.

My dear friend, the late Paul Field, editor of The Irish Daily Mail had been tempting me to make the move to his paper for months and within three days of my final meeting with Madam Editor, I had my first review in the Mail. It sticks in my mind: L’Atmosphere, the eccentric, very French, slightly bonkers but fun restaurant near the cathedral in Waterford, now mothballed.

And so I remained happily at the Irish Daily Mail until April 2023 when I was rationalised, i.e. let go as part of a major cost-saving exercise. The pay and conditions there were very good and I had wonderful colleagues but I often wondered how many people read the paper. (Not very many, unfortunately, and I knew nobody outside PR and broadcasting who did). Fewer and fewer people are reading actual newspapers, anyway, these days. I was also a little uncomfortable with the connection to the horrendous UK edition of the Mail titles, however tenuous.

I now write, very happily, for the Irish edition of The Sunday Times - about growing stuff (mainly to eat), rural life, cooking in our kitchen, wines that have worked well with various dishes and there’s only a rare mention of a restaurant.

That’s largely because I have been in so few restaurants since April 2023. Well, compared to before then, when it was one a week, at least.

There was a poor experience at Hawksmoor in Dublin that merited a mention because I’m such a fan of the London and Edinburgh iterations; and a mention of both Everett’s, a great favourite of Johann’s and mine, in Waterford, and the delightful Dax in Dublin where Graham Neville and Olivier Meisonnave create lots of happiness.

Anyway, having spent more than a year not reviewing restaurants, I’ve decided to return to the fray in a very small way: a restaurant review here on Substack once a month, maybe a little more if my experiences merit it. I will look at the new, the fashionable, the old, the overlooked, the whole caboodle. But as Twitter followers know, I won’t be going to anywhere with a celebrated sound system.

What are my guidelines-for-self? Well, first of all, try to write about the restaurant rather than myself. And to focus on the food, not so much on the decor, the music, the menu design. I’ll consider the wine list, especially what’s available by the glass. I’ll give bonus points (not that I ever employ a points-based approach) for serving dry sherry. I’ll review old favourites and new kids on the block. I’ll try to be eclectic. I won’t write huge, vaguely related preambles as I have done in the past when there was little to say but I had to fill the space; only the late Adrian Gill was good enough to get away with that. That’s all, I think, but I’d be interested to hear what people think.

So, if you would like to read what I’ve been up to, please subscribe. It’s free, unlike those meals that will have to be paid for. That will be a new experience, of course and I suspect it will focus the critical faculties.