There was a spat last night on Twitter. Nothing new in that - spats on twitter are as ubiquitous as bones in herring. This one, however, stuck in my craw like one of those errant bones. It concerns a young man called James Isherwood. From the fuss he's caused, you might think James is the chief restaurant critic of the New York Times, chairman of the Guild of Food Writers and has written four award winning cookbooks. His opinion carries a LOT of weight.

Except he's not. And it doesn't.

James is a very average writer of a very average blog. He enjoys interacting with the "big beasts" of the chef world, always, I imagine, on the lookout for crumbs from their mighty tables. His blog is rather sweetly called "Dining with James" and if you read all of it (there are only 12 posts), you will find the meanderings of an amateur food writer, blogging about his dinner. There isn't much flair, élan or technical knowledge on show but neither is there in most of the chefs in this country.



James has a hundred and something followers on Twitter and until last night, I would guess his blog attracted stats in the single figures. He is at worst a wannabe: naive, ultimately harmless. There is surely no one in the world that would cancel a restaurant booking on the advice of James.

James had dinner at Hibiscus, stomping ground of the great Claude Bosi - holder of two Michelin stars, technical genius and at the forefront of British and indeed global cuisine. A bear of a man with glowing reviews, the respect of his peers and at the top of his game.

Unfortunately Bosi has now shown himself to be an insecure mess of a man and a bully. Wee James had the temerity to "award" Hibiscus three stars out of five on Tripadvisor and say that he didn't like his starter. Monsieur Bosi took exception to this and offered the following advice:

Bosi seems to think he asked James if he had enjoyed his meal while he was there, to which James apparently responded, yes, he had. Which explains this outburst:

So that's nice.

Hands up if you have had a duff meal and then mumbled through gritted teeth "yes it was lovely thank you" and then paid a full tip? Everyone? Thought so. Why on earth do chefs think that I, as a paying customer want my expensive evening out to be sullied with a confrontation with an overbearing chef? It's utter arrogance.

The interesting thing here is that Bosi assumed that a paying guest wanted the respect of the chef rather than a nice dinner. And that says it all.

As is so often the way with twitter foodie cliques, this was widely picked up on by the gang of cheffy wannabe sycophants, and then all the big guns joined in. Tom Kerridge, a chef who I have never heard anyone say a bad word about, a bit of a hero of mine and a real personality chipped in uninvited:

The especially sad and poignant thing about this is that in July, James wrote a gushing review of Tom's 2 star gaff, The Hand and Flowers: "You leave the hand and flowers full, content and with a smile on your face. Congratulations go to Tom Kerridge who got everything spot on," he wrote. Kerridge is quite obviously his hero and it must have been crushingly dispiriting to be so publicly slapped down.

Then Sat Bains had to add to the discourse:

And on and on it went.

Until James had had enough and deleted his account and got the hell off twitter. Well done chefs. Nice work. A victory for common sense. How dare some nobody pleb have the temerity to criticise YOU. Bullying is not for this industry, nor any. I am shaking with anger writing this. If you were one of the group of people who laid into James Isherwood, from the safety of your laptop last night or this morning you should put your hand up right now and say sorry. Except you can't. Because he's gone.

All of you made me ashamed to be a chef last night, you made be ashamed to be on twitter and you have done nothing but bad for our industry. Yes we know a restaurant lives or dies by its reviews, yes we know that Trip Advisor is unedited and sometimes destructive. But calling a paying customer a "cunt" on a public forum for not liking his starter? That's going to kill you before any pee-wee blogger.

Here's the truth: if you cook nice food you'll do well, if you don't you'll close. If you demand the "respect" of your customers you are a self-important idiot who has positioned the art of cooking up there with fighting in the trenches or treating the sick. It's not. It's cooking. I do it, you do it, and my 90-year-old nan does it. It's just cooking.

If you want to bully someone, try me, try someone who can take it, who has a forum to fight you back. I dare you. I won't let you do this shitty thing in my name #chefsunite? My hairy, chef-whited arse they do.