The Good Life
Rejoicings in Noshleigh
Pamela Vandyke Price
The award of the Glenfiddich Trophy to Derek Cooper, as wine and food writer of the year was an event several years overdue — although, having won it myself °nee, I suppose I can't sincerely wish Derek had beaten me to it then. He, however, being as generous a person as he is witty as a writer, might be capable of this. To be interviewed by him or watch him interview all kinds of People is to see that rarity, an interviewer who doesn't want to put Words into the interviewee's Mouth. His books, The Bad Food Guide and The Beverage Report, are bedside reading in wellequipped guest rooms, and his articles in the Guardian, In Britain and World Medicine invariably leave me longing for more — for information and enlightened ideas, as well as for laughs. But it is with his creation of that cosmic culinary ogre, Ray Gunge, owner of the Cafe (no accent) Royal, Noshleigh, and of the ghastly Mrs Gunge (Derek has Phases of being sorry for Ray, as he thinks Mrs G drinks) that Derek Cooper comes into the big league of cuisine, from haute to bas. The Gunge papers, with Ray's articles of catering faith (he once took me to task for criticising wine baskets — "We serve everything in a basket — I once presented a bottle of Guinness in a basket") and his accounts of the re-usable plastic cress for plats earn is, the 'atmospheric' lighting and the sort of flambe-ing that gives those intime diners at Noshleigh their special charm, are clamoured for by Gunge addicts. I suspect, however, that Derek may be too subtle a writer to make those of the catering trade represented by the Gunges realise that, though fearfulness may be fun to read about, it can be otherwise in real life.
Charles Laughton, when asked if he didn't long to play Falstaff, expressed disgust: "I've chucked out too many of his sort from my father's hotel." Those appallingly arch restaurant write-ups, with Meals vibrant with over-decorated, glutinous ingredients, those Wine suggestions (Derek once showed me one where the owner, ever so Chevalier du Tastevin, Chose "and chose well a smooth golden Barsac" to partner the steak and kidney, and I've seen self-styled 'gourmet eaters' order Sauternes with osso buco), the !lideous descriptions, with 'intime,' atmospheric' working double Shifts, or, as in a recent press release, "You never know what Personality you may find at the next table" (which fills me with a resolve never to enter such a Place), they all really hapPen. It is very difficult to write simply and truthfully about res
taurants, partly because the public have become conditioned by Gunge-style prose to accept a lot of phrases that mean nothing, and also because the British bother about many more things than food, drink and service when they make use of a restaurant. I would cheerfully eat on a traffic island if the meal, the wine and the service were as I think they should be.
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