Incest and Morris Dancing By Jonathan Meades

Truly a legend in his own lunchtime

Purveyors of the bland, the unauthentic and the mediocre will have been sleeping easier since last December, when Britain's most vitriolic, knowledgeable and literate restaurant critic handed in his napkin after a 15-year stint at The Times.

How on earth did Jonathan Meades keep it up? One reason is, as this compendium of over 200 reviews reminds us, he did not restrict himself to gastronomy alone. The culinary content of his critique of Planet Hollywood is limited to five words: "The food, incidentally, is crap."

A further reason for Meades's staying power is his near-limitless reservoir of bile. The twin passions propelling this book are a profound appreciation of top-notch cuisine, preferably French in origin and visceral in content, and a Swiftian disdain for the tastes of the mass of the populace. Both aspects are expressed with impressive fluency and passion. The result is that extreme rarity, a book of collected journalism that merits its hard covers.

Every paragraph contains at least one memorable expression or arcane nugget. There is also a generous seasoning of jokes, often in stunning bad taste. None is more shocking than his reflection when Marco Pierre White gave him a bottle of '66 Pétrus in apology for a slight faux pas concerning Meades's dead mother: "If a mother gets you a '66 Pétrus, what do a cousin, an uncle, an aunt get you?"

Piquant as a well-seasoned pig's spleen, the book succeeds in its aim "to be read rather than consulted". In some respects, I wish it was more of a reference work. Shuffled vaguely into themes, his critiques are undated. Numerous establishments have gone out of business since Meades tucked in there. The 0-10 grading he applied so enjoyably in The Times has been excluded. Irritatingly, only one of the meals in this banquet is priced (£180 for two at the Quat' Saisons). At the Ritz, where Meades humbly grazed on foie gras and lobster in saffron risotto, we're merely told that "it is absurd to expect bargains at this sort of establishment". Well, who'd have guessed?

This is not to underestimate the book's usefulness. Meades is good about what to head for – Yang Sing, in Manchester, is not only "the finest Chinese" but "one of the finest restaurants in Britain, full stop" – and what to avoid. In London's fashionable Hakkasan, "dish after dish was merely greasy". Probably the best meal I've ever had in Paris stemmed from his recommendation to visit Chez Michel, three minutes from the Gare du Nord. I now want to try the Arkansas Café, in London's Spitalfields Market, whose chef-patron caters for the United States embassy's Independence Day party.

At times, we may quibble. In Ghent, Meades oddly chose to dine at the stodgy St Jorishof, ignoring a host of more interesting restaurants, such as the irresistibly named Virus. While praising Clerkenwell's Quality Chop House, he fails to remark that it has the most uncomfortable seating in London. He is unaccountable generous to that dire eating experience known as the Mongolian Barbecue. But Meades is usually right and always readable.