A 20-course tasting menu? More like an endurance test

LAST week’s fuss around the awarding of Michelin stars reminded me yet again that, while I’m sure it’s some people’s idea of a good night out, to me, things like 20-course tasting menus sound like an endurance test.

It’s not helped by the fact fine dining these days often feels like Mass, where you come and pay homage to the food and chef, and you don’t get too giddy. And you’re grateful to be there. Many of them don’t even give you the luxury of choice any more. You eat what you are given. You wouldn’t be qualified to choose what you would like to eat. Chef will tell you what to eat, and maybe even how to eat it. He’s the expert.

Fine dining, and the increasing fetishising of food, is just one more manifestation of capitalism commoditising things into so-called ‘luxury’ goods. They convince us that a ready-made experience, by virtue of expense, exclusivity, branding, hype and a certain amount of ceremony, is in some way special, unique, luxurious. In fact it’s an ersatz notion of luxury and it has created a whole network of bland, samey fine-dining restaurants around the world, places where the international jet-set and rich Russians will always feel comfortable.

A friend of mine once worked at a big international luxury brand. He had a few drinks one night with an older hand in the organisation. The older guy looked him in the eye at one point, and asked: “Do you think what we do is luxury?” My friend muttered some non-committal answer. “I’ll tell you what luxury is,” the guy said. “Luxury is this shirt I’m wearing. It’s a quarter the price of our products, but to get one you have to go to a small shop in a small town in France. The guy is only there at certain times and he will only sell you a shirt if he knows you or he likes you. He does a fitting and then you call back the next day to collect the shirt, and it will fit you perfectly. That’s f **king luxury, mate.”

The roving band of people who travel the world ticking off Top 50 and Michelin-starred restaurants and Instagramming their food are not all fools. Some top restaurants are incredible experiences. But many are identikit, their sameness interrupted only by the different ingredients that will be ‘foraged’ or ‘locally sourced’ in different countries.

Let me tell you about my idea of luxury, and locally sourced. On holiday, we had eaten in the same place for three nights, as you do. It was very good, and it was pretty much on the sea. There was a guy in a lean-to off the side of the building who was surrounded by various boxes of fish and shellfish on ice. He was hard at it all the time. A lot of his business seemed to be involving elaborate shucking rituals around various shellfish, and then he would shout and these large platters of crustaceans, on mountains of ice, would head out to the tables. The previous night I had noted that the matriarch, who sat watching everything, doing books and receipts, and who was clearly the boss, was eating a baked potato and what looked like red mussels. I asked her what it was and it emerged that they were cozze all right, but they were crudo. Raw.

It was our last night so it was now or never. The platter of crudo was about €20 and there was enough for two people or more. There were regular prawns, gamberi rosso — sweet red prawns, two types of mussels, oysters, cockles and chopped cuttlefish, all raw. I was nervous. Maybe Nonna was just used to it. Maybe her gut bacteria could accommodate any marine-life parasites at this point. The waiter had assured us it was all practically alive and twitching it was so fresh. And I’ve eaten oysters, and sushi, right? But didn’t raw fish for sushi need to be frozen first to kill the parasites?

Anyway, we chanced it, and we tucked in with a glass of flinty local white wine. And as I sat there on that balmy evening, the kids on chairoplanes 20 metres away, the smoke from the nearby barbecue van wafting around us, the sea a couple of feet away, sucking the insides out of the heads of sweet red prawns, I realised something. This was luxury. It was €20 for two, and a tenner for the wine. But it was true luxury. This was a bespoke experience that no tour guide or socalled luxury travel company could replicate. It was also an experience I would never forget. The textures of this moment would stay with me forever, this bit of magic, frozen in time.

Here are other moments of bespoke, exclusive luxury I have experienced: The first sip of a pint in Bridie’s in Derrynane after a swim, with the slight chill of the sea still in me. A meal in west Cork consisting only of boiled potatoes, butter and salt, but potatoes that I’ve just dug out of the ground. Sitting on a bench on a smelly farm with goats practically screaming all around me, eating bread and cheese with a bit of salt and oil, having just watched a guy make the cheese. Sitting on a sea wall in Tuscany eating a €4 plastic carton of fritto misto, vegetables, squid and prawns dusted in flour and deep fried, washed down with a cold can of Coke. A slice of my mother’s brown bread, fresh from the oven plastered in butter, at her kitchen table. A perfectly balanced watermelon and mint granita served on a hot day by an old man in an apron, an old man who has served these up all his life — that’s terroir for you. These are the transcendent moments for me, when it all comes together and time stands still. Authentic experiences of connectivity to place and to taste. But then. I’m a peasant really.

Michelin has embraced places with a less formal ethos in recent years. We’ve seen this in Ireland. Restaurants with a warmer atmosphere, a bit more texture and character and creativity, are now being included along with the dull temples to food.

But largely, I find Michelin-type dining to be a crashing bore, a failed attempt to recreate authentic experiences for people who don’t want to risk the authentic version. The funny thing is, if you ask most chefs what their most potent food memories are, they will usually pick something really simple and elemental, some rustic food they ate at a beach shack once, or something their mother used to make.

And in truth most of them are chasing that dragon, trying to find those essences again. Many top chefs now claim to be all about good ingredients, simply treated. But then why do I need to book six months in advance and pay €100 a plate for a guy to curate our authentic experience? Why not just go and have the authentic experience somewhere simpler, like that beach shack? True luxury is not packaged up and sold to us. It is all around us. We just need to take the time to look for it.

‘They don’t even give you a choice’