Product Description

For 15 years Michael Winner has been reviewing restaurants in The Sunday Times. His column remains the most read and most controversial and is a shining star of original comments. For his new book, Winner's Dinners, Michael Winner has drawn on the reviews he has written for The Sunday Times, updated many of them and included other hotels and restaurants which he has never written about in the paper. Some 400 restaurants and hotels are listed in the United Kingdom and abroad. Written in his own inimitable style and presenting facts on food, service and ambience, always in the outrageously subjective manner that we've come to know and love, Winner's Dinners is not only witty, controversial and bitingly truthful, it will also give any reader the confidence to visit a previously untried restaurant and know that they will enjoy a good meal. 'Michael Winner is the scourge of sloppy waiters, the man who could explode at the drop of a frozen eclair. The Winner guides are one of the finest pieces of comic writing.' Victoria Mather Film Director, author, critic and gourmet, Michael Winner is famous for the many films he has directed featuring major Hollywood stars, but also for his acerbic and outspoken Winner's Dinners column in The Sunday Times, and for his witty esure TV commercials. His books include his highly-acclaimed autobiography, Winner Takes All and Fat Pig Diet (JR Books).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17010 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

I'd never realised how much fun Michael Winner could be
There was a time when Michael Winner was one of those 'men you love to hate' and to many he probably still is, but perhaps it's time for a re-evaluation. Like Chris Evans (though unlike Noel Edmonds), he seems to have grown on me over the years - perhaps because more recent media figures are so much worse (Piers Morgan who, to my horror, sat behind me at the Ivy recently, springs to mind). There was something rather endearing about those insurance adverts...though I struggle to put my finger on exactly what it was.

Anyway, here he is doing what he does best. These are not so much reviews as diary entries: where he went, who with, what he liked, what he didn't...there's a slightly surreal stream-of-consciousness feel to it all which, after a while, is rather charming. He seems to like the restaurants that I like and dislike the ones I dislike for approximately the same reasons and it all makes for a very jolly read. He can't draw but that doesn't stop him, which makes it even jollier - and I really liked the cover.

The lack of an index is annoying. The phone numbers of all the restaurants are provided and they appear in alphabetical order but unfortunately by city, county, country and so on so it all gets rather confusing. A simple index indicating page number would have helped tremendously. For this reason I've knocked off one star.

Self-promoting and self-depricating in equal measure, Winner an enigmatic eccentric of the first order. I think it might be pushing it to give him 'national treasure' status but I'd venture he's not as far off that as some might think.