The Taste Test Restaurant (Channel 5)
Spitting Image, back in scabrous form on YouTube, lampoons Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in its latest episode, as her latex puppet shows us how to cook a microwave ready meal.
‘I learned this in France,’ she announces, and taking a fork, she stabs it savagely three times through the plastic cover, snarling, ‘Eat! Pray! Love!’
Chef Mike Reid prepared the supermarket TV dinners with more restraint on The Taste Test Restaurant, piercing the film precisely before loading the cartons into a preheated oven on a tray as if they were freshly basted grouse.
As the timer pinged, he whisked them out with a flourish, declared, ‘These are done!’ and then rallied the waiting staff: ‘Service please, let’s go, service!’
The hilarious conceit of this foodie show, which first aired last December, is to treat factory-made meals as if they were the height of fine dining.
Maitre d’ Tom Read Wilson, as squeakily camp as Charles Hawtrey with a lungful of helium, welcomes dinner guests to a pop-up restaurant and plies them with a succession of heat-up-and-serve dishes, three at a time.
As they eat, he slips anxiously between the tables, begging to hear compliments for what, he assures them, is ‘posh nosh’.
‘Today,’ he announced with a tear of happiness glistening, ‘my wondrous team are transforming the restaurant into a trattoria so that we can say ciao bella to Italian foods.’
‘The hilarious conceit of this foodie show, which first aired last December, is to treat factory-made meals as if they were the height of fine dining’, writes Christopher Stevens (Pictured: Maitre d’ Tom Read Wilson, left, and chef Mike Reid, right)
This transformation involved putting some gingham cloths on the tables. If I have one criticism, and no doubt I’m nit-picking, it is that the authentically Neapolitan atmosphere might have been enhanced still further by the addition of a fishing net slung across the ceiling with a few glass buoys in it.
The first course was a triple platter of arancini, or reheated risotto rolled into balls and fried in breadcrumbs — the best that Waitrose, M&S and Asda could supply.
Decked out in a Nehru tunic with a pearl necklace, like a 1960s housewife on her first visit to Rome, Tom was wrangling the Italian language into submission. He pictured the diners, ‘in sun-drenched Sicily, about to take a passeggiata, or an evening promenade’.
This was a Sicilian offer that some of them felt able to refuse. Two Italian brothers were horrified by the fare, especially the cheese ravioli (in tomato sauce with emmental cheese) from Tesco, priced at an enticing 80p a tin.
‘This one smells like cat food,’ opined one of the brothers. And the garlic bread was little better received. ‘I wouldn’t complain but I wouldn’t leave a tip,’ said one woman.
Down in the kitchen, or la cucina, chef Mike was examining the fare with a professional eye, showing us how traditional Mediterranean recipes were reworked for the ready meal market.
I have to admit I enjoyed every minute of this silly, self-mocking farrago. But I won’t feel like eating again for days.
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CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews The Taste Test Restaurant: Fine dining? No, but I enjoyed every course of this hilarious TV dinner
Dining and Cooking