A top Edinburgh restaurant has had its Michelin star deleted after judges noted that chefs working in the kitchen appeared to be well-balanced and not haunted by the effects of a family tragedy or struggling to come to terms with their personal demons.
‘Fenton’s’ in Edinburgh’s fashionable New Town were told by the Michelin guide that they had no option but to remove the star after staff were found to be ‘a good bunch who got on well together and enjoyed their work in a calm and harmonious atmosphere’.
‘The staff are quite happy at the moment’ says owner and Head Chef Fenton Barnes. ‘It’s a total disaster’.
‘Everyone knows that the best kitchens are a battleground of petty-minded hostility, self-loathing and competing paranoias - from the Head Chef struggling to come to terms with a family suicide and the prospect of bankruptcy down to the kitchen porter with a coke habit brought on by an unsympathetic and overbearing father. If we’re not all screaming at each other to ‘F-OFF!’ by half-past 7 every night then the whole business suffers’.
Clients have also noticed a decline in the restaurant’s standards.
‘I’ve been coming to ‘Fenton’s’ for 5 years now but recently it just hasn’t been the same’ says regular customer Henry Lennox.
‘If you’d told me a year ago that I’d get through a whole 12 course tasting menu without the sommelier having to run out in tears because their parents refused to accept them as non-binary I just wouldn’t have believed you’.
‘And the quality of the food suffers too. If my white peach with basil and honeysuckle sugar syrup dessert doesn’t include the tears of a passive-aggressive pastry chef struggling with the kitchen’s toxic hierarchy then it just doesn't taste the same’.
However, Fenton Barnes is looking to take positives from the setback.
‘To lose our Michelin star is a blow for sure’ says Barnes.
‘But maybe this utter catastrophe is exactly the type of calamity we all need to plunge us back into the depths of despair where we belong. Here’s hoping’.
Image: guillermomuro00 - Pixabay