Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster - Ep 2: Grace Dent

Episode Date: December 12, 2018

Ordering their dream menu this week is the Guardian's restaurant critic Grace Dent, so the pressure's really on for the genie waiter. The food writer talks to Ed Gamble and James Acaster about the tastiest things she's ever eaten, how the other half dine and what the chef really means when they say they're 'playful'.Recorded and edited by Ben Williams for Plosive Productions.Artwork by Paul Gilbey (photography) and Amy Browne (illustrations)Read Grace Dent's reviews on the Guardian website and listen to her Radio 4 series, 'The Untold'.Ed Gamble is on tour in 2019. See his website for full details.James Acaster is on tour in 2019. See his website for full details.Watch Ed and James's YouTube series 'Just Puddings'. Watch here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, listeners of the Off Menu podcast. It is Ed Gamble here from the Off Menu podcast. I have a very exciting announcement. I have written my first ever book. I am absolutely over the moon to announce this. I'm very, very proud of it. Of course, what else could I write a book about? But food. My book is all about food. My life in food. How greedy I am. What a greedy little boy I was. What a greedy adult I am. I think it's very funny. I'm very proud of it. The book is called Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy. And it's coming out this October, but it is available to pre-order now, wherever you pre-order books from. And if you like my signature, I've done some signed copies,

which are exclusively available from Waterstones. But go and pre-order your copy of Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy now. Please? Bon appetito and welcome to the Off Menu podcast with Ed Gamble and James A. Caster. Hello. That's James A. Caster. I'll be your waiter this evening. We're still persisting with James being a waiter in this. I've given in now. Yep.

I think that's the format. Can I take your jacket, Ed? Thank you. It's not normal for a waiter to do that as well, is it? Well, we've established that I do all the jobs in this class. Right. You're the only waiter. Let me introduce the podcast properly. This is a podcast where each episode we have a guest. We interview them about their dream meal, their perfect starter, main, side, drink, dessert. And I think when you talk to people about food, you find out more about their

lives. Absolutely. Definitely do. And also, when you own a restaurant, because you're a genie, you learn more about people's lives. And there's extra layers of confusion that James brings to the pot. I think I like to I bring sort of good chat, fun conversation topics, a little bit of fun food knowledge. And you bring chaos, would you say? I bring being a genie and being a waiter. So I went with Bon Appetitio there.

That was nice. That was a very nice start. I have been saying Bon Appetitio, but I've gone Bon Appetitio because that's what a... Well, I know why you said it. Do you? Because you're trying to impress our guest, who's the very well-esteemed Grace Dent. Grace Dent, indeed. Everybody, he's a food critic. And you know, he was scrupulous, Pip. You were just like, Bon Appetit, whatever.

Yeah. Grace Dent, you're like, oh, I better up my game. That must be it. Or it reminds me of a waitress in Bella Pasta in Durham, who used to say, Bon Appetitio. Yeah, probably is that, then. So yes, our guest today is the wonderful Grace Dent. Guiding food critic, also, she has her own show on Radio 4 called The Untold. Yeah. Podcast.

Yeah, this is also a podcast. Which you should definitely get. We'll do a better job of plugging things for Grace in the outro, I think. Okay. James, do you have any food news from this week? Well, what I've had to eat. What you've had to eat? Where have you been? What's your ingredient of the week?

Sure. Sure. Well, the nicest thing I've had to eat this week, I went to Bone Daddy's and I had the poke bowl there, salmon poke. Lovely. Delicious, raw salmon cut up with these crispy little onion-y bits in there and some fried and some rice and guacamole, loads of guacamole. Lovely.

I put some hot sauce on it, some carrot in there. So that's James's food news. I saw a woman on a train nearly choked to death on a salad. So that's my food news. Lots of food news. Also, this week, we should point out before we go to the podcast and interview Grace Dent, every week we have an ingredient that is a big no-no that we do not like and if it comes up in the podcast, they're getting kicked out of the restaurant and this week it is

fennel. Fennel. I hate fennel, Ed. Absolutely hate fennel. Why do you hate fennel? I don't mind a bit of fennel. Tastes disgusting. Aniseed stuff is not nice.

The first time I had aniseed or anything like aniseed was when I bought some of those licorice torpedoes but I thought they were jelly beans. Right. So what I expected as a child was that I was about to eat some jelly beans and then I tasted the most disgusting thing you can possibly taste when you're expecting jelly beans. I spat them out in the bin. I've never done that with food before since. Spat them out into a bin and I hate anything aniseed-y now.

But you know that's not what fennel tastes like. It does taste like licorice torpedoes. It doesn't taste like licorice torpedoes, mate. It's a very light aniseed flavour and it can actually bring a lot to a dish and raw. It's very refreshing. It tastes like licorice torpedoes, Ed. And that's why if Grace mentions it, she's out on her ass. Here's Grace Den.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Grace, welcome. Thank you for having me. This all just feels really sinister, actually. Yeah. Well, I'm going to address this up top.

You came in and you said, I've got some feelings about this, which I'm going to talk about when we start recording. You seem suspicious of the whole situation. It just seems a bit odd, actually, you know, well, for a start, well, I heard that you were doing a podcast, James asked me and I'm generally trying to ignore most of the messages James sent me. Sure. Why wouldn't you?

And then James said, I'm doing a podcast and if you just said to me, what are the top 20 things that you would guess it was going to be about, I would go to a massive list of them. Some example. What sort of things do you think? Cars. Cars? Well, the comedy circuit, lads, laddish things, boys, boys things, I don't know.

How many times have you met James A. Caster? I don't know. I'm a laddie boy. He loves cars. Well, yeah. He's written off three cars in his life. Well, this is where we bonded over that, didn't we? Yes.

I've failed my driving test seven times. Yes. So I thought that was maybe... That's incredible. I thought, well, thank you very much. Surely after time number five, you'd think it probably isn't for me. No, no, I'm going to carry on. Yeah.

I'm carrying on. No, every time I get a few more, like years older, I think, no, no, this is my time. You're getting the car again. And then I... And it's failed bigger. Yeah. And that, I've got to say, that is brewing again in me at the moment. When was the last failure?

It's definitely before my last husband. Is that how it works? Fail the driving test, marry the instructor. Sometimes you have to just count them off on husbands. It was a while ago and now I feel older and I feel more like, no, I can do this. Yeah. And also I live like up north quite a lot in the Lake District.

So it's a pain in the arse if you haven't got a car. Sure. You can't go anywhere. You can't do anything. You can't, you know, anyway. But that's just, I mean, look, I can drive. Yeah. So you were confused.

You thought this might be... You can't, but yeah. You know, I can drive though. I can. Not legally though. No, the DVLA won't let me, but I can't drive. Yeah, legally. Yeah, that's not really how it works.

So it's not a podcast about cars. It's not a podcast about lads things. No. What surprises you that we want to talk about food? Because I, I mean, I know a lot of stand-up comedians and I, they don't eat. They tend to live in fairly unsanitary conditions, mainly on service station pasties or back at home in rooms

that smell kind of of reheated microwave, supermarket meals. You know, look at James, for example. You've never been in my life. I mean, I've never been in your flat. But in my mind's eye, it's just, it kind of smells of, you know, cheese and chive pringles. Yep. A lot of cheese and chive pringles.

What flat smells of cheese and chive pringles? Well, probably that. So like, Link's Wildebeest or whatever, just sprayed like randomly about. What else is in the flat? What do you, lots of posters of cars? Just loads. Yeah, posters of cars.

And just lots of cars. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Basically high street honeys, lots of FHM high street honeys posters pulled out of the, you know, I don't know. I just, I've been. In my cheese and chive den.

Cheese and chive. I think so. I feel, well, look. Yes. I think that you, I mean, maybe this is the interesting thing about the podcast and this goes on to why it's surprising and also lovely that you're doing it.

Is that there's a very set group of people in British media who discuss food. Yeah. And that's it. That's the end of it. And it's very difficult to break into that. So when you put BBC one on the cooking programs, I've got the same set of people.

And it is Greg Wallace speaking to Mary Berry. And then on a Saturday morning, it's the same people that are coming through and it's the same chefs. And, you know, and they don't, they maybe have a comedian on, but it's just to kind of, to sit awkwardly and get two lines. You know what I mean?

Offer opinions on Pringles. Well, exactly. I mean, do you feel offended? I've said anything that's wrong. What is in your fridge at the moment? Oh, what's in my fridge at the minute? That is mine. There's some, I've got some Saint-Egar cheese.

Okay. Well, I mean, it's a little bit of a flip-up from laughing cow triangles, isn't it? I've got James. James did not let me down, man. We need to change the opinion of stand-up comedians. Yeah, there's a pasta sauce, but I don't have any pasta. What?

It's a jar of pasta sauce. Yeah, he eats them like a yogurt. Yeah, yeah. I haven't done anything with that yet. A jar of pasta sauce. That's just lazy. Exactly. We're going back to how if you've got a food podcast,

and your idea of making a simple ragout is to go to 24-hour garage and bring back something that's mainly toxic. Well, to be honest, I didn't buy it. It was a gift. It was a gift. I think I understand now. What have you got in your fridge? Oh, I've got a lot of vegetables, tofu.

Yeah, but do you do your own shopping? Yeah, do your own shopping online. Does that count? It does count. Well, so you put in a, because I mean, I find this like grocery shopping online, like a slight, it's like a therapy. Yeah. Like everything that, when everything in my, I've got on my phone,

I've got my, I've got my apps and when everything's going wrong, I just find a quiet corner of the studio and I just sit there going, you know, I mean, yeah, tofu. Yeah. And if you know that it's coming at that, you know that you have managed to get food coming to your house at 6 a.m. the next day. It's like everything's okay. It's beautiful.

And then also if you get up and wait for that grocery, those groceries and then put a wash on at the same time. So the house smells of fabric conditioner. You can basically have a really high function in heroin. I haven't actually got high function. Yeah. But you could literally have been up until four in the morning going crazy, but you still feel like you're nailing life down.

I think in my fridge is pretty, pretty full. Ed does a lot of cooking. Do you? He does a lot of stuff. A lot of cooking. I tried to. More than most comics, I'd say. Would you feel, would either of you feel confident to have, I mean,

I'm the restaurant critic for The Guardian and I'm one of those gargoyles you see on MasterChef like waiting for the chefs to come in so I can make them cry. Yes. Would either of you feel confident enough to cook for me? No. No, I wouldn't feel confident. No, I'll answer that quickly. No, do not feel confident enough to cook for you.

That's a good idea for a new column. Do you like Centagur cheese in pasta sauce? What Centagur cheese? It's not even cheese. It's not even cheese. It's some kind of mucus with some like nutritional yeast in it. Keep on talking. Love nutritional yeast.

But then I think that, I mean, joking aside, whatever you cooked for me, I would be very gracious and I wouldn't. I'm not sure that's true. Honestly, I think that there's a feeling, I think that what people see on MasterChef is very pantomime, you know? And I think that in real life, I would just be really happy that someone would cook for me because I'm generally very tired and I just want someone to cook something. I mean, not you, James.

Because I don't want it every, but I mean, babe, do you want me to get you some pasta? Do you want me to let you get some pasta? So this podcast is not about us knowing too much about food, really. But I think there's a lot of discussion to be had. They're building the perfect meal. So we've asked you to come up with your favourite starter. Welcome to our restaurant. Oh, and something I should also let you know as well.

James has sort of gone so deep into the concept that he's imagined this is a restaurant and he's the waiter. I'm proud to be in service. I think I'll be in service to you. But he's a waiter who sits with us for the whole meal and occasionally asks you what you want. James, you'd be a terrible waiter. Well, we'll see, won't we? What do you think would make James a terrible waiter?

Because I don't think that James is very good at hiding his contempt. I think that is absolutely true. And I'd say that's probably rule one of hospitality. But this is. But here's the thing though. The better a restaurant you'll find, the more rude the waiter staff I find, because they know that they've got good food and you'll carry on going there anyway. This restaurant is a magical restaurant where you can order whatever you've had in your whole life,

all your favourite things. So I know that I can be as contentful as I am. I can be really rude or mean or judgmental to all the customers because they'll keep coming back because I've got all of their favourite dishes here. And whatever your order is, bringing you back cheese and chive bringles anyway. Yeah, yeah. I hope you like them. Extra pasta sauce. But before we get into your choices, we're just bringing a quick surprise question on you.

Okay. Papa Dom's or bread? Papa Dom's or bread? James, stop it. I would say Papa Dom's because I think that it's very, it's tempting to go in on the bread, but the bread's gone out, you know, with every meal when you're eating out. It's very tempting to like eat all that bread when it's first brought because we're all, it's delicious and then it spoils your meal.

So my, you know, people say to me all the time, how are you not enormous because I'm out all the time eating and it's because I avoid stuff like that. You don't have the bread. Papa Dom's. And also, I think it can ruin the meal in another way. If they bring bread at a restaurant and it's bad bread, then it makes you really worried about the meal ahead.

Oh yeah. Yeah, but when they, or they, yeah, they put down a basket and, yeah, and it's, and it's hard and you think, well, how long has it been sitting there? So, yes. And I don't think you can mess up a Papa Dom. What tips do you want with that Papa Dom? Can I have a few? Yeah.

Well, just, just the random, the standard ones. I want the Raita. I want the mango chutney. I want something that's mint. And I want, we're talking about very, very kind of British influenced 80s. Like what we think Indian people eat. Which they probably, you know, they don't, I'm sure. And, you know, that kind of very lightly diced onion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it has to be in kind of silver terrenes that are on a kind of stand where the four, the four of them are like in a little tree. And they spin. And it spins. And it spins. But yeah, there's something, I think that there's something about that whole ritual of Papa Dom's coming and everybody getting one and crunching them.

You've never felt, you know, spoon in things. And I don't think we've ever felt more British. Yeah. Because there's clearly nothing that's authentic about that. That's just something that we. Yeah, that's, that's, that feels like a truly British thing. Completely. Would you take a whole Papa Dom or would you break a bit off?

No, I wouldn't. Are you ever the person to, there's a stack of Papa Dom's. Are you the person to break them? Are you the person to just punch the top of them? No, no. I just think, no, I think that's a really strange thing. That people do. Yeah.

When the pot, it's such a, it's such a dick swinging move. Yeah, it really is. When like the, the Papa Dom's arrive. And there's always somebody who just goes. And you just think, well, I don't want your, I don't want your foisty handed Papa Dom. And also, like, why, why, why do you think you have the right to do that? But I would never go and get a full one. Yeah.

Because I, I'm continually playing games with myself about how much food that I've eaten. So I will always get less with an option to go back. Yes. Do you see why? That's a good technique. Because what I, what I would normally do is get a whole Papa Dom and put, get all the dips and put them in different quadrants along it.

And then just sort of eat it like a big pizza. You see, there's few, there's, there's several things that men do if you were going to go out on a date with them, which they would do. And you would think, I can never see this man ever again. And that's one of them, is it? That is, that's like, that's like a psychopath thing. Yeah. Also, would you like anything to drink while you're looking at the menu?

If I was going to have a drink, usually the first drink when I go out is I'll have a glass of champagne. You're looking for a glass of champagne just to, just to wait? I'll just sit. Yeah. Any brand in particular? My favorite champagne that you can get freely everywhere is Tattanger. Can you spell that?

I was like, T-A-I-T-T-I-N-G-E-R. Pattinger. Yeah. Yeah. No, I like, I like a glass of Pattinger and I will, yeah, that always just takes the, takes the edge off the day. I always have that if I got, if I, I can't drink a lot. I'm not, I always think, I think people think that I drink, that I'm a big drinker and I'm

not. Like I, I'm a real lightweight and it gets worse the older that I've got. And yeah, so I, I, and I think about being a woman when you're like in the public eye is that you only have to get a little bit drunk publicly a few times. Like all right about it. Right. And like, you know, I had Tracy Emin say this once and it stuck with me always. Like you only have to be drunk on a couple of occasions and you are then ever more the

incredible drunk shouting woman, do you know what I mean? And, and so, you know, I think that people are surprised that I am pretty much sober all of the time. Yeah. I suppose if you're out. Yeah, exactly. That's how, yeah. I did, you know, there was a point when I was being, when I started being a restaurant

critic where I realized that there's two ways that this can go and, you know, exactly one of them is that I start to really control what is getting put, what I'm putting into my own mouth and like that my hangovers and getting drunk or you just end up with gout really. Yeah. I mean, you do get gout. There's a few of those restaurant critics knocking around you think that you've really gone all in.

Yeah. Oh God, there's, you know, there's a few that can no longer walk. Well, we can't get them on the podcast. We'll have to go and record at their house. You have to, you have to push them in like on Silence of the Lambs just standing upright. Hello then. I'll take those. For start, to start?

To start. So the thing that the thing that I would like is something that I'll probably never order again, but I love, I love it. And it's the beef shin ragu with probably it's like freshly made tagliatelle and it's a restaurant called Trullo in Islington. And I, I don't eat a lot of meat these days. Like I'm almost vegan and I say almost because I don't want people to spend my entire life tripping me up about it.

So this is it. So I can't, you know, and I'm never going to be perfect. And with my job, I, you know, there's, sometimes when I just, there's meat in front of me and I am going to professionally have to eat it. But, you know, and day to day basis I don't. So, and it's one of the things that really jumps out at me that I will miss because, I mean, I probably know, maybe I will eat it again, but it's so good. The beef shin, which is a really kind of ugly piece of meat, you know, and it's, it's like if

someone brings a beef shin to your house to cook, like, like if you're, you know, one of my, one of my friends brought one when we went on holiday on a cottage. They're like, I've got, I've got a beef shin opened up the boot and it was just, it looked like they'd like, you know, a crime scene. Yeah. So it's ugly, but you have to, you know, stew it and stew it and stew it. And it's so good and so rich and clearly something wrong. You know, it's clearly the tasty, tasty smell of murder.

You know, it's clearly, you know, you know, and Morris used to say, you know, that kitchen and meat is murder. He says kitchen aromas aren't very homely. And that's, and that is it. It's something, but there's something about that, that every time we, me and my friends went out, we would end up, we would get that. My friends loved this dish so much that they would just go, I'll have that for the starter and that for the main course.

Because it's double beef shit. It's the greatest thing. There is something about those big cuts of meat that you need to cook. Yes. Slow and long. Yes. You can just taste the effort that's gone into cooking them. It's just amazing.

But, you know, getting back to the veganism, you know, like I live up in the lakes half time. And it's like, I feel as if I can't meet the sheep's gaze. Yeah. You know, like I was out, you know, it was a few days ago I was up there and like I exercised loads of north and there's like tiny little lambs and they're all just lying out like basking in the sun. And I just think, oh, I can't.

You can't have that smell coming from your house. I know. They definitely talk. Stay away from that ladies. Smell what's coming out of that. I just feel like, oh, I just feel. So I'm very torn. But if I was in that, if I was to set aside my consciousness, conscious, conscious, conscious,

conscious. Yeah. You're conscious. You have to be conscious. You have to be conscious. That is one of our own rules. Yeah. I would.

Yeah. But I mean, do you both eat meat? I do. Ed doesn't. I'm three. I'm similar situation to you. I'm saying like almost vegan about three or four months, actually. But I still like to talk about meat a lot.

So I don't agree that I ate so much of it in the past, but I feel like a sort of like a football hooligan, a reformed football hooligan. I don't agree with what I did in the past, but I still like having a discussion about dust-ups that I got into. The last meat you ate was that with me in New York? Technically no, because then I had an awful chicken risotto on the plane on the way home. Oh yeah. I think we'll say the last meat that I ate was I shared a massive steak with James in

a restaurant called The Dutch in Soho, New York. Absolutely loved The Dutch. Yeah. Was it good? Yeah. Because we originally went there on what was the last day of our holiday, and then our flight was cancelled. Oh, hang on.

You two go on holiday together, don't you? We go on holiday together, yeah. Yeah. But our flight was delayed. So when we originally went to The Dutch, we wanted to get the steak and then didn't get the steak. Okay. Right.

Our actual final day, we'd go into The Dutch and get in that steak. Okay. And it was... It was worth it. You know, when you cut into a steak, and before you've even put it in your mouth, you go, oh my God. Yeah, yeah. This is already the best thing I've ever tasted.

It's not even in my mouth yet. What kind of steak was it, do you know? I can't even remember what... I think it was a rib eye. It was a massive on the bone rib eye. Do you want me to tell you what the next steak is that you have to mention to be cool? Oh, yes. Yeah.

Cool steak. Rib eye used to be cool, didn't it? Rib eye, it's cool. But the one that's coming through now that you have to say is, have you got any tomahawk? And that's a massive one on the bone rib eye. Bone tomahawk. You have to get a bone tomahawk, and then they cut it off. And what you then have to do, and this is a big power move, this is up there with banging

the popper down. Yeah. You then pick the bone up. Yeah. And you know, no, no, no, no, no. You get a knife. Whatever the word is, you saw. You saw the little bits off.

That's the ultimate power move. And then somebody from the restaurant will come over and because they're in the know, they'll go, oh, yeah, they're the best bits. And you go, yes, they're the best bits. So that's like, oh, it's all restaurant criticism. It's just smoke and mirrors. I need to go for a wee. Is that all right?

I think that's very unprofessional thing for a waiter to do. The thought of James as a waiter. It's funny, isn't it? I mean, he would never get the job in the first place. I think you're exactly right about what you said about him not being able to conceal contempt. Because that's almost, yeah, it's like 80% of the job is that especially if you come in on a Sunday to do the Sunday shift and you went to, you finished work at 11, you ended up staying till three, like flirting with the waitresses and drinking.

And then you're like two hours sleep upstairs on a sofa and it quickly wet wiped your armpits and then like, you know, went downstairs again. That's what he would then have to put on a smile and kind of, and dealing with people on a Sunday when there's just huge families of them. I worked in a pub for a while and had to work the Christmas day shift. Oh my God. Now and again, it wasn't the hiding contempt that I had trouble for there. It was hiding genuine sorrow for people having Christmas dinner in a terrible pub.

Like it wasn't a nice, but I just like put the food down and go, there we are. I'm so sorry. Bless you. I've seen how this is cooked. This is no way anyone should spend Christmas day with a boil in the bag sliced turkey. Oh, that was quick. Yes, I've actually just checked with the kitchen if we had a beef for goo. And we do.

We're very happy to make it for you. And for your main course. Well, my main course is probably would be a surprise to some of you. I think it is. It's just so I eat lots and lots of rich food and lots of, you know, food, which is like I was out the other night at a place called Hyde, which is in London. It's one of the biggest, most expensive openings of the year. They spent millions.

It's got a car lift in it. What's a car lift? A lift that you drive your car in and drive. It's Russian money. It's Russian money. Let's not ask where it came from. It's just Russian money. Right.

And when you go to order wine, they bring you like an embossed book with about 60 pages in it, inside a wooden box. And then they give you an iPad to go with it. So the iPad's got 4,000 wines in it. And, you know, all of the wines, like, you know, really, really, really expensive. The minute you open it up, you can just see that some bottles of wine are 5,000 pounds. Just ask for the house. Exactly.

But they send a sommelier over and I thought, right, I'm just going to, I'm going to say to him, not, you're not fooling me into spending 200 pounds on a bottle of wine because I just, so I just kind of went, look, I just want to spend like, choose me one, but 60 quid. And he took his face. He was just crestfallen. He was just like, well, he's completely spoiled my evening. You know, he did, he did bring his way. Anyway, I digress.

I eat so many meals in places like that where everything is petals and pipettes and, you know, and you and things that have been distilled, people that make their own, everything's made that when I am off, I like beige plain food. Yeah. And I think that one of the best things I ate last year was a tray of chips and curry sauce. Wow. There we go. Because I'm nauseous.

So all chips should be come with some kind of moist liquid. Should be drenched, right? Well, yeah. No dried chips. I think that chips and gravy is a bit of a northern people eating chips and gravy. I actually think that's, that's a myth. I think that from the 80s onwards, we've got that taste for that chip shop brown, slightly radioactive, curry sauce, which is quite sweet.

It's got a little bit of heat. And that's what we start, you know, we started to eat. And I, to me, that is just, it sates me. You know, I mean, it's like the chips, lots of salt, a bit of vinegar, and then curry, but not curry over all of them, curry over some of them, because some of them have to retain their, their, their crispness. And my brother had taken me to this out up north. He said, I'll cheer you up, Grace.

We'll go out for the night and we're going to go and watch this festival, this like little local festival. And the headline, it was Badly Drawn Boy. Right. Is this going to be the most northern night out all the time? It was like literally the most northern night out. And I remember, I remember, Badly Drawn Boy kind of came on and he was like, this is my friend who, who died.

And then he started to play some like, and I think someone started heckling him going like, you know, like buddy, we didn't come to your life story. And he's like, yeah. And it just all went wrong. And it was like, kind of, obviously it was a summer up north, so it was like sideways sleet. And I remember saying to my brother, going home, he's like, no, stay, we'll drink more Stella.

Like, no, no, I'm going home. And I remember walking out and I got my sauce and chips and curry sauce and just walked like the mile home eating them. And I just thought, this is probably the nicest thing that I've eaten in a world of stupidness, you know, in a world of like, you know, everywhere I go, it's like someone's just like banged a button on the wall and everyone just starts acting crazy, you know, because I'm a critic. And like everyone's like, I'm sorry, I just want to say, we don't, I know that you want turbo, but we don't have turbo.

I was thinking, I never bloody said I don't want a turbo. I want chips and curry sauce. Stop acting mad. I'm quite a cool and collected way too in comparison. Quite good. Quite happy with my. Howdy babe. You are the first critic we've had in the restaurant, actually.

Yeah. But I am quite relaxed about it. I understand why people are scared with regards to a critic coming in because, you know, you, they have spent a lot of money on this and the money has come from funding from people who have put all their money in, but don't strictly know loads about restaurants often. And they're going to have to report into them. Yeah. So they all sit down on Tuesday morning.

Yeah. And also, you know, what, you know, what did she say? And there's also, I've got, you know, all restaurant critics, all of the kind of big, well-known ones. We weren't food experts. In general, we were just people that can fire out a lot of copy really on anything, you know. So you've got that razor.

It's like, if you look at Giles Corndall's as well, I think he's probably the one that's the most similar to me or I'm similar to him. We, you know, we're both people that just write, we can write in a funny way. So I think it probably makes people worried. Well, we're not worried in this restaurant because this is an automatic five-star glowing review because you're choosing everything you want to eat. Also, but just to make sure it is five-star, what chip shop are we getting these for? Yeah.

Is it a specific thing or is it just generic Northern chips and curry sauce? Do you know something? I don't think I can like that down. We can't like Northern chips and curry sauce. Hate crime. Yeah. So it's not, it's, it's, it would be chips from, I'm not going to name him, but there's a place.

It's gone now. There's a chip shop. We can still name it. I know I can't because you haven't heard what I'm going to say. There's a chip shop in Courac in Carlisle where I'm from and it's gone now, but I had really, really good chips and I used to wind my brother up the entire of all of his childhood that that was actually his dad. The guy that ran the chip shop was his dad.

That's why you can't name the chip shop. So I'm not going to name it. I mean, it's not true though, the lie that you told as a kid. We can still say it. I don't think he's alive anymore. Now I'm not going to say it because people listen to it and it'll end up in the Carlisle evening news. Or that you made a joke that he was your brother's dad.

Yeah, because it'll be like his wife's probably still alive. I should probably start getting like a ready wrecking her out and working out whether my mother could actually have sex with him or not. We are in the early days of the podcast so we could do with an exclusive like that. But I used to always, as we were getting older, whenever there's a family occasion, I would always say, oh, Dave, probably not you because it's just close family, you know. That's a funny joke. What side dish would you like with that, Grace?

Because we all need a side dish with chips and curry sauce. Yes. Well, I mean, I would eat these things together and I think that this is probably why I really fare well as eating almost vegan. It would be, the side dish would be from Little Owl in Manhattan. And it would be green beans in a kind of, it's got green beans, but with like macadamia or it could have been walnut. It was a nut and I should have looked it up with them.

It was in a kind of a soy honey glaze. So we've got, it's basically really souped up nutty beans in a kind of soy unami type. And it really changed the way that I thought about. Fido went there for my god, one of my birthdays a long time ago. And I remember it really made me rethink how we do vegetables in this country. Like we, you know, we don't, for a start, we're coming through a point in history where British people don't want to, working class British people don't want to pay extra for

sides of food in general. They're like, oh, it should just, if you're paying the money, it should come with chips, you know? And then mashed potato. So people are just about getting used to, and I'm talking about outside London, looking at the bottom of a menu and it says, you know, mashed potato, £2.95, right? But even then we don't really, restaurants don't really do anything with that veg. It's as if meat, meat, meat, meat, meat, all the way down the page, fish, meat, fish,

then maybe a salad. And then at the bottom it'll just say potatoes of the day, you know, carrots. And all you can really hope for is like some butters been put in with them maybe, but often not, you know? Often not, sometimes it just comes out. It's like, you know, you were talking about a pub you worked in where, you know, Christmas day, people go in there for Christmas. And, you know, it's wrong to do that to people, you know, to kind of go that the turkey, that's

the turkey. And then everything else should just be slapdash. So I think that New York really began to teach me that, you know, you can go out for dinner and you could have two or three sides put together, and that would be like just as much love and care put into what they're doing with, you know, with the beans or the peas. And brussel sprouts on every single menu, yeah. Like sprouts just, you know, like what we do with sprouts in this country is ridiculous. Yeah.

This idea that, you know, you only have them like going up to Christmas and then you only have them like you have three at your office party pub dinner. Yeah. And then you have three on Christmas day. Yeah. And they're like student, student, student again, no butter. Whereas if you put sprouts, you can make a casserole type thing with them. You just kind of like layer them with like cream and salt and pepper and herbs and they

are just. I've learned a real lesson reporting this podcast that I should never do it hungry. Yeah. Because now I'm just thinking about those sprouts. Yeah. As you describe all these. Before we get into pudding, what drink have you got like a favorite drink? Was that already gone with the?

No. I was thinking before I came in that what has always kind of let me down in polite restaurant world society is that I don't like anything really. Oh, it's like I mind it, but I just like I hate it, but I don't like a negroni likes anything bitter. Do you know what I mean? Like the kind of, I don't want anything that is kind of vermouth based and they're the very cool drinks, you know, like everything that, you know, and I think that that kind

of thought there's something about vermouth. It just reminds me of being 11 or 12 or 13 and stealing it from my mother's. The drinks cabinet stuff. I mean, I'm like flailing around and around at a school disco and was that your first drink that you had too much of? No, that was Mary Downsider. Mary Downsider. Do they make that Mary does double strength?

I remember like cheap cider cheap bottled cider. I remember drinking a bottle of it and waking up and I'd came in and tip hexed something on my desk and then just fallen into it and fallen asleep and I had like this kind of it wasn't meant to be a swastika, but I remember that's kind of what it looked like. And I remember just being sick and sick as they couldn't drink Mary Down for ages. But I mean, did you remember Special Brew? Yeah. Did you ever drink that when you were younger?

I remember drinking a can of Special Brew on Wimbledon Common. We all used to go and I went to school in Wimbledon and then we'd all Friday night would go to Wimbledon Common just opposite the school and all drink cans of Special Brew. Ed went to a private school. Did he? Yeah. On Wimbledon Common, but we'll come the weekend. Yeah, yeah.

Doesn't matter where you went to school, it's cans of Special Brew on Wimbledon. With a Special Brew? I need to finish what I'm saying. So I don't drink bitter drinks and the one that I always find side, it really shocks people is I love a pina colada. If you love pina colada. Yeah. And what you'll find with pina colada is because it's obviously sweet, it's like a real hit

of sugar and it's comforting and it's a pineapple-y and it's like and but it's also, it kind of gets you pissed from the feet up so you kind of have like two or three and you realize you just seem to be shouting louder than everyone. And what I find with pina colada is when I'm in somewhere fancy and they come along and they go, cocktails and someone will always go, can I have a co-op survivor number two please? And someone will say, can I have a sidecar? And someone will say, oh, can I have an agroni?

But it has to be this type of agroni. And then I'll go, can I get a pina colada? And everyone will laugh and then someone will go, I'll have a pina colada. And then it just kind of spreads down the table and you can just see the weight are going. And suddenly there's like, I'm doing 16 of them. Hang on, we don't have to be cool. We don't have to be cool. We can just have what we want.

And when it's a hot day and you're somewhere and everyone has a pina colada, it is impossible not to have a good time. It is club tropicana. It is wham hay day. It is summer holidays. It is club 18 to 30s. It is getting pissed and yeah, waking up with your knickers and your handbag. You've done well though because you've got quite a sort of carby main.

So I don't think you're going to get pissed that quickly. Yeah, but you've got quite a pudding. That's quite a puddingy drink. And now we're going to go on to a pudding. I'm wondering how so help we got if you say cheese and biscuits on flipping the table. The pudding I've chosen is from the ridiculous Russian restaurant that I went to the on Friday. And it was called something like a religious. It was it was and it was kind of a beautiful work of art kind of sponge, but iced with

like a pale blue like duck egg shell blue icing. And it was like art. It was beautiful, you know, dinner for two there being really, really conservative with what we ate and trying to really pick out all the things that we're charging as extra for was still four hundred and twenty pounds. Whoa. And it was so this pudding came out and it was gorgeous. Just it basically it was a glorified cupcake basically made into something beautiful.

But it came with a tiny glass of Jasmine chilled, pearlescent Jasmine tea and the Jasmine tea was the greatest thing I think that I've tasted. When it was when you're giving it, you drink it kind of like this, like a frantic orphan being given mother's milk. It's like it's sugary, but it's also but I think that with Jasmine, the taste, we kind of we know, I think we can imagine how it smells and we've tasted it maybe in low rate Jasmine tea, but this was the real deal and you never don't taste Jasmine like that. And I remember coming out and feeling quite giddy.

Yeah. You know, like that's how that's one of the greatest things about food that when it's done well, you know, it's it's like drugs. It's like you get this thing. I always say this. I always kind of point at my chest and go, it's that it's just, you know, that's why we're addicted. That's why I'm addicted to restaurants.

You know, I'm always looking for that. Yeah. That kick that high, you know. There was, there was a moment when, when we went to the Dutch the first time in New York, James is a big puddings man. And we ordered, I think we ordered all the puddings, didn't we? To have us. There was four of us.

There was four of us. But we did all the puddings. Nobody else wanted one. And there was one that was, it was a chocolate mint. They called it like an ice cream ice box cake or something. And James had a bite of that and he grabbed my arm to steady himself. Yeah. He closed his eyes and went, oh, fuck.

I said fuck off is what I said. Oh, fuck off. Yeah. He told the puddings to fuck off because he liked it so much. That is exactly what I'm talking about. That's the moment. Where you just go, and, and sometimes the chefs kind of play with an idea, you know, they'll kind of riff on like that.

They want to do something with Apple that reminds them of a sweet that they had like, you know, the sweet they had when they were a child. And it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll turn out that it was the same boiled sweet that you had when you were a child. And like things like that happen where you just go, you go to eat the pudding and you feel, you want to cry, you know what I mean? You feel like there's a place in London called Farrah, a restaurant, a chef called Simon Rogan.

He's got Michelin stars. I've been there. Yeah. And, and he does things like that. You know, he's kind of roughly the same age as me. So he'll have themes all come through his food where I'll go, that's, that's the Fox's Glacier Mint. I was going to, as soon as you started talking about those feelings of food, I was going

to mention Long Clume, which is one of my favorite eating experiences. Up in Cumbria. Yeah. Up in Cumbria. I was doing a gig in Alveston. So me and a few of the other comics went to Long Clume for lunch. Absolutely phenomenal. So good.

So the cupcake itself is that, it's not really the headline. I think. The Jasmine Tea. The Jasmine Tea was the headline. And I also think that I'd eaten. I feel as if I'd eaten. I had the vegetarian taste in menu at this place. So it was kind of things like asparagus in three stages.

Right. So one course was asparagus. And then the next course came out in a completely different type of asparagus. And there was, it was, it was lots of bits and, you know, there was a, there was a kind of a pulverized beetroot course, which was kind of had like petals all over it. But in reality, you've spent all evening drinking and you haven't eaten anything. It's a, I think it's a problem generally with like fine dining. You're having such small little, small portions and you just end up absolutely wasted at the

end of the night. Now, here's a big, big question out of all those things you just told us about. You can only have one of them. I'd have the chips and curry sauce every single time. Every single time. No, I didn't have to think about it. There wasn't, we didn't edit out a pause there. That's how quickly Grace said chips and curry sauce.

Grace said chips and curry sauce about thinking about it. If I, yeah. All around the world, all these fancy chefs started crying. And not, not like deconstructed chips and curry sauce. Oh God. The polystyrene tray. Nothing fills my heart with more dread when you master chef. And you'll just say a deconstructed, deconstructed banoffee pie.

What's the point? What's the point of people deconstructing it? No food in general, especially not puddings, benefits from an autopsy. No. Just give me. Because you're going to mix it all together anyway. So you get the taste of the banoffee pie, right? It's incredible that it's, you know, putting everything in tiny little, it's a kickback

from probably the late nineties and experimental. I just, I just think that it's. Also, here's something I've noticed. When people say the chef's got a sense of humor, they normally mean they've added popping candy to something, don't they? Funny chef. Yeah. Or they say one of the things that drives me mad.

Yeah. It's playful. It's playful. It's very playful. I, the chef, can I, can I explain the concept? The chef will be taking you on a journey. I'm thinking, I don't want to go on a journey with him. I just want you to bring me some food.

Stop talking. I went, one of the most expensive dinners I ever had was a place exactly like him. It's called Alvin Lung and he used to call himself, he's going to hear this. I don't care. Alvin Lung, the demon chef. Alvin, listen to our podcast. All the photos of him were these are going to be cock-swinging photos of him like holding knives and like saying the journey was going to take you on.

Smashing poppadums. Smashing poppadums. Yeah. And he, so I went for dinner there and that was one of those where every so often they'd bring like one tiny little dim sum in like with some kind of incredibly expensive caviar on it. Yeah. And you know, at the end, it cost, it was about 600 pounds for two and it sent me, it

sent me into this spiral of actual genuine depression, right? Like for days, I just kept thinking about like how many shoes that would, that would you know, pay for for inner city children in Tower Hamlets kind of thing. But one of the courses of that you're talking about being playful and he said there was what the pudding was called sex on the beach. And what he'd done was he'd got a pile of kind of sugar and made it into sand so it looked like sand. And then he'd got a sugar sponsor and it looked like a condom.

And he'd injected a sugar syrup semen into it and then just draped it over this over the sand. And it was to, it was a playful take on when he used to live beside a beach and people used to have sex. Playful. It's gross. And how he got around it before they asked before they served it. They said, it's a little bit of risk, I hope you're not going to be offended.

And of course, I'm not going to be offended from Carlisle, you know, seen it all. And then they brought it out and then they gave 15 pounds to the Elton John 8th Foundation. What? Because you were putting? Yeah. They charge you an extra 15 pounds for it anyway. It's gone. Yeah, I bet.

That means he had a conversation with like, I really want to put a condom in one of my desserts. You had to pick it up though. So you imagine you've paid, this is like 40 pounds. So then you're picking it up and you're literally like, oh, so you eat the whole thing. It's all edible. It was all edible. Yeah.

Yeah. He's basically on someone said to him, you can't know who's going to eat a condom. It's gone. What if the money went to an AIDS foundation? Yeah. Yeah. Joe, what if you really want someone to eat a condom that bad will find up an actual charity and organize a thing?

Well, thank you very much, Grace. I think that sounds like a wonderful meal. And I hope this wasn't as as weird as you were expecting it to be. You know, it hasn't been weird, apart from James being kind of a creepy butler with a strange, weird hand. Waiter. I mean, that's a fairy tale. He's a waiter and also we haven't revealed this yet.

A genie. I'm also a genie. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, this whole place, this whole restaurant, I'm magic to up and I can go and get you whatever food you want from around the world and it's great in your wishes. There's actually no other staff in this restaurant. It's just me, the genie, and I come out of a gravy boat.

Every time that you go into character, it's just really unsettling and but what I would say being serious is it's actually been lovely to talk to people who just love food and aren't involved with the restaurant industry because it's been funny. Exactly. You've made me laugh anyway. And your descriptions of food were delicious. I want to try all of it. I'm genuinely hungry now.

Yeah, really hungry after this one. Am I the best guest so far? Yes. That's all I want. Safe journey home, Grace. Thank you. The car lifters on your left. Bye.

Bon appetit. Done. Yum, yum, yum. All finished, that episode. That hit the spot. Oh, our plates are all clean. Let's... And Grace was a bit mean.

Grace was a bit mean. It was great. What a different vibe we've had from every episode so far. Yeah, very much appreciated. And I mean... In a fun way, I'll say that. Oh, yeah. Hey.

Great fun. I'm not going to pretend like I didn't know what I was getting myself into when we booked Grace Dent. So happy about that. And she said that your flat probably smells of cheese and chive pringles. It doesn't, but I might start trying to make it smell like that now. Sounds delicious. Quite like that.

So that was Grace Dent. Thank you very much to Grace for coming in. A few things we need to say about Grace. She's the Guardian restaurant critic. And she has a podcast called The Untold on Radio 4. So check out those things. We did that very well. We're not so good at it that we can't congratulate ourselves afterwards.

We're doing well at plugging it so far. I just think, you know, we're perfect for just doing ad reads and things like that. Yeah. If anyone wants to sponsor us. Yeah. I can't name any specific companies because that's... We can't mention you. Oh, yeah.

For free, you know. Naked bars. Naked... Quite like them. Oh, yes. Grace, congratulations. You did not mention fennel. Well done.

It was not any of the ingredients in any of your dishes. If it had been, oh, so help me. There were no honourable munch-tions in that episode. No. Grace had no honourable munch-tions. That's a format point you're going to need to remember to bring in at the correct moment, I think. Yeah, I've got to start doing that more. You've got to start doing that.

That's on me, that one. Yeah. Because you don't want to say it. Yeah. Because it's not good, man. It's good. Honourable munch-tions is not good. It is good.

That could be a whole other restaurant. Well, maybe you can start that podcast yourself, honourable munch-tions. Honourable munch-tions. It's like a little extra thing to this podcast. Yeah, it's like the extra slice to our bake-off. Yeah. Yeah. Off menu with James Acaster's honourable munch-tions.

Yeah. Yeah. So that was the episode. That was the episode this week. We'll be back. We'll be back next week. Next week with another guest and another delicious meal. And listen, if you feel like putting Netflix on and watching my Netflix specials,

under the name of Repertoire, I get involved either. You can do what you like. Watch them. And while you're there, when you've watched all of those, maybe you want to watch a TV show called Almost Royal. That's got air, didn't it? I was just leaving that.

I was just imagining that was the last line of the podcast. But I think we should probably just say goodbye normally. Goodbye normally? That's a funny dad joke, isn't it? This is like Jim Davidson and John Virgo now. No, actually goodbye. Thank you very much. Eat up.

Hello, it's me, Amy Glendale. You might remember me from the best ever episode of Off Menu, where I spoke to my mum and asked her about seaweed on mashed potato and our relationship's never been the same since. And I am joined by... Me, Ian Smith. I would probably go bread. I'm not going to spoil it in case...

Get him on, James and Ed. But we're here sneaking in to your podcast experience to tell you about a new podcast that we're doing. It's called Northern News. It's about all the news stories that we've missed out from the North because, look, we're two Northerners. Sure, but we've been living in London for a long time. The news stories are funny.

Quite a lot of them crimes. It's all kicking off. And that's a new podcast called Northern News. We'd love you to listen to. Maybe we'll get my mum on. Get Glendale's mum on every episode. That's Northern News. When's it out, Ian? It's already out now, Amy! Is it?

Yeah, get listening. There's probably a backlog. You've left it so late.