LIFE
ing, as he ripped up basil with his bare
hands and told men, yeah, you can
cook, that he was my mate. (That is
the evil of television. Fake intimacy.)
The dish may have been called Jamie’s
Plank, but I do not remember. I hope
it was. It should have been, even if the
plank was me.
Barbecoa 2, then: it is neurotically
vast, on two floors. London restaurants
are big these days: what are they trying
to say? Do they even know? Are they
preparing to solve the housing crisis?
Or is it a competition between chefs
who have yet to experience Freudian
psychoanalysis, and so think: ‘Who can
build the biggest and stupidest brasse-
rie-style abyss in which credulous din-
ers can waste their money?’
It is next to Bafta, and opposite
Pret a Manger. There is a menu in the
street on a tiny plinth, as if we are out-
side a bad Venetian restaurant. Inside,
the design is a queasy, unconvincing
Art Deco, which makes Barbecoa
look like every other giant restau-
rant that has opened in London in theB
arbecoa is Jamie Oliver’s new
restaurant on Piccadilly, and no
matter how many times I mut-
ter the name, I do not know what it
means, if it means anything; it may be
a posh riff on barbecue, which does
not need gentrifying, because barbe-
cue is cuisine’s mass murder. The only
other mention I can find is the origi-
nal Barbecoa in St Paul’s. This is Bar-
becoa 2, then: the sequel.
I used to like Jamie Oliver, or the
idea of him. I liked his willingness to
be a spokes-chef; to damn parents who
feed their children Turkey Twizzlers
and roof insulation; I liked that he
is fat. Then I ate at Jamie’s Italian in
Soho and met a plank resting on two
tins of tomato paste bearing greasy
salami and cold cheese, and steak frites
that thought they were Italian, and I
stopped liking him.
I began to think him cynical and
money-grubbing. There is a peculiar
depravity to the mid-market family
restaurant in central London that
offers bad value through a good name,
and I cannot forgive Jamie for pre-
tending he was different; for pretend-
past two years. It overlooks the church
of St James’s: a pretty view of street-
food stalls and street homeless, utterly
wasted. It is, on a weekday lunchtime,
almost empty: there are five tables of
men and a baby. It is Vladimir Nabok-
ov’s fish tank.
And I think, even before the food
arrives, this restaurant is generic, and it
is a mistake. You may not like a brand
— and after the plank, I do not — but
it must be coherent. Nobody goes to
Jamie Oliver for fine dining — to eat
the love child of Jamie Oliver and
Alain Ducasse — but this is what he
attempts here, or half-attempts, as if he
does not trust himself, and he is right.
The brand falters, and that is what we
eat on a banquette by a window: a fail-
ing brand.
So, chicken wings: they are buried
in an evil orange batter, they do not
taste fresh, and they stay on my tongue
all day, which is unpleasant. Lamb
chops — for £26 — are chewy and
greasy and plentiful. A sirloin — for
£32 — is adequate, which is not good
enough in a city full of dedicated steak
restaurants; you would do better in
Hawksmoor, the barn across the road,
or at Beast.
It is a shame that a steak restau-
rant excels in vegetables, but Barbecoa
does: the dauphinoise potatoes and
creamed spinach are the best thing
we eat, aside from the bread. Inevita-
bly, it is sourdough. Sourdough has con-
quered London, as so many have before
it. It comes with a weird chicken butter
which I do not want to eat, and I no
longer know what Jamie Oliver is for.Barbecoa, 194 Piccadilly, St James’s,
London W1J 9EX, tel: 020 3005 9666Nobody goes
to Jamie Oliver
for fine dining,
to eat the love
child of him
and Alain
Ducasse‘It has become something of a
King Charles’ head, or should
that be a King Charles’s head?’
said my husband, laughing, as
though he had made a joke. By ‘it’
he meant the apostrophe, which
forces its way into any discussion
of grammar, just as the head
of the King and Martyr forced
itself into the memorandum that
Mr Dick, the amiable lunatic, was
attempting to write to the Lord
Chancellor in David Copperfield
(1850).
Looking through the book,
I found the exact phrase once,
when Mr Dick mentions to David
that ‘the mistake was made of
putting some of the trouble outof King Charles’s head into my
head’. So that is the original
form, even though the Oxford
English Dictionary quotes a
20th-century example of ‘King
Charles’ head’.
I think the apostrophe (one of
the simplest elements in grammar
to deploy) exerts such mesmeric
fascination because, after plural
nouns ending in —s, it merely
signifies a possessive and is not
reflected in speech. The history is
complicated, but in Old English(before the Conquest) —es was
a singular genitive termination.
This we still find in Chaucer,
who writes of a cattes skin and
a hogges turd, with each animal
becoming two syllables in the
possessive case.
After these came to be
pronounced cats and hogs, an
apostrophe was used to indicate
the lost vowel. In the plural, the
genitive never used to end in
–s. Only after grammatical case
endings were lost, and –s became
the termination for plurals in
any grammatical case, was the
bare apostrophe added after
the –s.
But in St Thomas’s Hospital,Thomas’s, as a singular noun, is
pronounced with one syllable
more than Thomas (like glass’s
or fish’s, or like the Court of
St James’s). There can be no doubt
of the spelling.
As if in some school exercise,
a strange-looking use of the
apostrophe emerged last
week, when the Queen gave
the Royal Lancers a new title:
‘Queen Elizabeths’ Own’. Here
Elizabeths is (the rather rare)
plural, standing for the Queen
and her late mother. So the
apostrophe tacked on is correct.
The regiment will no doubt
willingly defend it.
— Dot WordsworthMIND YOUR LANGUAGE
King Charles’s head‘No thanks — Mum brought us up on
quinoa, chia seeds and kaleFood
Jamie’s latest plank
Tanya Gold