HAVING spent 15 years reviewing more than 700 restaurants, TV food critic Jay Rayner has plenty of tales to tell.

And in the New Year, the journalist-cum-broadcaster-cum-novelist will be taking South Cumbrians on a journey through 'My Dining Hell' in a jam-packed show at Kendal's Brewery Arts Centre.

"The show is about my worst ever restaurant experiences because it's the negative reviews people love," he said. "There is just something in the industry that we like reading about terrible experiences."

The 48-year-old, who has never done a tour before, got the idea of the show after writing his book with the same title a couple of years ago - which he hopes will be available on the day in paperback.

"It's going to be all singing and all dancing with a question and answer session at the end - it should be quite fun."

Up until a couple of years ago, Jay said he hadn't been to the Lake District but "all of a sudden" has been up and down the country to visit.

And in recent times the critic, who has enjoyed trips to Simon Rogan's L'Enclume - which he described in a review is as feeling "as close to an expression of landscape as any I have ever experienced" - reviewed a lesser known establishment on the county's culinary map and is still raving about it to this day.

In fact of late, Grasmere's Oak Bank Hotel itself has been aptly thrust into the limelight after its head chef Darren Comish became a Masterchef: The Professionals finalist.

"Darren Comish was cooking up a storm alone in the kitchen," he said. "I don't often ask to speak to chefs, but I was so impressed."

Not exactly a novice to reviewing eateries, Jay has been munching, digesting, and regurgitating his thoughts since 1999 for the Observer, joking his inspiration is simply that he is "just greedy!".

"As a writer I would read reviews. My parents used to take me to restaurants and I loved them - the theatre of it all."

Although the critic, who lives in Brixton with his academic editor wife and their two boys, has written about food for more than a decade, he wrote about "everything" before.

"The only thing I haven't written about is sport."

The son of famous agony aunt Claire Rayner, Jay was interested in journalism from the outset, but feared the inevitable and inescapable accusations of "nepotism".

"I went to Leeds University because they had the biggest student paper. I thought if I got elected then I wouldn't get accused, and I did get elected. But my mum's been dead for four years and I'm still accused of it now."

Despite doing the obligatory court and council meetings and going into the nationals "fairly young", Jay wanted a specialism of his own and carved out a niche in food.

"I realised food could stretch into everything - politics, who we are and why we are. I still like to think of myself as a reporter because I still always try to find the angle."

And it is in food that Jay has certainly made a name for himself.

"I review restaurants not food. It's about how much pleasure your money will buy you. All good restaurants are good in the same way. But there are a myriad of ways to screw things up.

"People tend to say I only review very expensive restaurants but that's not true.

"Everywhere I go I think "are they keen to run this?" and with some places you end up asking yourself why people have entered the industry when they don't really like people."

So what's the test? "I think of whether the price they give is reasonable, because if you spend the big money you want the best."

And with a catalogue of experiences to compare to, Jay has spent the big money and knows what he likes.

If "forced", he said the best place he has eaten when boiled down to it was Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck - where the tasting menu comes in at a not-so-modest £220 per person.

By night he may be sitting in restaurants, but by day the Observer's go-to-food-guy juggles a busy schedule including penning novels, food reporting for BBC's The One Show and hosting BBC Radio 4's tasty titbit-filled panel show Kitchen Cabinet.

With creativity at his fingertips, he also indulges his passion for music playing the piano in The Jay Rayner Quartet - complete "with a food and drink repertoire".

However, he insists, he considers himself a writer first and foremost.

"It all starts with the written word. My newspaper doesn't employ me for the way I eat."