Of course, there is nothing wrong with enjoying language, and its rhythms and moods. And some menus are a little like surrealist art: windows into the mind of the chef's weirdness. But stream-of-consciousness poetry is a poor guide to lunch. The problem is confusing the language of feelings with the feelings themselves. The diner believes he is savouring ''shallot-tickled bull pizzle in a pool of olio and aqua'', but he is actually eating mediocre offal, and salivating over sentences.

The point is not to give up on tasting and describing food. The point is to be more clear about what we're sensing and what we're inventing. We never perceive the world raw, but we certainly can perceive it more sensitively, and recognise our own responses to it. This sometimes requires we turf the menu altogether, and give our own words: "The pizzle was like soft, tasteless gristle. It was in no hurry to reach my stomach. I felt very sorry for the bull, because this meat meant much more to him than to me."

This more mindful approach helps pitchfork out the bulldust. We cannot swim in the syrup of irrelevant, imprecise jargon - we have to be specific about the food's characteristics, and how they relate to our experience. It is, in other words, not just a matter of taste. While not a science, the language of food is partly concerned with demonstrable stuff ''out there'' in the world. Why else talk about it?

For this reason, food is closer to art than Poole might like. Not simply because they can both be faddish or overpriced. Not simply because both can be tiny drops of colour on oversized white backgrounds. It is because food and art require a combination of sensation, receptivity and awareness of each. Both have a strong ''aesthetic'' dimension, from the Greek aesthesis, meaning sense perception. And both require we distinguish objects from how we feel about them.

There is also the problem, common to art and food, that pleasure becomes a secular religion. Chefs can become priests in floury vestments, channelling supernatural truths. "The cook is in tune with the terroir,'' writes Poole, ''an interpreter of Gaia for our lip-smacking pleasure and spiritual improvement." They have their lavishly illustrated cookery bibles, anointed with truffle oil. ("A sure wankerdom sign," says food blogger Ed Charles.)