AA Gill is away

Food for thought

AA Gill's anthology of travel essays will leave you hungry for more. By Fortunato Mazzone.

A Gill is a genius, tyrant, monster, chef destroyer, wit and dandy, depending to who you listen to. Appearing most regularly in UK newspaper The Sunday Times, he is undoubtedly the most famous food critic in the world today.

His savage, dry wit has been the ruin of many a puffed-up restaurateur or shoemaker chef. His column is so important that when he is away on his travels, all that appears is the wording "AA Gill is away".

AA Gill is Away (Simon & Schuster, 2005) is also the title of a compilation of articles written by Gill relating to his travels and interviews. It is not a food book, although food features as a topic. It is social commentary with the cynical eye of a seasoned food critic. I found this book to be the funniest I have read in the last five years.

This is not slapstick, slip-on-abanana- peel funny, but rather that rarely found writing that is darkly funny, dry as gin, with an unexpected twist often in the mix. The writing is descriptive and evocative, conjuring up beautiful mindscapes and sometimes bizarre scenarios.

Gill's descriptions of travels to the Sudan and Ethiopia capture the helplessness of the situation and the suffering of the population in language that alternately makes you want to laugh and cry in the same sentence. His description of the Kalahari and its dryness will make you reach for a glass of water: "The great thing about the Kalahari is that it hates you ... it is not generic, you understand, it is personal".

This same glass of water you will then spill on yourself as you gurgle in uncontrolled mirth at his description of the local animals, pests and characters, not necessarily in that order.

A description of the Timbavati in Tanzania unfolds on the page like the great technicolor opening scene of a 1950s movie epic. His fascination with the East bursts from the page in his description of a strange alien Tokyo in "Mad in Japan".

I can never look at Japanese food or customs in the same way again. A very sad account of the disintegration of the former Soviet far eastern reaches of Russia exudes the torpor and sterility of the region and leaves the reader grateful for the benefits of a Western lifestyle and democracy. Special vitriol and the driest humour are of course reserved, as in any true English wit, for the English themselves.

No one is immune and all the English are fair game. "To the manure born", a description of the Royal agricultural show and the "Return of the native" on travels to Scotland will leave you gasping for breath. "Nobody knows what the original people of Scotland were - cold is probably the best informed guess, and wet".

You will be shocked by the directness of his observation and the truisms in his humour, and good humour is always based on the dictum that the truth is stranger than fiction. In "The Wilmslow Boys", Gill takes on the British class system.

Just like he strips the emperor's new clothes away from the British restaurant scene, he lays bare the inanities of the class system and leaves you with a greater understanding of the English psyche.

Behind the wit undoubtedly lies one of the great social commentators of our age. You owe it to yourself to go and buy this book immediately. Just don't be surprised if you are one of the characters on the pages.

Mazzone is co-owner of the award-winning Ritrovo restaurant and über-trendy BICCCS in Pretoria. He is involved in making his own olive oil and wine.