TheTroublemakerTimes

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For Fiamma’s,

Yum Thai,

Don’s Chicken,

…and all who have thrown their pearls before swine.

May you no longer suffer the Jabba of Fools.

and her eating out in the Zulu Kingdom.

Annie is out to lunch, a lot. If you live on the East coast, and you either read or go out to eat, or both, you will know, immediately, to whom I refer. For God only knows how long, Annie has been the queen of the Durban Food review.

Gone is the notion of the incognito food reviewer who sneaks into your local restaurant, oh no, not here in Durban, dear reader. Here, the madam of the quixotic food-a-torial, arrives to fanfare, with her possee of freeloaders, complete with their obligatory own cheap wine from home, stuffed under their arms, fluttering and clucking like a bunch of hens around a gigantic cock. You can see the delight on their faces as they take their seats, in preparation for the great feast, while their celebrity host squeezes her ample form into her mobile throne at this her latest court.

The well proportioned Queen of the meet-and-eat-for-free-brigade, presides over the table like Caligula at an execution, smiling like a Cheshire cat, pretending to listen intently, while her minions offer up their observations and culinary insights and the staff cow tow and curtsy to her every whim.

Don’t be deceived, dear reader, the waiters rush around in a frenzy of faux attentiveness, while the manager quickly phones the owner, to make a quick cameo, to come and sit with her royal highness and offer up complimentary this and that’s to placate and sooth her critical palate and gargantuan ego.

Its serious business you see, for this particular, precocious pantomime,can have far reaching consequences, put a foot wrong,and Annie’s poison pen will spit you right in the eye , and leave you to face the consequences, alone with your bank manager, and the sheriff of the bankruptcy court.

Just what goes down around that table, will be news, tomorrow, for all to see, stuck right next to the TV guide in the Tonight section, complete with pictures, and a run down of the Queen of Mean’s latest  culinary adventures around the globe, and just how well your little trattoria will hold up, is anybody’s guess. For there is no real way to know exactly what our Lady of Yum likes, you just have to wait for the review.

Later that night, no doubt between gulps of cheese burgers and Coke, she will put pen to paper, and tell the rest of us twits just what this little restaurant in worth, in her very own culinary universe.

Just why a woman who knows nothing about food and even less about grammar, became a food writer will remain, dear reader, one of the great imponderable mysteries of the cosmos. Perhaps she feels that having eaten a great deal more than her share of food, that she is an expert.

If you can stumble past the shocking grammar, and overlook the split infinitives, and bumbling style, there are even greater challenges to understanding Annies unique critiques.

Every ingredient becomes an adjective, everything is  lemony, herby, creamy, sugary, peppery, garlicy (sic)  and on and on.

Dishes are divided into either intriguing, or yummy, or not quite to her liking, without ever specifying what her liking is, or why that specific dish has intrigued or offended her particular palate.

Dishes are often “versions of” , and she rates their existential success by determining if they are as they “should be”. You can have either highly enjoyable or distinctly unpleasant, languishing together on her yummy plate, and never an explaination as to why.

Consider this, from last Friday’s review of  veteran food genius, and master chef extraordinaire, Don Wilkinson’s peri-peri chicken;

“…the only dish that did not impress was peri peri chicken, which used to be a signature dish…it lacked any real marinated flavour and …the chilli sauce… distinctly unpleasant. Perhaps it had been sitting around in the heat too long.”

The mind boggles!

What on earth are marinated flavours ?

Where do you find them ?

Why are they not real ?

Is Don using artificial chillies?

Does he leave his chickens lying around in the Durban heat?

What is she implying?

Don Wilkinson, I will have you know, makes the finest peri-peri chicken you are likely to ever have, along with a few other dishes too, of that I can assure you. He was dazzling real gourmets long before Jabba the Hut reviewed her first egg. Perhaps the chicken was too “chickeny” for her, and the peri-peri too “garlicey”.

She liked the chips though, no surprise. Perhaps they were just exactly “chippy” enough.

One thing is for sure though, the only unpleasant fowl lying around for too long in the heat, at Don’s restaurant that day was her.

But the sublime to the ridiculous continues, for you see, the globe trotting Annie, having guzzled her way through half a century of lunches, can do magic tricks too.

Oh yes indeed, she, who must be obeyed, does not have to have to actually eat the food to critique it, nor, even lay eyes on it.

She will review the food her minions ate, and tell us how delighted they were or, not, as the case may be. This, without telling us if they were vaguely educated about food, or even if they were out of high school.

Perhaps they were in baby high chairs, who knows.

With just cursory glance at the menu, she will tell you what is worth trying, without ever having laid eyes on the stuff, never mind tasting it. Consider her latest advice at Mundo Vida, home of the lazy, layabout chicken and the unpleasant chillies;

“I also think its worth tying the duck with orange and ginger, loin of venision with rooibos and honey sauce, loin of veal with truffle jus, and polenta, and kassler with sage, mustard mash, caramlised apples and braised red cabbage.”

And if this feat of culinary clairvoyance does not stun you, then there is her amazing capacity to order, and get an imaginary dish, at each and every establishment she pillages.

“Veges!”

“Veges”, ladies and gentleman, “veges” ( I assume pronounced veegs or ve-guess.)

I assume she means veggies!?!

I hope she means veggies.

Is it possible to make the same spelling mistake for years on end?

Could anyone be this stupid?

God only knows.

Not the Anne Steven’s Guide

After guzzling her food, and the food of her guests and divining the dishes she has never seen, to great applause, the genius continues, and she reads the minds of patrons,  telling us just how their meal was too.

“The table next door look pleased with a thin focaccia and beef carpaccio…”, she enthused on Friday’s column.

After having intruded into other guest’s meals, to ply her magic tricks, she regales us with her tales of trips to Thailand, where she learnt about authenticity, a new word in her limited vocabulary, that she throws around at Thai restaurants all over town. I’m glad that she finds Don’s authentically Thai, and now her search is over. Truly glad.

I’ve been to some of the Thai restaurants she trashed, in fact I went to one last night.

Where an authentic Thai woman, from Thailand, made me a real Thai curry and served it speaking authentic Thai.

Wow, Don must put up a real performance.

We spoke, too, in broken English, about how Annie’s poison pen, abysmal grammar, and Thai holiday maker expertise nearly knocked them out of business.

But they were full, and so they should have been. The food was fresh, it was delicious, the people keep coming back, again and again.You see, the food is not quite to her liking, and “catering for western tastes”, silly them, considering the huge community of non-westerners that want to eat Thai food in Durban.

Perhaps, next time, instead of scoffing it up in Thai land yet again, she should try Portugal, and then come and re-rate the chicken at Mundo Vida.

I’m sure it won’t be to her liking, but I’ll bet my bottom dollar, it will be authentic.

Ps. No, I don’t think Annie looks like Jabba, its a quantative comparison, not a formative one.