Learning to be a food writer

 Then added, “God I hate the way that man writes!”
I disagreed and said I liked the way he wrote. Then I read what he’d written about me, and a lot more besides, and decided that when he gets it right he’s good but when he’s spoiling for a fight he’s awful.
Writing in NewsDay (September 17) he showed an interest in my nom de plume and gender that smacked of the WASP 1950s Southern Rhodesia in which I grew up, when being called Miller or Gulliver was more acceptable than the “vaguely Portuguese moniker” he affords my predecessor on this column.
She wrote under a nom de plume because she didn’t want to receive special treatment in the restaurants she intended to write about. I followed her example. But surely, a nom de plume is a personal choice and should be respected, not treated as a challenge?
I was offered this column the day before I left for a week on the beach in Mozambique. In-between packing I wrote about Vanilla Moon where I’d been for lunch that day and hurriedly decided to call myself Jeke because it’s what I’ve been called all my life by Shona speakers. Except as a child when I was called Miss Jeke by my parents’ employees, but mercifully, some of us have moved on from there. I wrote about Rio Savane when I returned then left a few days later for the UK. I only met my editor after that and we discussed, among other things changing the name of the column and writing under my own name.
Meanwhile, Sleuth Miller had established that I’m definitely female and that I travel almost as much as he does. “As much as Gulliver!” How in the hell did this man, who I’d never met, know how much I travelled, I wondered? But then he has me time travelling through a Lilliputian conspiracy theory involving the time frame between Adrienne’s new menu, the position of potholes and me eating oysters in Colchester where I haven’t been since I tried marketing my tourist business there, about 15 years ago.
The following day I was invited to a promotion at La Fontaine in Meikles. It was a last minute invitation, but as it was my first as a food writer and as I enjoy writing this column, I accepted. Mr Miller, who has been doing this for almost 50 years, would also be there, and he “has seen, done, heard, tried and read almost everything”. I haven’t; for the first part of the last 50 years, I was at school and I didn’t look forward to meeting a man who trashes other newspapers and their columnists.
As the event the invitation was intended to publicise is now over, I’ll only thank Meikles and visiting chef, Malika van Reenen, for a lovely meal — the bisque was memorable and the fish cooked to perfection.
Writing restaurant reviews isn’t just about the food it’s also about the way you’re treated. Suffice to say it meant more to me when we, four ordinary diners, were given one of the nicest tables in La Fontaine when we drifted in there a few weeks ago.
And it’s for this reason that I will occasionally ask a friend to visit a restaurant, the one where the proprietor refers to me as “Bryony’s mummy” springs to mind.
– For comments e-mail:   g.jeke@yahoo.com