Andy Richardson: Trip to Hades to be tortured by vegetables in food hell

I blame it on my grandfather, a fabulous man with a brilliant moustache and manners from a different age. Bill ran butchers shops somewhere in the Black Country – or was it Birmingham – and I inherited his carnivore gene. And so trips to restaurants are usually easy to navigate. She Who Must Be Obeyed eats fish or vegetables, I scare the vegans.

And so my friend had a cunning plan when she asked me to go and interview a chef for a feature in a magazine.

“You’ll love it,” she said. So far so corpulent.

“It’s got a Michelin star.” Boom.

“And it’s in Vienna.” Boom Diddy Boom.

She left me to make arrangements and we put the date in our diary. She Who Must Be Obeyed would photograph, I would write – and after doing our work, we’d sit down for dinner in downtown Austria. Perfekt, as the locals say.

I’ve seldom been one for detail. Big picture is where I’m at. So if I’m hitting the road, I’ll make sure I know my final destination and where I’ll be staying, but don’t trouble myself with the finer points until the night before. So, typically, I’ll throw a few things in a bag, scour Google and work out a last minute plan, rather than prepare like a member of the military.

Our Austrian adventure followed a similar pattern. Date in the diary. Check. Passport. Check. Car park and flights. Check. On the way to the airport, I thought I’d better find out more about our final destination. And so, with a frisson of excitement, I read the itinerary. As my friend had outlined, we’d be travelling to a Michelin- starred restaurant in Vienna, visiting a farm, eating to our heart’s content. Bliss. I scanned the restaurant’s menu. There seemed to be a lot of vegetables. I read the chef’s biography. He was one of Europe’s greatest vegetarian cooks. Ha. No meat. No front hock, chops or belly; no shoulder, leg or rump cap.

In matters of meat, I am unashamedly unreconstructed. The only time I’ve ever baulked at meat was at a wedding in Ethiopia when the bride’s father had literally killed a fatted calf and hung it on a rack so that people could help themselves to a chunk, raw, by cutting it off with a sickle. Later that evening, a live goat was brought into the courtyard and I learned the true meaning of sacrifice. Poor goat.

In Vienna, there would be no fatted calf. There would be no fatted lamb, pork or goose, come to that. It would be six varieties of beetroot, four of carrot, the odd artichoke and a bundle of mushrooms, if I was lucky.

Eating trips are odd. Chefs presume that because you’re going to write about their food normal rules don’t apply. They somehow imagine you’ve bought a second stomach along for the ride and will be able to eat every dish on the menu. Normal rules of digestion are disregarded as plate upon plate are sent out.

There’s another secret to share. When you eat at really good restaurants and the chef knows you, he or she will frequently send out a signature dish. So, at a particularly good restaurant in Birmingham, you might be treated to a dish of curried monkfish; in London, there may be blonde asparagus; in Devon there may be an extra scallop course.

Back in Vienna, we were sitting down to eat. We’d worked our way through snacks made from plants, through vegan-friendly canapés and through vegetables that had been reworked in 20 different ways. There were 12 courses to consume – yes, 12, ridiculous, isn’t it – when the waiter signalled that the moment had arrived for the chef’s pièce de résistance, or, in my case, piece de resistant. I waited with baited breath – might he perhaps have bent the rules to send out a beautifully slow-cooked oxtail, a barbacoa beef or perhaps even a confit de canard?

No.

As the chef placed our extra-special-tell-your-mom-and-dad-about-it course before us, my worst fears were realised.

“We have broccoli,” he said, pointing to the two sprouts on the plates.

“They are served with a broccoli sauce.”

I almost got up and walked.

Saturday Kitchen has a segment called food heaven versus food hell. I had walked into Hades and was being spit-roasted by Satan. I had walked into Gehenna with my own matches and can of petrol.

I ploughed on gamely, learning how the hippo and bison, the wildebeest and horse must live. Man, I hope I’m not reincarnated as one of those. If I come back as a muntjac, I swear I will eat my own face.