Does AA Gill Eat Meat From A Gibbet?

The row about AA Gill giving London’s trendy Hawksmoor steak restaurant a mauling with a fleischklopfer has raised a couple of interesting questions, namely where does the overpaid napkin-tucker get his beef from, and just how much justification was there in his review?

I promise this is my last word on the matter, but there was one fundamental aspect to his article that I thought was a bit odd – even if you do take into account his over-developed use of hyperbole and glibness.

Part of Gill’s “absolute slating” as the restaurant itself put it, was that the meat was undercooked, the béarnaise sauce was cold, and everything was swimming in fat. As I wrote in my last blog, this caused a furore on Twitter from food bloggers and fans, who said they couldn’t understand why he’d come to that conclusion when their meals had been so good.

I don’t have a problem with that bit at all. Firstly, food is highly subjective. Secondly, it shows a lack of understanding of how a critic like Gill works. And thirdly, it reveals a lack of understanding about how a professional kitchen works. Kitchens are chaotic places at the best of times, and although consistency is the mantra banged into every chef, not even the top restaurants get it right all the time - even those that have as many chefs as customers (and Hawksmoor isn’t one of those).

I can’t believe the restaurant hadn’t spotted Gill marching in with his steel-capped boots on, and stepped up its game. But even then, it’s quite possible that key staff were off, or nerves took hold, or standards had slipped on that occasion.

The béarnaise could easily be cold (a massively subjective judgement), the steak could easily be undercooked (a massively subjective judgement), and as for the “tacky pools of beefy lard”, his bone-in prime rib for two could have been from a particularly fatty beast, and the dripping chips might have been put on the plate by a junior garnish chef, who’d forgotten to bang the fryer tray, or hadn’t used towelling to soak up the grease.

All of that is possible, so I don’t really see what all the “shock” was about from Hawksmoor’s supporters. But saying that, it is of course far more likely that Gill just exaggerated the imperfections 300-fold because he knew rival critics had given the restaurant a massive thumbs-up – with The Observer’s Jay Rayner saying it was "the best steak I have ever eaten in this country" to New York Magazine generously putting it “on a par with the legendary beef palaces of New York". And he knew that the Hawksmoor was the darling of Twitter and food bloggers, so he’d get a bit of publicity from poking a stick into the baboon cage.

But what I couldn’t understand was how most of his criticism was directed at the meat supplier. He said the beef was tough (eating it “felt like something you should do in a gym”) and he had sympathy for the chefs because they were at the mercy of the butcher (The Ginger Pig) and there’s “not much you can do to rescue a badly bred and underhung sirloin”.

Chewy, underhung beef from The Ginger Pig? It didn’t sit right. Whenever I’ve bought meat from there it’s been exquisite – and it should be at that price. The beef was always juicy, tender and ridiculously full of flavour. It was always a deep purple in colour that you only get from hanging meat for long lengths of time that supermarkets are far too greedy and cost-conscious to worry about. The pork cheeks were so gamey they tasted like wild boar, and the chickens always tasted like chickens should.

It was real meat. Provided by people who knew what the hell they were talking about, and loved their jobs. It’s always the case the closer you get to the source – provided you find the right source.

When I cooked in Cornwall, I was surrounded by farmers who hung pheasants until their necks broke – an event that sometimes took up to two weeks – and the flesh had the punch of Roquefort. It wasn’t for everyone, but if you wanted the taste of wild game that epitomised Britain’s season of far-from-mellow fruitfulness, then there was no better.

As I say, it didn’t sit right. Other chefs I spoke to said they had never had a single complaint with their meat from The Ginger Pig, and raved about the quality and matureness of the beef. It seemed a strange – perhaps clumsy - thing for Gill to pick them up on.

The Ginger Pig crew were obviously not pleased to return from the weekend into a shit storm. But just as Hawksmoor did, they handled it in a dignified, professional manner, and just said they hadn’t read the article, but they’d be happy to show Gill round the farm (and hopefully feed him to the pigs).

When I contacted them to ask how long they hang their beef for, they said: “All our beef is always hung for 30 days at the farm and then delivered to London where our shops hang it for a further 10-plus days.”

Forty-plus days! No-one hangs meat longer than that. Not even the Australian beef farmers who Gill has been busy arse-kissing of late. It begged the question where does a strange, alien-like creature like Gill get his meat from, and is it from a gibbet?

Hawksmoor's Slating & Jailing Food Critics

For the second weekend in a row now AA Gill has managed to stir up a hornet’s nest among food bloggers by doing what he’s paid to do – putting the boot in, upsetting people, and getting as many column inches as he can in the process. Last weekend, he came under a storm of derision when he slammed the lack of critical commentary in food blogs, suggesting they were giving suppliers and restaurants an easy ride to maximise their PR freebies.

Today, he sparked more spleen-venting by having a swipe at what Hardens called that “Twitter sacred cow” Hawksmoor, the fashionable steak restaurant in Covent Garden. After panning the starters, he turned his attention to what he called the main event - the steak. He said their bone-in prime rib for two was undercooked, had the “texture of fat-slag thigh”, and eating it “felt like something you should do in a gym”.

Despite commenting that the béarnaise sauce was cold, and “everything seemed to be covered, or exuding tacky pools of beefy lard”, he said he had sympathy for the chefs because they are at the mercy of the butcher (The Ginger Pig) and there’s “not much you can do to rescue a badly bred and underhung sirloin”.

The bloggers and fans were incensed. How dare he? Not Hawksmoor. The owners were clearly upset, but very dignified about it, saying they hoped his “absolute slating” was outweighed by the thousands of people who love their chain.

“About 200 messages of support on Twitter today. Thanks so much. Tomorrow we sit down and try to get better, same as every Monday,” they twatted.

But some fans clearly took the attack even more to heart, reminding people what a talentless, horrible little man Gill is. Some pointed out that it was best just to ignore him, and then ignored their own advice by tweeting endlessly about him for the next few hours.

Such was the outrage and shock, it left me wondering whether they’d like to see him extradited to Taiwan, where the authorities take a very dim view of troublesome food critics like Mr Gill.

On Friday, a 28-year-old woman became the second food blogger in a week to be hauled before the courts for having the nerve to write something bad about a restaurant. The blogger, referred to only in the court papers by her surname Hsia, became embroiled in a lawsuit after she accused a yakiniku (grilled meat) restaurant in Gongguan, Taipei, of using a rusty grill to cook beef.

She posted a photo of the grill on her blog, and was then sued for defamation by the eatery which claimed the “rust” was actually barbecue sauce that hadn’t been cleaned off properly. Well that’s alright then. Perfectly understandable. Twenty lashes and it’ll all be sorted.

But she then raked up the embers further by blogging about how she was being sued by the business, which she compared to a “fat, arrogant cockroach”. She claimed that some Taiwanese firms, like the restaurant, were using the courts to silence negative comments, and by doing so “managed to continue to hassle the human world because everyone turns a blind eye to them, allowing the cockroaches to grow fat and become arrogant.”

Not surprisingly, this threw even more beefy fat on the fire, and the restaurant launched a second legal action against her - this time for the more serious charge of “public humiliation”.

Banciao District prosecutors ruled that her original review – which included photographic evidence of the grill and some positive comments about the food – was not defamatory. But they said her cockroach comments were definitely below the belt, and crossed the well-greased line from fair comment to libel. They decided her little-read blog had damaged the restaurant’s reputation, and charged her with public humiliation.

On Tuesday, another food blogger was sentenced to two years probation and ordered to pay £4,400 after she wrote a negative review of a beef noodle restaurant in Taichung, saying the food was “too salty”, the owner was a "bully" who did not enforce parking rules, and there were cockroaches in the restaurant.

The owner sued her for defamation, saying the review sparked many calls to the restaurant to verify the blogger's claims. The Taiwan High Court ruled that her post should not have referred to all the dishes as "too salty," since she only had one dish, and the conditions were not as unsanitary as she claimed when they later went to inspect (presumably after the place had been given a good deep-clean). The blogger was originally sentenced to 30 days in prison, but this was downgraded to a two-year suspended sentence after she agreed to compensate the restaurant.

It remains to be seen how the “rusty grill” woman will be treated. But the threat of a crowded prison cell in a country not known for its human rights – if you haven’t got £4,400 to avoid it - is a hell of a price to pay when you’re not getting paid to write the stuff in the first place.

Judging by the reaction on Twitter, I reckon there must be many who think Gill deserves a similar fate, but whatever you say about the “vile twat”, thank God there are still countries in the world where he can say it.