LISTEN every reviewing day is a good day.
Being a food critic is one of the world's best jobs but even the most po-faced scribe would hardly consider it the most important.
Critics aren't saving lives or building engines or securing investment into cities, all we're trying to do is use our experience to say whether restaurants are any good. This gives readers a guide as to where they should spend their money.
39 Steps needs to lower prices and do the basics properly. It needs to heat things properly. It needs to ditch slabs of flatulent courgette.
Still reviews have value.
When a venue is exceptional or very good a review can help sustain or improve the place, ensuring jobs, and maybe spring-boarding successful careers.
Linen and lean-to
Negative reviews are another matter.
Reviewing can be, forgive the pun, absolutely critical, for those restaurants on the end of a proper kicking.
This is especially the case when a writer's being negative about independent restaurants that don't have the safety nets of chains and groups. The latter have economies of scale, marketing teams and numerous outlets to spread the burden should one of their number suffer condemnation. Indies are separated from the pack.
So when attacking independent restaurants you have to tread more carefully as a critic. Livelihoods are much more directly affected. But still you owe to the reader to tell the truth.
Which brings me to 39 Steps in Styal.
Oh dear. I really wish I hadn't gone.
In every negative food review there's farce as well as tragedy.
Farce began our meal.
"Who's the chef?" I asked the waiter as we looked at the menu.
"What do want to know for?" he said.
"Er....so who is it?" I eventually said, wondering if this was a game as he grinned at me.
"A very talented one," he said.
I think he may have stated a name at that point - but I'd moved on.
"Well, did the person in the kitchen create the dishes on the menu?"
There was a nod - I think.
It was a curious attitude from the waiter when you consider that 39 Steps in Styal is the most expensive place in the region I've visited in perhaps two years.
Of the six main courses not one is under £23. Sides are £3.75 a pop. The cheapest starter is almost £8 and the rest are over £9. Wines are astronomically priced.
This is odd. It's certainly odd reading the prices on the menu and noting the fading varnish job on the floorboards and the lean to extension with a plastic corrugated roof.
How much?
If you're pitching things this high in tired surroundings then a restaurant's food has to very very special and its service equally so.
Unfortunately for 39 Steps the best thing we ate was free.
This was an on-the-house amuse of a feta stuffed cherry tomato. Juicy and full of finesse. Tiny. It's the main picture at the top of this page.
The rest was a catalogue of errors apart from a couple of individual components such as the haggis with the lamb and the flesh of the pigeon with the starter but not the tepid peas, beans and ham that came with the latter.
Goodly munchkins haggis
Temperature was a major problem throughout.
Most of the food was underheated so flavours drained away and merged in muddy dullness.
In complex mains with descriptions such as Parma wrapped monkfish tail, fondant potatoes, tomato and sweet garlic butter (£23.75) this killing chill was compounded by a lack of care in constructing the dish.
Parma ham monkfish thing
Both with the tepid lamb (£24.75) and the monkfish, strange unannounced extras had been stuffed on the plate in the form of bricks of courgette cut lengthways. Were they to fill up the plate? Mange tout was almost as prolific as well.
Bring me courgettes
Farce had nipped in early again with my starter of goats cheese, pinenut croquette, pickled beets and honey. It was £9, lukewarm and lacking in the delicacy of handling these ingredients required. The goats cheese mix was Polyfilla claggy, totally wrong.
I told the waiter.
"What do you expect, it's goats cheese?" said the waiter.
My jaw dropped, and if it hadn't been a review visit I might have left there and then.
The implication was that the restaurant had only put this on the menu as a sop for veggies, so clearly it wasn't going to be any good, was it?Naughty. And nine pounds sterling.
Worse was the lemon pie dessert (£7) with souffle topping, that was freezing at the base and almost warm at the top. When I cut into it a watery goo ran out, and the whole thing began to smell of stink bombs. Completely horrible. And very brown. I would have even welcomed some courgettes to add colour and vibrancy.
The lemon stink bomb pie souffle - dull to look at disastrous to eat
Apparently the cheeseboard my dining partner had was good, but the waiter didn't bother telling us the names of the cheeses.
The fact that the £35.25 Pouilly Fuisse was also decent seemed immaterial given the poor food.
The whole occasion was disconcerting in the extreme.
I first reviewed 39 Steps several years ago when John Thompson was the chef. This talented man has recently been helping create excellent food at Cicchetti in the city centre.
I recall a particularly good take on the classic of scallops and black pudding.
I don't recall the breath-taking prices.
And I don't recall service which attempted to be funny and sharp but ended up slapdash and sarcastic.
As for the food on my latest visit, the ambition in the kitchen was in no way matched by the experience on the plate.
39 Steps needs to lower prices and do the basics properly. It needs to heat things properly. It needs to ditch slabs of flatulent courgette. There is no point in trying to be fancy before doing the basics.
There is room for a restaurant such as 39 Steps in this part of the region, but the whole place on the evidence of my visit needs a massive re-think.
It's horrible giving a proper kicking to indies such as this, but really if reportage is the name of the game then what can be done in these circumstances? With those prices and that execution I almost feel the customers here are being mocked.
You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter here @JonathSchofield
ALL SCORED CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL AND PAID FOR BY THE MAGAZINE.
39 Steps, 4 Altrincham Road, Styal, 01625 548 144
Rating: 7/20
Food: 3/10
Service: 2/5
Ambience: 2/5
