Coren's food fight

The London Paper's restaurant critic, Feargus O'Sullivan, got more than he bargained for when he dropped in for lunch at Hampstead's Osteria Emilia recently. "Sometimes it's good to be a covert reviewer, I reflected to myself," O'Sullivan wrote in his review. "While the Times's restaurant critic, Giles Coren, seated in front of me with David Baddiel, was allowed to order off the restaurant's evening-only à la carte menu, unrecognisable me and the rest of the diners were encouraged to stick to the abbreviated list of lunch dishes." Can you see where this is going, dear reader? As devotees of our archive Monkey's Long Tail would know, Coren is not someone backwards in coming forward with a few choice words of criticism, such as when a dozy subeditor made a mistake in one of his book reviews, as this all-time Monkey classic from 2002 attests. Anyway, Coren didn't disappoint with this humdinger of a flamer email. As Coren told Monkey: "I always dash off these obscene letters half-thinking: 'Oh fuck, that'll probably end up in Monkey or something.'" Giles, that's why we love you.