The devil makes work for idle hands, and all that. Too right. In my case, that devil happened to be Bill Knott, the columnist and former chef, and my hands were not idle per se, just wrapped around the stem of the martini he was plying me with. “Would you,” he said, leaning in, “fancy doing Too Many Critics again?” Dumbly I nodded. Should have had a lemonade.
Too Many Critics is a charity fundraiser where, in a reversal of the natural order of things, restaurant writers are shoved behind a stove to cook for a judging panel of chefs, therefore offering them a rather public opportunity to get their own back. The point is two-fold: the night raises money for Action Against Hunger, which helps starving children across the world, and it’s a chance to see if those of us who bitch about restaurants for a living have a leg to stand on. I suspect rather a few who attend turn up purely in the hope of seeing Giles Coren get his arm taken off in an air fryer or the like. This year it’s at Darby’s, Robin Gill’s terrific gaff in Nine Elms, on June 25.
