When I was eight or nine years old, my mother told me I had “the Greenspan arse”. I knew she meant it fondly. John Greenspan, who was stocky and bearded, was my mother’s first cousin, the child of a great-aunt I had never met. He was a regular visitor to our house, along with his brood; a sweet and funny man who treated us kids like people who were a part of the conversation. I liked him, which was good because he was also my childhood dentist, although I later concluded he was only marking time. John, who died in 2023, eventually moved from London to San Francisco, where he became an eminent professor of dental surgery and a world-renowned researcher into Aids/HIV. I did not share his academic prowess. Apparently, I only shared his arse.
My mother’s point was that a branch of our family, the Greenspans, of which I was clearly a part, had a genetic predisposition to hefty, tree-trunk thighs and magnificent bottoms. We were a tribe of Jewish immigrants who, through hard work possibly driven by a paranoia that our host country might not always be welcoming, had done well for ourselves. And yet for all that, like most British Jews, we were essentially peasants from the Russian steppe, where the winters are hard and the pickings once meagre. Natural selection had favoured those of us with slower metabolisms and a tendency to store calories, in our case around our ripe-apple middles. If I wanted to know who I was, I only needed to take my clothes off and stand before a mirror. Behold: the Greenspan arse.
Early days: Jay getting to grips with the basics as a boy. Photograph: Courtesy of Jay RaynerI have never been thin, much as Elton John has never been understated and the Himalayas have never been flat. Like the Himalayas, I am simply built that way. There have been moments when I have been thin-adjacent, achieved through quite monstrous effort, both in the gym and the kitchen. Such achievements are meant, in our culture, to be celebrated, so hooray for me and all that. But generally, I have come to understand myself as a large man who will never buy slim-cut jeans. Those are for the others; for the ones whose bottoms were never named after branches of their family tree. There is no doubt I have appetites. I was a hungry child and a hungry adolescent. When I pitched for the Observer Magazine restaurant reviewing job 25 years ago, I made the point to the then editor that I already spent my own money in restaurants. I like my dinner. And my lunch. I would always be a large man whatever so-called career I stumbled upon.
The question is, does the job I now have contribute to my size? I really am adamant, often defensively so, that I do not eat for a living. That would be a stupid way to earn money. I am a writer, describing experiences. But to have something to write about I must first have the experiences, which means eating. From time to time, people have asked me how I manage all those heavy-duty restaurant meals. I point out that I only review one a week. It’s not as if I am, on a weekly basis, re-enacting La Grande Bouffe, the 1970s French movie about a group of men who meet in a country house and resolve to eat themselves to death.
Family matters: Jay with his mother in the kitchen. Photograph: Courtesy Jay RaynerThis may be true, but it ignores two key points. The first is that my glib line about only reviewing once a week ignores the fact that restaurant critics treat as a routine occurrence that which for most people is a special occasion. Most people do not eat in a restaurant, fancy or otherwise, once a week. The food is engineered to reflect that. It’s a treat. Yes, there are places offering options for those who do not wish to overindulge, and we can have a long, discouragingly tedious discussion about eating regimes, like the carbohydrate-free rigours of keto, which are achievable in restaurants. Those, however, are simply dodging the point that restaurant meals are by their nature a carnival of largesse. Generally, we don’t go out to eat to be healthy. We go out to eat to have a nice time. And even if some people do pick around menus in search of healthier options, that is not a route that’s open to me. My job is to order all the pies. No, not all the time. But a lot of the time. A picky-eating, pernickety restaurant critic is of no use to anyone.
The second point is that whole “I only go once a week” thing. It’s an outright, filthy lie. Yes, I only review one restaurant a week, but these things are habit-forming. I go to many more restaurants than that. Sometimes, it is as part of my work and boy do I put my back into it. Or perhaps it’s because I’m working away from home and need dinner. These, however, are just feeble excuses. The truth is I bloody love eating in restaurants and I am lucky enough to be able to afford to do so. As a sweet soul once put it on Twitter, the question with me is not why am I such a big man? It’s why am I not bigger?
Mr Muscle: ‘At one point, around 2008, a combination of low-carbing and excessive gym work, by which I mean five or six huge sessions a week, took several stone off me.’ Photograph: Neil Wilder/The ObserverThe answer, I think, is that the job makes you very conscious of the process of eating and its impact upon you. Part of that is what euphemistically we might call the “forward facing” elements of the role. I do a fair bit of television. I am regularly asked if I will be photographed, perhaps to illustrate a piece I have written. This means I am required to look at myself, often in excruciating detail. Professional photographers shoot digitally to laptop, which means I get to examine how I look moment by moment. I like to think I am now professionally vain, which is just a fancy way of saying I am vain. I know exactly which positions I look thinner in and which positions make me look especially huge. I do not leave a photographic studio without having first scorched the digital earth of all unflattering images.
Chez Jay: cooking at home. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The ObserverOver the years I have tried to alter my general diet, rather than follow formal diets. I hold to the view that none of those diets work. Or to put it another way, if a single one of them did, no one would ever publish another diet book again. They wouldn’t need to. Almost all of them are some variant on making a calorie-restricted eating regime tolerable. At one point, around 2008, a combination of low-carbing and excessive gym work, by which I mean five or six huge sessions a week, took several stone off me. But what people who run to fat know is that serious self-achieved weight loss is rarely sustainable. Not all of it went back on but some of it did. What’s the solution? I could stop reviewing restaurants. Eventually, of course, I will, whether it’s my decision or that of a restless editor hungry for new voices. No journalist should assume a column is theirs by right. The thing is, even if I’m no longer reviewing restaurants, I’ll still be me. I’ll be eating in them, because that’s who I am, and I’ll still be of Russian peasant stock with a sluggish, indolent metabolism.
My solution is to assume that if I can’t be thin, I can at least be fit. At home I tend to avoid pasta and rice. The gym habit acquired around 2008 has never gone away. I’m in there three to five times a week, wearing a sweatband to keep my ludicrous hair out of my eyes, bashing away at the cross-trainer like “a waxed Wookie giving it stacks” as one fellow gym-goer once observed. I do sit-ups. I lift weights. I sweat in the way large men are prone to and end up looking like I’ve just taken a shower with my clothes on. It’s not a pretty sight, but then it’s not meant to be pretty. It’s meant to be a solution of sorts. While I’m doing all of this I’m thinking about dinner. I like being alive. I’ve concluded that the best way to stay alive is by not dying and that’s what I’m attempting to do. So far it seems to be working. Unless you’re reading this after my death. In which case, boy did I have fun, Greenspan arse and all.
In Nights Out at Home, I offer 60 recipes inspired by my favourite restaurant dishes. Here are a few…
Chicken in a mustard sauce Photograph: Will CarneInspired by the rabbit in a mustard sauce served by Henry Harris at Racine.
The people who write about food in Britain, be it served in restaurants or for recipes and features, can be a fractious lot. Some enthuse about a particular chef; others think they’re not all that. Some swear by a certain maker of stilton; others insist their direct competitor is far superior. Occasionally, though, everyone agrees. In the 13 years from 2002 that chef Henry Harris’s restaurant Racine was open, I didn’t come across anyone who had a bad word to say about it. Racine, on the Brompton Road in London’s Knightsbridge, was everybody’s fantasy version of a bourgeois French country restaurant made real. At Racine, Harris did it all: fish soup the colour of copper coins, leeks vinaigrette, calves’ brains in black butter with capers and duck confit with lentils and, of course, his rabbit in mustard sauce with smoked bacon. It was all so damn comforting.
Harris closed Racine in 2015, but in late 2022 decided to reprise it above the Three Compasses pub in Farringdon. And, of course, the opening menu included his rabbit in a mustard sauce. That sauce is old-school: glossy, deep and profound. The compounds which give mustard its heat are deactivated through cooking, so what you get is flavour rather than fire. I made up this version years ago and use it with chicken thighs, not least because rabbit isn’t always that easy to get hold of. The original dish includes rashers of crisped smoked bacon perched on the top. In mine, the bacon is part of the sauce. Serves 4
onion 1, large, sliced into rings
chicken thighs 6-8, bone-in, skin-on
smoked bacon lardons 200g
olive oil 2 tbsp
sea salt and ground black pepper
butter a couple of knobs
chicken stock 400ml, from a cube
double cream 100ml
dijon mustard
Heat the oven to 220C/gas mark 7. You’re going to roast these chicken thighs hot and fast.
Put the sliced onion across the bottom of an oven pan. Place the chicken thighs on top, skin side up. Chuck the lardons over and around them. Dribble on a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, season liberally with salt and pepper and add 2 good knobs of butter.
Roast the chicken thighs in the oven for around 45 minutes, and certainly until the skin is crisp. Baste them every 15 minutes or so. About halfway through the cooking give them 10 minutes skin side down so the backs also crisp up. Then turn back skin side up for another 10 minutes, so the skin is really crisp.
While the chicken is roasting, warm a serving dish which has sides high enough to restrain the sauce.
When the thighs are done, take them out of the pan, shaking off any caramelised rings of onion or lardons. Put the chicken in the serving dish to rest. It will not get cold and will benefit hugely from the 15 minutes or so rest it will take to make the sauce.
The pan will have lots of fabulous juices in it. Put it on a medium heat and pour in the stock, scraping up everything from the bottom of the pan. Let it bubble away and reduce a little for 5 minutes.
Pour in the double cream and whisk to incorporate into the stock. Let it simmer and thicken further (but don’t let it boil).
Whisk in a good tablespoon of dijon mustard. Taste. If you think it can take more, add a teaspoon at a time. Dijon mustard is a very good emulsifier and it will bring the whole thing together.
Once it has thickened enough to lightly coat the back of a wooden spoon, pour everything in the tray over the chicken thighs.
Serve with rice, or crusty bread and a sharp green salad.
Charred hispi cabbage topped with crushed Scampi Fries and Frazzles Photograph: Pål Hansen/The ObserverInspired by the dish served at XO Kitchen, Norwich
Some dishes start as innovations and end up as clichés. That doesn’t mean they’re bad. It just means there’s a lot of it about. Across the past decade, charred hispi cabbage has become practically a required part of every side-dish menu. I’ve certainly mentioned it in more than 30 reviews going back over the past 10 years, which clearly means each way of cooking it was of note. I suspect it’s so popular with restaurants partly because it portions up nicely. Half a hispi cabbage makes a good side dish. It can also take a spanking over the coals, which is helpful because live fire grills have become increasingly popular. And once charred it proves a sturdy platform for huge flavours, smeared on the singed surface.This version, served at the boisterous XO Kitchen in Norwich, just made me laugh. It was described on the menu as BBQ hispi with salad cream, black bean dressing and XO seasoning. I asked the chef Jimmy Preston what was in the golden rubble of XO seasoning. “Well,” he said slowly. “You need a pork element for XO, so that’s crushed-up Frazzles. And then you need dried seafood so that’s Scampi Fries.” He paused. “Monster Munch might also have been involved.” If you’re reading this outside the UK and have no idea what I’m going on about, you can look these great and vital snack products up online. Just know, it’s genius. Serves 4
hispi cabbages 2 medium, halved vertically
olive oil
thick vinaigrette 100ml (see below
For the black bean sauce:
preserved black beans 1 heaped tbsp
light soy sauce 60ml
caster sugar 50g
cornflour ½ tsp
For the XO seasoning:
nori seaweed 3 sheets
Frazzles 1 packet
Scampi Fries 1 packet
Pickled Onion Monster Munch 30g
crispy onions 2 tbsp (of the sort sold in tubs for topping hot dogs)
chilli flakes 1 tsp
Heat a cast-iron skillet until smoking hot. Dribble the pieces of cabbage with a little olive oil, then place them flat in the skillet. Do not worry about charring. It’s what you want. Turn them occasionally and check that the tight slabs of leaves are softening. It will take 15 to 20 minutes. You will need to do this in a couple of batches.
Meanwhile, put the black beans into warm water to soften. Put the soy sauce and sugar in a pan. Heat to dissolve the sugar, then bring to the boil. Mix the cornflour with a tablespoon or two of water to make a slurry, reduce the heat and add that. Stir until the sauce thickens. Drain the black beans and add them. Stir and set aside to cool.
Now make the XO seasoning. Blitz the sheets of seaweed in a food processor until finely chopped. Smash up the Frazzles, Scampi Fries and Monster Munch. I find the best way is to open the bag a little to let out the air, then bash liberally with the end of a wooden rolling pin.
In a bowl mix the seaweed, crushed snacks, crispy onions and the chilli flakes until they are a well-mixed rubble.
Dress each piece of cabbage first with a generous amount of the vinaigrette, then spoon over a quarter of the black bean sauce. Finally, pile on the XO seasoning.
Thick vinaigretteInspired by the version served with globe artichokes at Oslo Court, London
Vinaigrette is very personal. For example, my wife doesn’t like my version. She thinks it’s too mustardy and thick. Fair enough. The joy of a long marriage is that you can disagree on things like vinaigrette without getting divorced, because divorce involves far too much admin, unlike vinaigrette. The thickness here is deliberate. This version is designed more as a dip than a dressing, although it can be used as one. It’s perfect for asparagus and charred hispi cabbage with XO crumb (above). Some people will argue that vinaigrette is basically oil and vinegar in a ratio of three to one. Go discuss that with Pat. She’ll probably agree with you. I throw in other things. The light soy, which adds a bash of umami, is a trick I picked up from Henry Harris of Bouchon Racine. The mix of vegetable and olive oil and the addition of half a teaspoon of honey comes from Felicity Cloake, whose “How to make the perfect” columns in the Guardian are essential reading for any cook, as are the “Perfect” books arising from them.
garlic 1 clove
sea salt 1 tsp
dijon mustard 1 heaped tbsp
light soy sauce 2 tsp
white wine vinegar 40ml
vegetable oil 100ml
extra virgin olive oil 70ml
honey ½ tsp
mayonnaise 1 tbsp (shop-bought)
black pepper a grind
Grind the clove of garlic with the sea salt in a pestle and mortar to make a paste. If you don’t have a pestle and mortar, you can do this with the back of a spoon in a bowl.
Add the mustard to the paste, then the soy and vinegar, and mix to incorporate.
Pour all that into a processor, making sure not to leave any behind. Add the oils, the honey and the mayonnaise, and blitz on high for 20 to 30 seconds. The result will be a thick, almost frothy vinaigrette that will hold without separating for at least a couple of days. Add a good grind of black pepper and stir that in.
Jay Rayner’s cookbook, Nights Out at Home: Recipes and Stories from 25 Years as a Restaurant Critic (Penguin, £22), is available to preorder for £18.70, guardianbookshop.com
Jay Rayner is also on tour this autumn. For tickets visit fane.co.uk/jay-rayner