Britain's best known restaurant critic is a sticklet for the finer details of eating out - suhc as making sure he gets his favourite table. So what happened when Britain's top interviewer took Michael Winner to lunch
Published 25 January 2004 The Observer By Lynn Barber
Lunch with Michael Winner is always fun, but never relaxing - he gets upset so easily. One minute he's sitting there beaming, telling anecdotes and hooting his great Hahahaha laugh, the next, he's grieving and keening over some perceived catastrophe - a dirty wineglass, an absent fork, an inattentive waiter. I remember a few years ago he took me to what was then his favourite restaurant, Assaggi, and he was in his happiest, most bonhomous mood, saying the reason he liked Assaggi was because it was very exclusive and you got a nice class of customer - and then his eyes fell on a young woman breast-feeding her baby! My dears, I have never actually seen anyone turn purple before. It was such an enthralling sight that I hastened to prolong it by saying, 'Oh I totally agree. I love restaurants that encourage children!' He must have forgotten that remark or he wouldn't be having lunch with me now.
This time there were some terribly long-drawn-out negotiations beforehand about where we could eat. I said the Wolseley, the hot new restaurant started by Jeremy King and Chris Corbin, ex Ivy and Caprice, but Winner said Ooh no, he couldn't risk taking me there - I might write something rude and then he'd be banned and that would be tragic. I said I wouldn't dream of writing anything rude - 'I have to eat too!' - but he was adamant. He said we could go to the Dorchester Grill - 'Beautiful room and not many people know it.' That's just the trouble, I told him - nobody knows it so nobody cares. But, I said, as a compromise, we could go to the Caprice. This was not entirely disingenuous because I knew that he'd recently had a great row with the Caprice - they said they couldn't guarantee his favourite table so he cancelled the booking and complained vociferously in the Sunday Times. But actually, he's made his peace with the Caprice since then, so he agreed we could go there. But then, mysteriously (did they refuse him his fave table again?), he rang and said he'd booked the Wolseley after all.
One o'clock Thursday, he said, and then added rather plaintively, 'You will be on time, won't you, dear? I don't want to sit there like a lemon.' Oh poor man, I thought, I'll go early to save him. So I got to the Wolseley at ten to one and blow me, he was already installed at a central table, with Jeremy King, the tall elegant co-owner, hovering beside him. I went over and kissed Winner and then Jeremy kissed me with a fervour I thought smacked slightly of desperation. Do I detect a hint of an Atmosphere? I wondered, but I didn't have to wonder long because Winner, who is not one for keeping secrets, immediately confessed: 'It was so embarrassing Lynn - thank God you weren't here. I just asked Jeremy to switch our table with the one next to it, because I thought the one next to it was bigger. And as the waiters passed the two tables in front of me, like two ships passing in the Channel, I saw they were identical in size! Hahahaha!'
But gosh, I thought, this is a whole new development - I know Winner cares insanely about which table he sits at, I didn't know he worried about table size as well. Oh yes, he says, these at the Wolseley are rather small, smaller than at the Ivy, but adequate, he reckons. But he didn't like to think anyone else's table might be bigger. So this is the best table? I ask, looking round. 'Of course,' he beams, explaining that, for a start it's a corner table which means we can sit at right angles rather than facing each other, 'and you don't want to look at me, darling!' and second, it faces the front door so he can see everyone coming in. Thirdly, it's in the centre of the room so everyone can see him - he knows some people prefer a discreet table but 'I've never been discreet dear!'
'I don't go to restaurants, I go to tables' is his watchword, and he has a list by the phone of all his regular restaurants with his favoured table numbers beside them. He says you have to do that. 'I mean at the Tour d'Argent in Paris there is one table, and only one, where you can see right up the Seine to Notre Dame on one side, right up the Seine the other side, and it is one of the great views of the world. There are other tables where you could be in Essex! So don't tell me the table doesn't matter!' So what's the number of this table? 'I don't know,' he says (meaning he doesn't want to tell me), 'but with Jeremy and Chris I think if there's a problem they'd tell me.'
Right, got it, so we are at the best table at the best restaurant in London, and Winner is one happy bunny. Except - what is this? No sooner has Winner finished his explanation, than who should come trip ping through the door, with a tiny blonde on his arm, but Andrew Lloyd Webber. Ooh! Lloyd Webber, it will be remembered, was until recently the restaurant critic for the Daily Telegraph and therefore Winner's closest rival - though as Winner was always the first to admit, 'Andrew knows a great deal about food and I don't! Hahahaha.' But where would Lloyd Webber sit, given that the best table was already taken by us? Winner watched, quivering like a fox on hearing the distant view halloo. Lloyd Webber was taken to a table - another corner table, one we hadn't noticed before - still in the inner circle but in a more discreet, shadowy area near the bar. 'So is that a good table?' I asked innocently. 'Hm.' Winner was obviously thinking about it, thinking deeply, while also waiting for Lloyd Webber to notice him and nod. Eventually satisfactory nods were exchanged and Winner was able to give me his attention. 'That's a good table too,' he finally pronounced, 'but I prefer this one because, as a film director, I like to see the door.' Phew. Honour satisfied. But it was an anxious moment.
Waiters hover while we read the menu - though Winner says he doesn't need to, he already knows it by heart. He has been to the Wolseley twice a week since it opened and has already established his 'usual' - chopped liver to start and Hungarian goulash to follow. So this is his new favourite restaurant? 'Absolutely. This is unquestionably the best dining experience in London. You know, people might say you can get better food somewhere else, but the overall situation - I mean look at the room! Isn't it a pleasure?' It is indeed - huge but somehow intimate, with a wonderfully opulent, decadent, Edwardian feel. Does he have money in it? No, he says, he wishes he did. When King and Corbin left the Ivy, he told them 'Count me in for a hundred grand any time you want to start up', but they never called him. Anyway, he says, he doesn't normally invest in restaurants - he puts all his 'frivolity' money in theatre - which I suppose is just as well given that he reviews them.
Winner's improbable career as a restaurant reviewer started in 1991 when he had a terrible meal at the Pont de la Tour, and wrote an article about it for the Sunday Times 'to get revenge'. It produced such a huge reader response that Andrew Neil decided to run regular restaurant reviews by celebrities. But he made the mistake of asking actors and 'Of course, actors are never going to say anything bad about anyone - they want to be loved. So Andy [Neil] rang me one day and said "I'm fed up with giving these luvvies £200 to say everything's wonderful - what are you doing?" So I said "Well I'll do it for a couple of weeks". This was about 12 years ago. And I said: "I'm never going to go anywhere just for the sake of it, because the day I have to run my life to suit the Sunday Times, it's over." They don't pay anything anyway.'
Don't they? I squeaked. I'd heard he was paid £2 a word. So then it was his turn to squeak, 'Two pounds a word! Oh a lot more than that, darling!' But, unlike all other restaurant reviewers, he pays for his own meals and doesn't claim any expenses - 'and believe me I've asked!' - so he reckons he breaks even at best. 'But it doesn't matter because it's fun. If it wasn't fun, I wouldn't do it.' And also, he believes, he is performing a public service. Stop sniggering at the back: Michael Winner regards himself as the champion of the common man. I know, I know, it's a bit hard to imagine, given that he arrives at restaurants by chauffeur-driven Rolls (or private plane if abroad), demands the best table, and expects all the waiters to genuflect on his arrival. Nevertheless, he thinks he's standing up for Joe Schmo. And in a way - admittedly a rather far-fetched, contorted, defying-all-logic way - he is. Because until he started writing for the Sunday Times, he suffered from Restaurant Fear just like everyone else. 'You know Lynn - I'd spent at least 50 years of my life being frightened of restaurant staff. If they gave me the book to sign, I'd write: "Wonderful meal, thank you"; if they came over and said "How was it?" I'd say, "Very nice thank you" - and it had all been terrible. Why did I spend 50 years being frightened of restaurant employees? How pathetic can you be? So now, if I have a bad meal, I don't make a scene, I just say very quietly "Read about it".'
But he is unusual among restaurant reviewers in that he doesn't really give a toss about the food: he cares more about the room, the clientele, the service. 'Oh much more, no question. I mean if you want good food you go to Gordon Ramsay's restaurant when he's cooking and you will have the finest food you can ever eat. But the room is oppressive, it's no fun. I mean this room is fun.' He is currently on good terms with Gordon Ramsay - 'though we have little tiffettes all the time' (and probably will again when Ramsay reads this) - but he has fallen out with his former favourite Marco Pierre White because Marco didn't invite him to the opening of Drones Club, 'so I decline to go to Drones and I hear he's slagging me off all over the place. Which is silly because he never sees my films so why should I go to Drones? But I'm very fond of him really.' Meanwhile Gordon and Marco have also fallen out badly, Winner doesn't know why. 'Quite honestly, dear, the idea of celebrity chefs is ridiculous. In my day, they stayed in the kitchen and cooked. Nobody saw them, nobody had to listen to them and that was fine. But we're so short of celebrities now, we'll soon have celebrity plumbers! It gives them ideas well above their station. And they're so boring.'
He says if he has any skill in food criticism - 'which I do not' - it's because he's been eating good food for 68 years. 'I think Jewish people always put food above everything - above relationships, above family, above business - though business is a close second. My mother was a very good cook - I remember her meat loaf with an egg going through the middle - absolutely historic!' Was he a greedy boy? 'Oh greedy ! There used to be a place in Marylebone High Street called Maison Sagne that had these incredible cream cakes and I used to go there with my mother and she would invite all her friends to watch me eat. Typical Jewish mother - I would eat 14 cream cakes at one sitting and she would say, "Isn't he wonderful? Look what an appetite he's got!" In the meantime they're killing you! Hahahaha.'
His parents sent him to a progressive vegetarian school where the food was vile and he spent all his pocket money on meat paste, but in the holidays they took him to the best restaurants - Wiltons, Wheeler's, the Savoy, Claridge's. It might have been at this point that he acquired his own restaurant manners. 'My mother was difficult in restaurants. She was very difficult in restaurants, no question. She'd go to somewhere like Wiltons - which was superb - and say "Could I taste the smoked salmon?" So they'd have to bring her a sample first and she'd make a big performance eating it and then say, "No it's salty." They were furious!'
He believes that English food was actually better when he was growing up, in the Forties and Fifties, than it is today: 'All this codswallop about how food in England has improved is rubbish. The food in the Fifties and Forties wasn't chemicalised, wasn't deep frozen, wasn't tired, wasn't processed - it was wonderful basic quality food. In those days you got meat and two veg - and a potato, the potato was extra - and it all looked like it should look like, cabbage looked like cabbage, and it tasted superb.' But surely it had thick brown gravy all over it? 'Well I quite like brown gravy! Basically it was bloody good food.'
He is still very conservative in his tastes and believes that 'the last thing to do is trust foodies!' He sticks to the dozen or so restaurants he likes and rarely changes them. His favourite restaurants abroad are La Chaumiere in the South of France and Puny in Portofino; he also recommends Tetou in Golfe Juan for the bouillabaisse. He has only added two new restaurants to his London list in the last three years: Racine in Brompton Road, and now the Wolseley, though he welcomes the Almeida in Islington for those rare occasions when he has to venture to the far north. He likes the food at Zuma and Nobu but finds them too noisy. He leaves the task of reviewing new restaurants to his colleague, A.A. Gill, who has the advantage of knowing about food (as well as being Winner's ex-gardener) but their paths rarely cross.
By this time, we have finished our first course and the goulash arrives. Winner, typically, beckons Jeremy King across the room to ask for a spoon, which a waiter is already bringing. 'This is good isn't it?' he says, sloshing it about. 'I wore a black shirt specially for you, Lynn, so you wouldn't notice when I spilt things on it. I always spill things on my shirt,' he says, doing so. There is a plate of white curly things on the side, and I ask Winner what he thinks they are. 'No idea, darling. Do you want me to ask Jeremy?' 'Oh no please !' Winner contents himself with summoning a waitress, who says they are potato noodles. Anyway, they are very good.
It is hard to imagine Michael Winner anywhere except in a restaurant, but actually he says he eats nearly every meal at home. He dines in the kitchen at 6.30 and there is a rota - sausages on Monday, pasta on Tuesday, tongue salad on Wednesday, cooked by his Filipina cook-housekeeper. 'Agencies keep offering me a chef but the last thing I want is a chef - one prima donna in the house is quite enough, thank you!' And he doesn't go to dinner parties because he doesn't like meeting strangers. The only person whose invitations he accepts is Michael Caine because 'Michael is a brilliant cook and serves the best food in the world bar none.' Nor will Winner allow his girlfriends ever to cook because, 'they all say they can cook - every man says he's a good driver, every woman says she's a good cook - but they're never as good as they think they are, and I don't want it to be a source of friction.'
The current reigning girlfriend is Geraldine Lynton-Edwards, whom he describes tactfully as 'a very nice lady, not really a girl - for me, she's very mature'. (Presumably that means in her forties.) She is an ex-actress, now Pilates instructor, who makes him do exercises for 30 minutes every morning and an hour's walk every evening - 'even in the rain! Walking round the streets, up hills and everything.' (Oh those Alpine peaks of Kensington!) 'She is the fuhrer of Pilates. But it's very good, because I wouldn't do it otherwise. I'd just die, darling, I'd die!' Winner had a nasty health scare earlier this year when his nose bled for two days and he ended up in intensive care, but he is in the pink now, in fact looking healthier than I've seen him for years.
In September, he finally publishes the autobiography he has been promising for 15 years. He says he wrote it all himself, without help, so I wondered if it involved any soul-searching. 'Well it's no secret that my relationship with my mother was very difficult [she was a compulsive gambler who spent many years suing him and, he always claims, gave him his first heart attack] and I've written about that very fully. But I've skimmed through life, Lynn! I've skated on the surface, what with the girls and the movies and all the kinds of things that are bachelor heaven. Nothing has been searing, except for my mother.' He says that his friends have told him he should write more about himself, and less about the Hollywood stars he is so besotted with, 'but I was such a fan, I was so interested in the stories of these stars - not just to show off that I know them, of course I know them, I've worked with them for 50 years - that maybe I didn't write enough about myself. But that's directors - we are basically insecure and shy, no question. Don't laugh, Lynn, we are !'
We are only just ordering pudding (lemon meringue for him, fruit cup for me) when Lloyd Webber, who must have eaten very quickly, comes over to say hello. Lloyd Webber asks Winner if he is coming to stay in Majorca, and tells me he's recently bought a house in Deja because Majorca now has the best restaurants in the world. Winner says rather ungratefully that he might come at Easter - I want to squeak, 'Oh I'll come any time!' Anyway, the meeting is satisfactory and afterwards Winner gives me quite a lecture on how journalists are always so nasty about Andrew and he is such a nice man.
Over pudding, Winner admits that his appetite for film directing is beginning to wane (possibly as a result of the stinking reviews he got for his last effort, Parting Shots) but he loves writing, producing, directing and starring in the eSure insurance ads. Moreover, he boasts, last year for the first time he made more from earned than unearned income - 'I am a worker, Lynn' - largely thanks to the eSure ads. His other source of pride is that next year sees construction of the National Police Memorial in the Mall, designed by Norman Foster, the culmination of Winner's efforts for the Police Memorial Trust. Surely now he will be offered a knighthood? 'They haven't offered me a bar of chocolate and it's got to the point that if they offered, they can stuff it. I don't need it. I know who I am. I'm quite comfortable with my persona. It's like the tray of canapes - if it's there, I'll eat it, if it's not, I don't care.'
At three o'clock precisely, he looks at his watch and says he must go - he's got to test drive an Aston Martin which he is thinking of buying. So saying, he rises from the table. I am a bit confused because he hasn't even asked for the bill, but silly me - this is Winnerland - you don't get bills, it all goes on his account. So we walk out of the restaurant through ranks of smiling waiters, waving graciously at Jeremy King and all the other people who seem so thrilled to see us. But as Winner strolls the few yards to where his chauffeur is opening the door of his Rolls, he hoots, 'people sometimes ask me if I'd like to run a restaurant? I can't think of anything worse. I'd rather go down the sewers. I mean can you imagine? With people like me turning up, Lynn? No! Please! Hahahaha!'
