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So PostScript is the name of a new book. It's the Good, the Bad, and the occasional ugly. Bits from a twenty five year career in Australian food writing and my next guest, John Lethlene, spent a quarter of a century as a restaurant critic. He has a reputation for not mincing words. He says what needs to be said, that got him in trouble at the end, and I'm sure we'll touch on that as well. Former journalist, food writer and restaurant reviewer Lethlene joins me, John, welcome, lovely to have you on.
It's a pleasure to be talking to your left Thank you.
You know, there's a lot to get to with you. I will get to the end, I guess towards the end, because there's so much more than just that. I love this book. This is a collection of good, bad and ugly. Let's go right back to the start. Are you a foodie who had kind of an acid tongue? Are you an acid tongue who just loved How did this perfect marriage of you know what, I'm going into these great restaurants and I'm going to tell him if it's great or I'm going to tell him if it's.
If we've got a prioritize one over the other. I was probably the tongue who decided I needed to apply it to something. I mean, I started my career as a journal incredibly young, and I was really lucky enough to go and work at a very good newspaper for the first five years of my sort of kind of post adolescent life. But I worked out it pretty quickly that I was never going to be a serious journal But I loved words and I loved writing. But my career took a lot of different meanderings. But eventually I worked in a food business for five years. I had my own my own food business for five years, and I really thought that was kind of where the future would take me. Not that I had any plans, career planners and two words I can't even spell. And then while I was running my little business, a friend who was a magazine editor came along and said, our restaurant critic is hanging up his desert boots. Would you like to have a crack at it. I think you've got what it takes and I'd love to give that a guy. I mean, I'm a bit of a restaurant tragic. I love food, and it just proved a really fantastic sort of condute to kind of expressing myself about restaurants. But restaurants are about so much more than food. They're about people, They're about society, they're about the zeitgeist, They're about the mood of a town. And I sort of tried to use restaurant reviews as a way of talking about initially Melbourne, but then later on when I was at the Australian restaurants around the country, I tried to use them as a sort of a you know, as a way into talking about a whole bunch of things other than food. But of course food is central to a restaurant review. So yeah, I guess I'm an acid tongue who became a food eat see.
I admire that it's about the experience. You do have some critical things to say about the Grange and about the Hill of Grace, and I remember where it became a story here in Adelaide, like you made the newspaper. I do remember thinking, wow, isn't it interesting there's an outcry because somebody doesn't like a restaurant here in this city. I found that fascinating as an outsider looking in my.
Role, particularly the fourteen years I did at the Australian was was quite quite literally unique. I was the only person in the country just flying around and just nipping into restaurants and sort of putting putting a thermometer under the tongue of the local restaurants. But from from an outsider's perspective, and time and time again, I found over the years that there were certain there were certain individuals and certain restaurants that had just been almost untouchables with local media, and they had assumed as sort of a kind of a mythical mythical status Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide. And it just so happened that I've been hearing about chong Lu and the Grange since I was old enough to pick up a pair of chopsticks. And you know, I hastened to add leads that I always went out, you know, excited, heart glass half full. You know, I've got Rubert Murdock's credit card in my hand. I'm going to have dinner. I'm going to have some good wine, and someone else is going to pay for it. And all I have to do is write a story at the end of it, you know what's not to like. I always went out positively. The Grange was the first of them, of the of the icons that I had to write a quite damning report about, and it did get a lot of attention. And that's okay, because you know, I don't have to take phone calls from Chong Lou. I don't have to take phone calls from Hilton management. I mean, not that I'm not accountable, but they're all my friends. If you lived in Adelaide and you worked within aw in the periphery of food media, you would not feel such a lack of constraint. And you know, that caused a lot of farts, because I found that the famous Grange at the Hilton was like the you know, it wasn't what it actually was. It was the lobby of a It was a lobby of a hotel, and the food was confused and lazy and resting on its laurels. And as I said in that review, at the time, I sat down for dinner with my wife actually and the chef was sitting at a table next to us, and I don't expect chefs to be in their kitchens twenty four to seven. But there was a big sign in the lobby that says who's cooking your dinner tonight? And it was pointing towards It was a pointed towards Chong and Simon Bryant, who was also at the Hilton in those days, Simon being a pretty well known Adelaide food guy. And it was pretty clear to me that Chong wasn't cooking with dinner because he was in jeans. And I laded the jacket at the next table having a whiskey, so you know, it was good. It was great grif grist for the mill, but it also it went to a bigger thing, which was that he was a restaurant resting on its laurels. And it was only a couple of years later that a huge hooha was made about the restaurant that was going in at the Adelaide Oval to be called Hill of Grace. I think to this day that the Henschke family are probably still admonishing themselves for that particular piece of branding because they put the name of one of us Australia's most famous red wines to a restaurant that was truly dreadful. We arrived and we again last half full. I mean, we'd heard a lot about it, and it was a truly, truly miserable restaurant. It didn't last longer, I might add, despite threats of legal action and articles in the Advertiser on a Monday and on the Sunday paper and Da Dad. But the food was terrible. The place had all the charm of a doctor's waiting room. The staff looked like they'd just wandered over from Tayfe on a part time gig. And we gave zero out of five, which caused a lot of fuss. But yeah, you know, it's quite funny in hindsight. Really, I don't take any relish out of destroying people's careers, and I'm sure I didn't destroy anybody's career there. But I don't think that restaurants should have a land of us.
We should stress the book is not all about bad reviews, is it, Because there would be places in Adelaide that you like, give me one or two, give me one or two that you when you go back in the recess of your mind, you just thought, you know what this is quality?
Oh look at the easy example for me is the Botanic Restaurant at the gardens, which I managed to spend a lot of mister Murdock's money on drinks that night because it was a very, very long meal, and I decided to do it properly. I went on my own and still managed to spend the kind of money that most people would spend as a couple. But it was just a sublime experience. Was the most extraordinary creativity. I didn't know much about the chef, although he had a reputation, that's for sure. His name was Justin James. But it was one of the most extraordinary meals I'd ever had, and I just sort of sat there in awe at the creativity of what was going about, the sensation of putting these things in my mouth and slowly enjoying them, and slowly he's sort of trying to get my head around where he was coming from in terms of produce and sort of themes. And you know, I'm not an intellectual, but there was an intellectual element to the meal. That sometimes these things work and sometimes they don't, but that is that was a truly sublime experience.
John Letteleen is my guest. The book is called PostScript. He is a former journalist, writer of food and restaurant reviewer. You didn't get into you didn't get in trouble, and this is the day and age of social media. You posted a throwaway line on one of your views and it went online again as an outsider looking and it feels like you talked about those people whose feathers maybe you ruffled. They sort of thought, right, this is a chance for us to pile on. Is that a fair assessment of that time when you look back now, do you look at it differently? Years on? You know what it's done to your career post that, Oh look, I.
Think that's a really accurate reading of what happened. Leth I wrote a review of a restaurant in Cubaco. The review was for Delicious dot Com. I used a line from memory that was something like the waiter's outfit threatens to reveal more than simply her inadequacy or inexperience, one or the other. The point being that she was wearing an outfit that was completely inappropriate to waiting tables. And I highlighted that in an Instagram post to sort of say, hey guys, my latest review is up online now. Delicious dot Com published it word for word. The all female editorial staff there took a look at it and said, yeah, it's up to John's usual, you know, acceptable standard. We haven't liable to anybody grammatical errors. It's readable. Bang they hit publish and then the people I talked about before, the legions of waiters and chefs ide offended over the years, thought okay, this is our trojan horse, this is our way of getting revenge, and this pylon just started. I was accused of being sexist, I was accused of being a perv. I'm neither of those things. But I would say that, wouldn't I that's self serving? And unfortunately the editorial people at some of the publications of US then contributing to decided, you know, to bend to the will of this vocal group and said, look, your services are no longer required. And that was the end of my career at full Stop.
So so book a side. Are you doing anything you're watching from afari? Are you able to just time heal or wounds? Will you get back to the industry or you think you've moved on from that?
No, I think to be to be perfectly frank with your leath. The whole experience has left me fairly disillusioned with the restaurant industry, and from a media perspective, look, I think the media has has changed so much. I think there's you know, there's lots of room for cheerleaders, and there's not much room for people who actually tell it like it is. That doesn't sort of seem to fit with the touchy philly vibe that's out there these days. I'm sixty five years old. I don't need to work. I probably won't work in the in the in the media. Again. I've put this book out as a kind of a way of getting some getting some water off a chest. And because a lot of people have said, you know, you wrote some crackers over the year, why don't you sort of package them up? And I thought, why not? So I just packaged them together and put them together as a book and wrote a bit of fresh stuff, put a bit of context, a bit of background, and it was sort of it was a bit of a way of saying thank you, but see you later.
So your reviews live in the mind, that's for sure of readers and restauranteurs. I'm sure, how do we get a hold of it, John, How can people read PostScript the good, the bad, the occasion ugly from a twenty five year career in Australian food writing.
Well, I look, I've done it as an e book, so it's published on Amazon, and I don't think that means you need a kindle because you can read. You can read kindle books on any device, even on a phone. But there are Kindle apps for laptops, there are kindlelaps for iPads, or you can just read it in a web browser. But if you go to Amazon and put in my name and PostScript, you'll find it and it's very reasonably priced and it will go towards keeping making an old man happy.
Well again, I love the idea. I like the idea of people not mincing their words. Now, occasionally that gets you in trouble, but that's who you are, you know, that's the part that you take. And again, selfishly for South Australians, it's good to read the good reviews and the bad reviews because these are restaurants that we know, these are people that we know, and it's always interesting to not get a love in take of everything. Not everything is great, so it's actually nice to read both sides of that. John Lethlene. The book is called PostScript, the good, the bad, the occasional ugly bits from a twenty five year career in Australian food writing. Will put all the links up on our socials too so you can get a link to it. John Lovely Dementia, thank you so much for your time and all the very best with the book.
A huge pleasure to eth I appreciate your interest. Thank you