Tavern review: 'AI chose this week's place. And it's fantastic'

[Celerity]

‘Here was dish after dish of my favourite sort of thing: simple combinations sparely expressed; thoroughly British but with exotic grace notes’

https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/food-drink/article/giles-coren-tavern-restaurant-review-ndkk87wql

https://archive.ph/udFcy


Giles Coren; Tavern in east London Tom Jackson for The Times Magazine, Ricky Hart



It turns out that I can be replaced by artificial intelligence after all. I always thought I couldn’t, but I can. In fact, for the good of my professional future, I probably shouldn’t even tell you what just happened to me with AI. But screw it, when did I ever do the sensible thing? I was boiling water for coffee and thinking that I ought to go out and review somewhere, but I couldn’t think where. I’d let Camilla Long have the last two or three really juicy ones, there was nothing much on the various websites I usually use, the PRs have rather slackened off as the summer warms up, and so I picked up my phone and said idly into it, “Are there any new restaurants within 45 minutes of here by bicycle that I would like, with fantastic cooking but not too posh, that I haven’t been to before and which are open for lunch today?”


Merit mushrooms, roasted yeast and barley

I was mostly joking — when you work alone, you’ll often find yourself joshing with a robot for the want of any human company — and put down the phone without looking at the answer. I made my coffee, I went upstairs, I sat at my desk. And then I picked up my phone to see what I’d got. “Tavern in Shoreditch,” said Google Assistant, and nudged me to a webpage with a monochrome reproduction of an old painting, possibly 17th-century Flemish, that featured men and women and an old dog eating and drinking. The word “Tavern” was spelt out over it in white gothic script. It looked weirdly amazing, vibe-wise. Like almost “made up” amazing.

I also definitely hadn’t been there and it was certainly within 45 minutes of me. I looked around the room, suspecting human (or metahuman) intervention. Seeing no evidence of same, I swiped left and came to a menu: a single page with “Tavern” in black gothic letters at the top, offering 22 dishes that included: “Smoked cod’s roe and pigskins; the chunion puff; fried Isle of Skye shrimp & Mary Rose; lamb kofte, fermented chilli and wild garlic; baked Isle of Skye scallop and cobnut XO; pork and cuttlefish sausage and grape mustard; tandoori quail; saddleback pork loin, black apple and cucumber; some chips; a salad; elderflower ice cream and blackberries …”


Baked Isle of Skye scallop and cobnut XO

Oh, come off it. This was a hoax. Here was dish after dish of my favourite sort of thing: simple combinations sparely expressed; thoroughly British but with exotic grace notes; local produce, international expertise; even the occasional complete mystery (chunion?); not entirely unpretentious but, rather, just pretentious enough. Okay, so the robot knew this place had opened and knew I could get to it and knew I would like the menu and somehow, somehow, knew that I hadn’t been there. But it couldn’t be sure that I would like the food on the plate when I arrived. There was that element of doubt remaining at least.

snip


Smoked cod’s roe and pigskins: “Huge pigskin crackers that were still just warm, light as candyfloss”


Saddleback pork loin, black apple and cucumber


“Pork and cuttlefish sausage, thick and fat and smooth as an emperor’s dong”


Tandoori quail: “Properly meaty, almost gamey, in more or less a masala sauce with slashes of yoghurt”