Jay Rayner interview
Jay Rayner
The journalist and food critic on 25 years of reviewing restaurants, his new cookbook and his favourite local places…
Photo: Joe Magowan
If you’ve ever been so inspired by a restaurant meal that you want to recreate it yourself at home, you’ll know where Jay Rayner is coming from with his new book. Having been restaurant critic for The Observer for 25 years, he’s reviewed over 1,500 restaurants, and had many a great dinner, which he has later tried to conjure up himself. He’s now sharing the results in his first cookbook, Nights Out At Home.
He says: “As a keen home cook, it’s something I’ve always done. If I came across something in a restaurant I liked, I’d try to make it myself.” One of his first attempts was a salsa verde he’d had at Mitch Tonks’ Green Street Seafood Café in Bath, although neither of them realised what it was at the time – it was just a delicious combination of herbs, lemon and anchovies that had been served up as a dip.
Another was The Ivy’s crispy duck salad. “I had it a lot and thought it was delicious. It was initially created by Mark Hix for Le Caprice and was originally pork. It didn’t sell well until he realised so many punters were Jewish, so it was changed to duck.”
Back home, Jay made his version: “I got a couple of confit duck legs, rolled them in some hoisin sauce, crisped them up and put them on a salad. It was delicious. I looked at Mark’s recipe, which is a conscientious chef’s recipe, with the legs simmered in aromatics first, cooled, put in the deep-fat fryer and then put in a sauce made up of many ingredients. His recipe would take all day, mine took 15 minutes. I phoned Mark and he said of mine, ‘yep, that’ll work.’”
Jay has the blessings of all the chefs whose dishes feature in the book. “The recipes are inspired by or ‘reverse engineered’ from dishes in my favourite restaurants. They are rarely the big-ticket ones as they have their own recipe books. You won’t find me doing a Gordon Ramsay tarte tatin but dishes from smaller places where recipes are often not written down.”
The book features stories about the recipes and Jay’s recollections as a restaurant critic. While he has written several books, including novels, this is his first cookbook. And he wanted it to be authentic. There is no glossy photography. “I own many of those kind of recipe books. They can be helpful. But a little bit of me is suspicious as food photography now is so sophisticated. It can be an invitation to fail as yours will never look like that.”
However, he did want to provide some kind of visual reference. “I know people find it helpful so I have done a gallery on my website with photos I have taken of around 98% of the dishes. It gets away from the heftiness of these glossy cookbooks but it also takes pounds off the price of the book!”
Jay lives on the Brixton/Herne Hill borders and there is no shortage of local suppliers where he can stock up on ingredients. He mentions the butchers M. Moen in Clapham, Dugard & Daughters in Herne Hill, and FC Soper in Nunhead for fish. Other local spots he likes include Brixton Market’s Kaosarn Thai and Mamalan Chinese for a takeaway. He’s also a fan of Freak Scene in Parsons Green and Balham, and features its miso glazed aubergine dish in the book.
He describes trying out recipes on his family: wife Pat and their grown-up children, Ed and Taiga. It was a ‘humbling’ process and while many a dish was greeted with delight, others were less of a hit. “Everything I have created for the book, I think is great. But nobody’s family is pleased with everything they have done. My wife and I have been together for 37 years so we can agree to disagree. She thinks my vinaigrette is far too mustardy. I think she is wrong. It is fantastic.”
With his passion for food having sustained his quarter of a century as a restaurant critic, as well as seeing him become a judge on MasterChef, I wonder if he was a foody child. “I was a greedy child,” he admits. “My parents were both working class Jews from the East End. They had suffered privations and I think they thought that what was once an empty table would always be full.”
They went on to provide a very comfortable life for their family. His father Desmond was an actor. His mother was the agony aunt and novelist Claire Rayner. She started out as a nurse, and began her writing career by having letters published on nursing conditions before finding fame with her popular columns and frank sex advice.
Claire would sometimes take Jay with her when she went to deliver her copy to the newspapers and magazines she worked for. There would be lunch. Jay recalls: “I was introduced to the joys of eating out. Rules in particular, Joe Allen, and Stones Chop House where waiters would set fire to things tableside.”
Jay was soon to follow in his parents’ footsteps. “My upbringing meant that I saw jobs that many would see as unattainable as just what you did as a career. My dad was an actor, a painter and my mother’s agent. Mum was a novelist, broadcaster, and columnist. To me they were just jobs.”
(Scroll to keep reading)
Initially, Jay wanted to become an actor, until, he says, he found out he, “was really bad at it.” Surrounded by newspapers at home, and having met many journalists through Claire, he decided on journalism instead.
He studied politics at Leeds University with a very deliberate plan. “I chose Leeds as it had the biggest student newspaper in the country. The editorship was a full-time job and you had to be elected by a cross-campus ballot.”
“I was exceedingly aware of how famous my mother was. So I got it into my head that if I could get into Leeds, work my way up on the paper and get elected as editor by cynical students, nobody could accuse me of getting where I am by nepotism.”
“I did get onto the paper, and I did become editor but it didn’t make any difference. My mum’s been dead 14 years and [the accusation] still comes up on social media. It took me years to come up with the response: how did having a mother who was an expert in premature ejaculation get me a job on MasterChef?”
“I’m not denying I had an expensive education and comfortable upbringing but to suggest I got where I am because she made a phone call [is ridiculous]…”
Jay has certainly put in enough of the legwork to prove himself. As a journalist, he has covered a whole raft of topics, and has won countless accolades for his pieces on subjects such as mental health and race crime. He says he loves a good chewy story but it is harder to do that now he is recognised from the TV.
Having done an article on the day in the life of posh fish restaurant Scott’s, it was decided that he should do one on a greasy spoon on Holloway Road. “When it came to interviewing the clientele, I had to explain why the man from MasterChef was asking them questions. They found it baffling. Part of me was sad as the business of turning up and getting people to talk to you who didn’t know they were willing to talk always thrilled me.”
Jay is a busy man. When he’s not writing, he’s pursuing his other passion: music. He’s an accomplished jazz musician. His Jay Rayner Sextet, in which his wife sings, has a residency at the acclaimed Pizza Express club in Soho and is a regular on the festival circuit. He says: “It’s a side hustle that got wildly out of control.” It all started with the Bontempi organ when he was eight, before taking up piano. “I got to grade three then gave up. Then it was synthesisers – it was the eighties – but I didn’t like it when the technology changed so I went back to piano.”
He got into blues and jazz, and would watch his friend Joe Thompson play each week at the Ivy Club. On one of these occasions, Jay was invited on stage to play piano – he was terrified – but it all spiralled from there. “It is a beautiful part of my life. Piano is a place of safety for me. It baffles some people in the food writing world. They like you in your own lane, and I am very much out of it.”
Finally, I ask Jay (probably for the millionth time he has been asked this question), who, living or dead, would be his dream dinner party guests? “Peter Ustinov and Ella Fitzgerald. I’d also like to invite Stanley Tucci. We do know each other but I think it is about time I got to cook for him. I’ve also interviewed Dita Von Teese for my podcast and she’s great – she can bring the glamour. So me, my wife, Ella, Peter, Stanley and Dita. Sounds pretty good…”
- Nights Out At Home, Recipes and Stories from 25 years as a Restaurant Critic, Fig Tree.
Jay’s tour based on the book runs from 4 September to 9 November
