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Jay Rayner
Jay Rayner (born 14 September 1966) is an English journalist and food critic. After editing the Leeds Student newspaper while at university, he wrote for The Observer, The Independent on Sunday, and The Mail on Sunday before returning to The Observer in 1996.
Rayner became a restaurant critic in 1999 and developed a reputation for acerbity. Several of his reviews have been widely shared online, including a takedown of the Paris restaurant Le Cinq. Rayner has also been published in Esquire, Granta and Cosmopolitan, the last as a sex columnist. In 2025, he transferred from The Observer to the Financial Times.
Rayner has published books, including a book about the 1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident, three compendiums of his columns, several works of fiction, and several works about food, including a cookbook. Rayner has presented the BBC program The Kitchen Cabinet and the podcast Out to Lunch and has judged numerous cooking shows for broadcasters including MasterChef, where he was nicknamed "Acid Rayner". In 2012, he founded a jazz band, the Jay Rayner Quartet, which changed its name to the Jay Rayner Sextet in 2022.
Rayner was born in the London Borough of Brent on 14 September 1966 to actor Desmond Rayner and journalist Claire Rayner, and was raised in Harrow on the Hill, London. He and his brother and sister are of Jewish descent, though he is non-observant. Rayner attended the independent Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School and attracted headlines after being suspended in May 1983 for smoking cannabis. He was inspired to become a writer aged 14 by the Daily Mail miscellany column Dermot Purgavie's America and studied politics at the University of Leeds, where he was editor of the Leeds Student newspaper, having selected the university with the intention of holding the post. While there, he met Pat Gordon-Smith, whom he subsequently married.
After graduating in 1988, Rayner spent as a year editing a tabloid student newspaper before being hired as a researcher by The Observer, a Sunday magazine then owned by The Guardian newspaper. He spent a few months there as its diary columnist, once making the front page of The Observer's arts section with an interview with Sammy Davis Jr., before spending a few years working freelance and for other newspapers including the Independent on Sunday and the Night and Day supplement of The Mail on Sunday. Among his works during this period was an Esquire piece co-written with Gordon-Smith about their fertility troubles. He also spent time as a sex columnist for Cosmopolitan before returning to The Observer in 1996 as a generalist.
Rayner contributed a piece for Granta 65 about Shirley Porter in March 1999. That month, after deciding to develop a specialism, and about three seconds after being told by The Observer's editor that Kathryn Flett would no longer be its restaurant critic, Rayner offered himself for the job, and got it. His reviews were described by The New Yorker in 2014 "sometimes incendiary, often crass, always cheeky" and by the Radio Times in 2016 as "providing a dyspeptic counter-note to the custard sweetness of Nigel Slater’s cookery pages". In October 2014, Rayner's review of the Beast in London was widely shared online. He made international headlines for a scathing April 2017 review of the Paris restaurant Le Cinq, shortly after which he was described as "the world's most feared food critic". He stated in 2018 that around a fifth of his reviews were negative.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when many restaurants were forced to close, Rayner announced he would no longer publish reviews if he could not be generally positive about them. He resumed the following year after objecting to the cost of a Polo Lounge popup at the Dorchester Hotel. In a November 2024 article about the sale of The Observer to Tortoise Media, Sky News described him as "arguably The Observer's highest-profile writer". That month, Rayner announced his departure from The Observer for the Financial Times, citing The Observer's pending sale, the antisemitism of some Guardian staff, and The Observer's online opinion section "too often" being a "juvenile hellscape of salami-sliced identity politics". He transferred in March 2025.
In 1994, Rayner published his debut book The Marble Kiss, an art history-based romance thriller based in Florence. The book had been researched via a trip to Italy funded by a £5,000 Cecil King travel bursary he had won for being named Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards. A subsequent novel, 1998's Day of Atonement, was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Prize for Fiction and republished as an e-book in 2015 to coincide with Rosh Hashanah, and was followed in 2002 by Star Dust Falling, a book about the 1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident. He then published The Apologist in 2004, about a fat, sexually incompetent journalist who becomes chief apologist for the United Nations, followed by The Oyster House Siege in 2007, about two burglars holding up a restaurant in Jermyn Street the day before the 1983 United Kingdom general election.
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Jay Rayner
Jay Rayner (born 14 September 1966) is an English journalist and food critic. After editing the Leeds Student newspaper while at university, he wrote for The Observer, The Independent on Sunday, and The Mail on Sunday before returning to The Observer in 1996.
Rayner became a restaurant critic in 1999 and developed a reputation for acerbity. Several of his reviews have been widely shared online, including a takedown of the Paris restaurant Le Cinq. Rayner has also been published in Esquire, Granta and Cosmopolitan, the last as a sex columnist. In 2025, he transferred from The Observer to the Financial Times.
Rayner has published books, including a book about the 1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident, three compendiums of his columns, several works of fiction, and several works about food, including a cookbook. Rayner has presented the BBC program The Kitchen Cabinet and the podcast Out to Lunch and has judged numerous cooking shows for broadcasters including MasterChef, where he was nicknamed "Acid Rayner". In 2012, he founded a jazz band, the Jay Rayner Quartet, which changed its name to the Jay Rayner Sextet in 2022.
Rayner was born in the London Borough of Brent on 14 September 1966 to actor Desmond Rayner and journalist Claire Rayner, and was raised in Harrow on the Hill, London. He and his brother and sister are of Jewish descent, though he is non-observant. Rayner attended the independent Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School and attracted headlines after being suspended in May 1983 for smoking cannabis. He was inspired to become a writer aged 14 by the Daily Mail miscellany column Dermot Purgavie's America and studied politics at the University of Leeds, where he was editor of the Leeds Student newspaper, having selected the university with the intention of holding the post. While there, he met Pat Gordon-Smith, whom he subsequently married.
After graduating in 1988, Rayner spent as a year editing a tabloid student newspaper before being hired as a researcher by The Observer, a Sunday magazine then owned by The Guardian newspaper. He spent a few months there as its diary columnist, once making the front page of The Observer's arts section with an interview with Sammy Davis Jr., before spending a few years working freelance and for other newspapers including the Independent on Sunday and the Night and Day supplement of The Mail on Sunday. Among his works during this period was an Esquire piece co-written with Gordon-Smith about their fertility troubles. He also spent time as a sex columnist for Cosmopolitan before returning to The Observer in 1996 as a generalist.
Rayner contributed a piece for Granta 65 about Shirley Porter in March 1999. That month, after deciding to develop a specialism, and about three seconds after being told by The Observer's editor that Kathryn Flett would no longer be its restaurant critic, Rayner offered himself for the job, and got it. His reviews were described by The New Yorker in 2014 "sometimes incendiary, often crass, always cheeky" and by the Radio Times in 2016 as "providing a dyspeptic counter-note to the custard sweetness of Nigel Slater’s cookery pages". In October 2014, Rayner's review of the Beast in London was widely shared online. He made international headlines for a scathing April 2017 review of the Paris restaurant Le Cinq, shortly after which he was described as "the world's most feared food critic". He stated in 2018 that around a fifth of his reviews were negative.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when many restaurants were forced to close, Rayner announced he would no longer publish reviews if he could not be generally positive about them. He resumed the following year after objecting to the cost of a Polo Lounge popup at the Dorchester Hotel. In a November 2024 article about the sale of The Observer to Tortoise Media, Sky News described him as "arguably The Observer's highest-profile writer". That month, Rayner announced his departure from The Observer for the Financial Times, citing The Observer's pending sale, the antisemitism of some Guardian staff, and The Observer's online opinion section "too often" being a "juvenile hellscape of salami-sliced identity politics". He transferred in March 2025.
In 1994, Rayner published his debut book The Marble Kiss, an art history-based romance thriller based in Florence. The book had been researched via a trip to Italy funded by a £5,000 Cecil King travel bursary he had won for being named Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards. A subsequent novel, 1998's Day of Atonement, was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Prize for Fiction and republished as an e-book in 2015 to coincide with Rosh Hashanah, and was followed in 2002 by Star Dust Falling, a book about the 1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident. He then published The Apologist in 2004, about a fat, sexually incompetent journalist who becomes chief apologist for the United Nations, followed by The Oyster House Siege in 2007, about two burglars holding up a restaurant in Jermyn Street the day before the 1983 United Kingdom general election.
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