Now the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is undertaking another tricky mission: creating a chain of affordable but excellent high street restaurants across Britain.
The first branch of "Jamie's Italian" is due to open in Bath in the spring. Others are planned for Cambridge and Brighton and within a few years, Oliver is intending to open up to 40 "neighbourhood" restaurants serving "authentic" Italian food.
...
Oliver's mentor, Gennaro Contaldo, the executive chef and co-owner of Passione in Charlotte Street, London, has been helping with the menu and the staff training. "So it'll all be completely authentic, rustic Italian," added Oliver.
Does Mr Oliver understand the meaning of authentic? What could possibly be authentically Italian (or authentically rustic) about a chain of cheap restaurants with a standard menu located on the British high street? The restaurants may be good value; they may adapt Italian cooking practices; they may even offer a splendid imitation of the trattoria tradition. But they will never be authentically Italian.
2 comments:
Thought you were going to go a different route here. Because Jamie is not Italian. Jamie's From Essex would have been a much more accurate name for his restaurant.
Oh leave poor Jamie alone. Hot on the heels of the nonsensical hounding he got for his efforts in Jamie's School Dinners the poor guy tries to give us Brits cheap, top notch pasta in place of Pizza Hut etc and he gets a pasting.
I don't think it's too great an ask of one's imagination to picture an Essex boy making authentic and rustic Italian food, albeit in a cold and blustery town like Brighton. Yes, his language does actually stack up but, either way, if you're going to analyse it in such detail I suggest you find better things to do with your time.
If I was going to be equally anal I would go on to dismantle your opening sentence "How language deteriorates" which, ironically, fails dismally at having any literary merit whatsoever.
"How language has deteriorated" might have been a better effort...
Post a Comment