Books

A sophisticated palate and a fiery, comic tongue. Jay Rayner’s food writing is brilliant.
Stanley Tucci

 

Chewing the Fat: Tasting notes from a greedy life

Why are gravy stains on your shirt at the dinner table to be admired? Does bacon improve everything? And is gin really the devil’s work? In this rollicking collection of his hilarious columns, the award-winning writer and Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner answers these vital questions and many, many more. They are glorious dispatches, seasoned in equal measure with both enthusiasm and bile, from decades at the very frontline of eating.

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop

This is Rayner at his rambunctious best: upfront, full-fat, and always deliciously written.
Nigella Lawson

A sophisticated palate and a fiery, comic tongue. Jay Rayner’s food writing is brilliant.
Stanley Tucci

Deliciousness served up in book form.’
Philippa Perry

Wonderfully funny, foodie and perfectly short.’
Tom Kerridge


My Last Supper: One meal, a lifetime in the making

You’re About to Die. What Would Your Final Meal Be?
This question has long troubled Jay Rayner. But why wait for death? Why not eat your ‘last meal’ now, when you can enjoy it? So, he had a simple plan: he would embark on a journey through his life in food in pursuit of the meal to end all meals. It’s a quest that takes him from necking oysters on the Louisiana shoreline to forking away the finest French pastries in Tokyo, and from his earliest memories of snails in garlic butter, through multiple pig-based banquets, to the unforgettable final meal itself. This is the story of one hungry man, in eight courses. 

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop

Hilarious, informative, enlightening, instructive... It's the funniest book I've read all year.’
Chris Evans

Witty, wise, and, obviously, delicious.’
Guardian

A raucous, joyous celebration of life.’
Irish Times


Jay Rayner isn’t just a trifle irritated. He is eye-gougingly, bone-crunchingly, teeth-grindingly angry. And admit it, that’s why you picked up this book, isn’t it? 

Because you aren’t really interested in glorious prose poems celebrating the finest dining experiences known to humanity, are you? You want him to suffer abysmal cooking, preferably at eye-watering prices, so you can gorge on the details and luxuriate in vicarious displeasure.

You’re in luck. Revel in Jay’s misfortune as he is subjected to dreadful meat cookery with animals that died in vain, gravies full of casual violence and service that redefines the word ‘incompetent’. He hopes you enjoy reading his reviews of these twenty miserable meals a damn sight more than he didn’t enjoy experiencing them.

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop

Pure, unfettered joy... The perfect book for anyone who loves their food.’
Stylist


The Ten (Food) Commandments

Britain's culinary Moses brings us the new foodie rules to live by, celebrating what and how we eat.

The Ten Commandments may have had a lot going for them, but they don't offer those of us located in the 21st Century much in the way of guidance when it comes to our relationship with our food. And Lord knows we need it.

Enter our new culinary Moses, the legendary restaurant critic Jay Rayner, with a new set of hand-tooled commandments for this food-obsessed age. He deals once and for all with questions like whether it is ever okay to covet thy neighbour's oxen (it is), eating with your hands (very important indeed) and if you should cut off the fat (no). Combining reportage and anecdotes with recipes worthy of adoration, Jay Rayner brings us the new foodie rules to live by.

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop


Day of Atonement

Ingredients: It is the early Sixties. Down the side of a dilapidated synagogue in North-west London, a great partnership is born. Apart, Mal Jones and Solly Princeton are two teenage no-hopers scrabbling about in the dirt. Together they are dynamite: a world-beating team who turn a company selling chicken-soup machines to the Jewish mothers of Edgware into an international hotel and leisure empire.

But success is never simple. Before long pressures draw them away from the comforts of their roots. They find themselves cutting corners, taking risks and breaking the law. Finally Mal has to confront his life, his friendship with Solly and where their very different ambitions have led them.

Thirty-five years later as sunset ushers in the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, Mal, his fortune gone, picks over the ruins of his past with his niece, Natasha. He tells her the story of the Sinai Corporation, of his best friend and business partner, Solly, and at last begins to ask himself: how far must you go before you lose faith in yourself.

Buy from Bookshop


My Dining Hell: Twenty ways to have a lousy night out

I have been a restaurant critic for over a decade, written reviews of well over 700 establishments, and if there is one thing I have learnt it is that people like reviews of bad restaurants. No, scratch that. They adore them, feast upon them like starving vultures who have spotted fly-blown carrion out in the bush.

They claim otherwise, of course. Readers like to present themselves as private arbiters of taste; as people interested in the good stuff. I'm sure they are. I'm sure they really do care whether the steak was served au point as requested or whether the soufflé had achieved a certain ineffable lightness. And yet, when I compare dinner to bodily fluids, the room to an S & M chamber in Neasden (only without the glamour or class), and the bill to an act of grand larceny, why, then the baying crowd is truly happy.

Don't believe me? Then why, presented with the chance to buy this ebook filled with accounts of twenty restaurants - their chefs, their owners, their poor benighted front of house staff - getting a complete stiffing courtesy of the sort of vitriolic bloody-curdling review which would make the victims call for their mummies, did you seize it with both hands?

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop


The Apologist

Marc Basset, restaurant critic for a national newspaper, has made vitriol his trademark. His vivid cruelty makes his many readers laugh – until, one day, a chef roasts himself to death in his bread oven, leaving behind Bassett’s scathing review of his restaurant stuck to the door. When Marc learns of the chef’s suicide, he experiences an entirely new sensation: remorse. And, by apologising to the wife and daughter of the deceased, he begins to experience levels of self-satisfaction that even he never thought possible.

As Marc begins to apologise for anything and everything he’s ever done, he discovers that saying sorry can be every bit as pleasurable as the Varlhona Manjari chocolate he devours nightly. And, after atoning to an ex-girlfriend with high-level political connections, he finds himself offered the role of Chief Apologist for the United Nations, which brings with it a private jet, a rent-free apartment, an enormous salary and a sizeable cut of any compensatory payments made between nations. All he has to do is say sorry for the world’s wrongs – and cook the dinners to prove it. He is adored, loved and admired; an entirely new sensation for the perennially loveless Bassett. But will all this attention go to his head?

The Apologist is a deliciously funny satire on the complexity and greed of international – and personal – politics, as well as a powerful paean to the diplomatic role of a well-made almond soufflé.

Buy from Bookshop

A very funny book about apologies – by someone who has a lot to apologise for.’ Anthony Bourdain

It made me laugh, it made me cringe. It is, I’m sorry to say, highly original.
Alistair McGowan

A very surprising, very funny book.
Arabella Weir

It is a brave writer who apologises for his novel in the preface, but Jay Rayner has apology taped… The timeliness of the novel is a terrific coup.’
The Independent


A Greedy Man in a Hungry World

Now with a new epilogue, the UK's most influential food and drink journalist shoots a few sacred cows of food culture.

Buying 'locally' does no good. Farmers' markets are merely a lifestyle choice. And 'organic' is little more than a marketing label, way past its sell by date. This may be a little hard to swallow for the ethically-aware food shopper but it doesn't make it any less true. And now the UK's most outspoken and entertaining food writer is ready to explain why.

Jay Rayner combines personal experience and hard-nosed reportage to explain why the doctrine of organic has been eclipsed by the need for sustainable intensification; and why the future lies in large-scale food production rather than the cottage industries that foodies often cheer for. From the cornfields of America to the killing lines of Yorkshire abattoirs via the sheep-covered hills of New Zealand, Rayner takes us on a journey that will change the way we shop, cook and eat forever. And give us a few belly laughs along the way.

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop


The Man who Ate the World

The UK’s most influential food and drink journalist shoots a few sacred cows of food culture.

Buying ‘locally’ does no good. Farmers’ markets are merely a lifestyle choice. And ‘organic’ is little more than a marketing label, way past its sell by date. This may be a little hard to swallow for the ethically-aware food shopper but it doesn’t make it any less true. And now the UK’s most outspoken and entertaining food writer is ready to explain why.

Jay Rayner combines personal experience and hard-nosed reportage to explain why the doctrine of organic has been eclipsed by the need for sustainable intensification; and why the future lies in large-scale food production rather than the cottage industries that foodies often cheer for. From the cornfields of Illinois to the killing lines of Yorkshire abattoirs, Rayner takes us on a journey that will change the way we shop, cook and eat forever. And give us a few belly laughs along the way.

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop


The Oyster House Siege 

It's General Election night, 1983. The great and the good have gathered in the Jermyn Street Oyster House restaurant in central London to celebrate a Tory victory. But when two masked gunmen burst through the door and take a group of diners hostage, none of them has any idea just how hellish their night has just become.As the hours tick by, the terrified hostages grow increasingly aware that they are surrounded by glinting blades and trapped with a psychopath who can't wait to start using them. They may not be able to stand the heat, but there's little chance they'll ever get out of the kitchen...

Buy from Bookshop


Star Dust Falling

In August 1947 in the highest of the High Andes, one of the earliest long haul passenger aircraft, a Lancaster called Star Dust, disappeared en route to Santiago, Chile. It left behind only questions: was it sabotage; was there a horde of gold on board; and what was the meaning of the radio operator's mysterious final message before the air waves fell silent? Only with the discovery of the wreckage by two Argentinian climbers in January 2000 could those questions finally begin to be answered. "Star Dust Falling" is the story of those on board that pioneering aircraft and of the ramshackle airline British South American Airways which sent them to their deaths. Run by an austere Australian war hero newly arrived from bomber command, BSAA's flying crew consisted entirely of ex-bomber pilots. The fleet of converted Lancaster Bombers operated on a shoestring, regularly flying without sufficient fuel or access to adequate weather forecasts. The result was that it became one of the most dangerous airlines in the western world. Yet it wasn't until a third of its planes had crashed and dozens of its passengers had died that the Government finally called a halt. In this account, Jay Rayner recreates the events surrounding the loss of Star Dust and her discovery 50 years later, piecing together the lives of the characters involved: the Chilean-Palestinian passenger with a diamond stitched into the lining of his suit; the King's Messenger with his bag full of diplomatic secrets; the crew of fearless pilots working in unbelievably strenuous conditions; the Argentinian climbers who risked their lives to find the wreck; and the Argentinian military men who declared war on each other in an attempt to claim the credit.

Buy from Bookshop


The Marble Kiss

In 1483 Princess Joanna dei Stossetti dies in childbirth and her husband enshrines her in a tomb. The tomb is restored 500 years later causing disagreement between a restorer and an art historian. Journalist Alex Fuller is called in to cover the story and meets Isabella, Joanna’s descendant.

Buy from Bookshop