> Skip to content
  • Published: 26 March 2015
  • ISBN: 9780241973479
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 96
  • RRP: $16.99

My Dining Hell

Twenty Ways To Have a Lousy Night Out




The legendary critic's most vitriolic, scathing restaurant reviews. He's eaten there so you don't have to

I have been a restaurant critic for over a decade, written reviews of well over 700 establishments, and if there is one thing I have learnt it is that people like reviews of bad restaurants. No, scratch that. They adore them, feast upon them like starving vultures who have spotted fly-blown carrion out in the bush.

They claim otherwise, of course. Readers like to present themselves as private arbiters of taste; as people interested in the good stuff. I'm sure they are. I'm sure they really do care whether the steak was served au point as requested or whether the soufflé had achieved a certain ineffable lightness. And yet, when I compare dinner to bodily fluids, the room to an S & M chamber in Neasden (only without the glamour or class), and the bill to an act of grand larceny, why, then the baying crowd is truly happy.

Don't believe me? Then why, presented with the chance to buy this ebook filled with accounts of twenty restaurants - their chefs, their owners, their poor benighted front of house staff - getting a complete stiffing courtesy of the sort of vitriolic bloody-curdling review which would make the victims call for their mummies, did you seize it with both hands?

  • Published: 26 March 2015
  • ISBN: 9780241973479
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 96
  • RRP: $16.99

About the author

Jay Rayner

Jay Rayner is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster who now writes for the Observer. He is the author of two novels, The Marble Kiss and Day of Atonement. He is married and lives in London with his wife and son.

Jay Rayner is an award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster. He is restaurant critic for the Observer and has written a number of books about food, including The Ten Food Commandments and A Greedy Man in a Hungry World. He has also written several novels, including The Apologist and Day of Atonement.

Also by Jay Rayner

See all