WE ARE WHAT WE EAT

Nearly three decades ago I wrote a restaurant review that was so scathing that I can virtually remember the intro word for word.

I was writing about one of those trendy new tourist magnets where the high altitude revolving restaurant provided a great view and very little else.

(Plus you had the romantic delight of trying to find your way back from the toilet and where did your leave your purse?)

It was the 1970s and in Sydney I was editing an afternoon newspaper but also indulgently slipping on the nosebag as a restaurant reviewer called The Hungry Hinch.

The revolving experience iuvolved a new place called The Summit which gave diners an awesome view of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and Pyrmont and the sparkling views as far as Parramatta.

And, from memory, I wrote something like:

If nothing else, and there is nothing else, the view is fantastic.

It was fair comment. Hinch’s Law on revolving restaurants from Sydney to Hobart to Seattle is that people get so spun around that the quality on the plate means twiddly squat.

You are a tourist? Eat this and shut up. When surely, patently, it should be the other way around.

I mention food for several reasons and several affinities. I was The Hungry Hinch in Sydney and in Melbourne became Sir Hinchalot as a funny/serious acknowledgment of John Burns and his talented, now lamented, Sir Lunchalot on 3AW’s breakfast session which he now co-hosts.

I had some food cred. I had attended cooking classes in Sydney and New York, had owned a New York –style Melbourne restaurant called Sardi’s which Bette Midler opened and in 1991 wrote the Derryu Hinch Diet book for Penguin which sold 50,000 copies after I had shed 43 pounds (more than 21 kilos).

Lost more than 40 pounds. Made more than $80,000. That has to beat the beep out of Jenny Craig.

Actually I once had lunch with the American boss of Jenny Craig and gave her a breakdown on how they could attract men to their programmes. I argued that their zealous antipathy to alcohol must turn off many Aussie males.

Was I surprised when suddenly Paula Duncan turned up on camera sipping champagne to celebrate her Jenny Craig weight loss victory and then we saw Mark Jacko Jackson.

This column has been sparked by several things. I know we have an obesity problem in this country. For adults it is your fault. For kids it is your parents’ fault.

Nintendo, chat rooms, lap tops, mobile phones, text messages. Why get off your butt?

It is easier to watch footie heroes on the field and stick their images on the wall than try to emulate them.

But let’s get back to food and the reviewers who can make or break a noshery.

A book prompted this column. It crossed my desk this week. This is the opening paragraph.

“Writing history is the art of exclusion. The quality of interpretations of the past relies on the historian’s ability to target the crucial material and exclude the unimportant. Bearing in mind constraints of time and money, I hope I have achieved this”.

Right now I am reading two books: “Gallipoli – The Turkish Story” and “ Eavesdropping on Evil” the inside story on the scumbags who committed the Silk-Miller murders.

“Writing history is the art of exclusion” clumsily, tortuously, got me in. I thought that writing history was the art or knack of INCLUDING history. Until I realised I was reading a book of restaurant reviews!

Stephen Downes book, published last year, is called Advanced Australian Fare. His pun on our national anthem is fair. His typewriter journey from our meat and three veg to Cheong Liew’s brilliance in Adelaide is clever and interesting.

But it does raise the fundamental issue: Who can and should review restaurants?

When I was The Hungry Hinch I glibly said that I ate three times a day and therefore I was entitled to any opinion.

I even wrote a column once in the 1970s quoting my butcher who said:

“If you don’t eat, you don’t s--- and if you don’t s--- you die!”

Not a bad premise.

Food critics have the greatest job in the world. Thirty years ago I ate in a restaurant in New York called The Palace, The set menu meal for two cost $US 400. Thirty years ago.

My partner and I had six hovering waiters. It was intrusive. Every fifteen minutes in a two-hour meal they replaced your bread roll with a hot new one. It was stupid.

I read that they gave any diner a gold credit card if they spent $10,000 in a year and learned later that most of their high-rollers were drug dealers from South America.

What was Stephen Downes’ line?

Writing history is the art of exclusion. I guess he would write about Columbian coffee and ignore the cocaine.

Sunday 3rd August 2003

.©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2003