How to Eat Out

Book excerpt: It has taken Giles Coren a lifetime to master the art of eating out. From a lonely childhood spent in restaurant car parks, peering in at a magical world of chickens in baskets and butter in little foil squares, to belching his way through fifty pointless manifestations of nitrogen-chilled excreta at 'the best restaurant in the world', to the sticky corner of Bangkok's Chinatown where he sat his own baby daughter down in front of her first jellied iguana foot and was genuinely surprised when she didn't like it, Coren has experienced pretty much everything a restaurant can throw at you, and thrown it right back. Or at least caught it, sniffed it, and bagged it up for later. Bad waiters, bum tables, little rip-offs, big cons, old fish, cheap meat, yesterday's soup and tomorrow's gastroenteritis... Coren tells you how to avoid the lot, and even come out of it with free champagne and a dish named after you by way of apology. It doesn't matter if it's fish and chips, takeaway pizza, a medieval banquet with Sue Perkins or a slap-up nosh at the Hotel de Posh, there is always a right way and wrong way to do it. How to Eat Out is a bit of both.