AA Gill on Brawn, a Shoreditch restaurant

'Brawn is going to be full of men with scarves and shoulder bags and bicycles without gears. And women who like men with gearless bikes, scarves and manbags. It will welcome people who expect food to be convivial and unencumbered with manners or cutlery or fuss. Socially and culturally correct[...]The place was packed with happy customers, engrossed in each others' brilliances and availability.It is hard to fault the essence of an honest commitment to good things in a good room [...] [but] it comes with a gnawing English parsimony, a Fabian righteousness that believes it's the right thing not to be too interested in your stomach.

That is fine and dandy, and it suits the pockets and the needs of these customers. I can't fault it as a mission, but my smile is beginning to wear thin; I seem to be eating like this too often. I'm missing some sense of occasion, some gastronomic obsession, an epicurean generosity. I want something rare and underage that died screaming on my plate. I want it made by a self- indulgent fat man with the morality of a Somali cabin boy and I want it served with lashings of tip-hungry flirtation. I'm fed up to hear with cool; I've overdosed on irony. And I want a comfortable chair.