Gut Reaction

Stephen Downes is well-known as an uncompromising food critic, whose frank restaurant reviews were amongst the first to say what no-one had dared before.Â

In this funny and revealing memoir of travel, food, music and love, Stephen rails against his starched Methodist upbringing to indulge in the romance of newspaper journalism.Â

From London’s famous Fleet Street, he falls in love with the adrenalin of chasing a story, the sound of typewriters and the smell of ink on newsprint. Moving to Europe in his early twenties, Stephen finds love of another kind when he meets his Parisian wife-to-be and discovers the authentic cuisine of the gastronomical hub that is France.Â