Richard McComb: A Christmas truce between food critic and restaurant
It is almost 100 years now since English and German soldiers downed rifles and celebrated Christmas on the Western Front with an impromptu armistice.
On December 25, 1914, enemy combatants fraternised briefly in No Man’s Land, exchanging gifts of cigarettes, chocolate and sauerkraut.
Hostilities were temporarily put on hold as troops gave expression to a common humanity before the mortars rained down on Boxing Day.
Brindleyplace in Birmingham played host to a lesser known seasonal truce last Friday. The seemingly improbable took place at a new Italian cafe/restaurant.
A very unlikely thing happened: I broke bread (foccacia, to be exact) with the boss of food chain Carluccio’s, whose new businesses I had bayoneted just 24 hours earlier.
I had been less than impressed with the company’s newest opening in Brum, its 50th, and reported my findings in the Birmingham Post.
The service was poor, the food lukewarm and mediocre. I never set out to do a hatchet job on a restaurant and rarely get feedback other than coded threats and banning orders.
In all honesty, I didn’t expect to from Carluccio’s and its perky PR company, Roche Communications, following publication of the review. That’s not to say I didn’t hope to, it’s just that experience has taught me otherwise.
I had given the place 4/10, which is pretty rubbish, but not as rubbish as Jamie Oliver’s new Italian at the Bullring (3/10). I didn’t hear a chorizo sausage from Jamie’s mob following that review – provincial food critics can be so tiresome, can’t they, and anyway, what do they know? – and I thought Carluccio’s would be the same.
How wrong I was.
An hour or so after the review was published, the lovely Anne from Roche was straight on to me. Carluccio’s, in particular managing director Simon Kossoff, were mortified by my experience.
Kossoff was planning to drive up to the Birmingham restaurant to address the complaints I had raised. Would I be available to meet him?
This was too good an opportunity to miss. I would either be kidnapped and subjected to an Italian version of waterboarding, having tagliatelle stuffed up my nostrils, or I would experience a toe-curling tsunami of PR crisis management.
It was a hack’s win-win. The former scenario might make for better copy but I had hopes for the latter, hopes that weren’t entirely bolstered when a chef at a different establishment said I should brace myself for a horse’s head.
Was Kossoff going to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse at the Water's Edge?
I met him at the appointed hour. He’s 50 but looks younger and was wearing jeans and an open-necked blue checked shirt. I couldn’t see weapons.
He had travelled up from his home in west London and I had agreed to return to the scene of the crime. Some things are worth remembering: Kossoff’s company has an annual turnover of £70 million and his business serves more than 140,000 customers a week. He’s got clout and I am a gobby irritant. If I didn’t know better, I’d show myself the door.
“I’m sorry. We got it wrong,” said Kossoff, shaking my hand and looking like he’d ballooned a penalty over the bar in a sudden-death shoot out.
Blimey, I hadn’t seen that coming. Humble pie wasn’t on the menu the last time I dined. (I toyed with saying that even if it had been it would have been served late, after our coffees, but thought better of it.) I was genuinely, pleasantly, taken aback.
I asked Kossoff to quantify, on a scale of one to 10 (10 being apoplectic), how unhappy he was when he read the Post review on Carluccio’s.
