#IR6: There's Only One Restaurant in Nottingham

Welcome to the sixth edition of In Review

Everyday People/Instagram

With a couple of weeks having passed — thanks to the maelstrom of job applications — this edition of In Review will pull out some recent tropes across critics, as well as examining some individual pieces.

In Review is the paid subscriber portion of In Digestion, but the introduction and first piece of the week will always be above the paywall.

If you are an existing paid subscriber who signed up due to the interviews, and don’t find this appealing, that’s all good. Please get in touch and I will sort you out.

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Jay Rayner and Tim Hayward | The Observer and The Financial Times

Everyday People, Nottingham

Restaurant critics choose their targets via a blend of free will, public relations compulsion, and bit of jostling about who gets to go to the same place as everybody else first. Sometimes, though, genuine coincidences occur, as when both Jay Rayner and Tim Hayward end up at the same ramen restaurant in Nottingham, which has been open for over two years.

Sadly, neither critic was brave enough to break the fourth wall in their review. While this is understandably rare, when done well it can add layers to discussions about hype, access, and the media machine behind the restaurant world. When Washington Post critic Tom Sietsema noted seeing the late Los Angeles Times legend Jonathan Gold across the room in his review of Noma “2.0,” the self-awareness added a bit of frisson to a procession of acclaim. When both critics relayed how René Redzepi told them that they might spot a fox, in “wild nature,” the repetition robbed the anecdote of its alacrity, more truthful about the nature of wilderness in the Danish capital than a single nod could have been.

Thankfully, Rayner delivered on Instagram (where I am not yet blocked), noting that both men were in town to record a radio episode (together) but had no discussion of where they were going to eat (separately.) As for the reviews: Hayward is normally at his best when getting nerdy about pork, which Everyday People allows him to do, while Rayner looks into antecedents like Tim Anderson’s Nanban in London and James Chant’s Matsudai in Cardiff.

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After the paywall:

• How our critics are responding to an influx of Italian-American tributes

• What on earth is going on with their approach to Chinese restaurants

• The dead website living rent-free in Giles Coren’s head