In his review of Corrigan’s Mayfair in London, Matthew Norman devotes the first 285 words to a single hypothesis: The best professional cooks are, like Norman himself, portly:

Just as you can’t put too much faith in a bald barber or in a psychiatrist whose jacket does up from the back, so you cannot fully trust a professional cook with a Body Mass Index anywhere near whatever nonsense the powers that be classify as “normal”.

The premise is neither amusing nor original nor valid. A thick rim of fat might be a requirement for dart players, judging from last week’s World Darts Championship at Lakeside, but Heston Blumenthal, Joël Robuchon, Ferran Adrià, Alain Ducasse and Thomas Keller prove you don’t need a body like the Michelin man’s to gather his stars. [Read more...]