An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
There is a lot to like about Diane Purkiss’s English Food. It’s a hefty thing, packed full of titbits to trot out down the pub, but also a serious consideration of how English food has changed over time, and of the perils of assuming there has ever been a golden age, or even a very
28 min listen
Luke Farrell is a restauranteur and founder of two of London’s fieriest new openings, Plaza Khao Gaeng and Speedboat Bar. He has spent the last few years dividing his time between Thailand and his nursery in Dorset, where he grows a ‘living library’ of south-east Asian herbs and spices. On the podcast they discuss memories of Chinese cuisine,
Sirloin, rump, tomahawk, fillet, rib-eye. However it comes, is there any food that gets salivated over more than steak? Restaurant reviewers compete to outdo one another with their florid descriptions of the sensual delights of tucking into a particularly prime example. But then steak comes loaded with far more than a dollop of garlic butter
I love pasta bake more than is reasonable: I would struggle to name a dish that brings the same level of comfort even from first thought. From the moment I consider making one, I am already reassured: confident in the knowledge that it is a dish which will deliver everything that is required for culinary
The Menu is a horror film about fine dining that revolves around a psychotic head chef (Ralph Fiennes) who runs a destination restaurant on an American island. The island is uninhabited apart from the chef and his staff, who pluck it for the most refined marine treats to serve the obnoxious clientele on a nightly
This week we get to Epiphany, the Twelfth Day of Christmas, when the wise men finally make it to baby Jesus in Bethlehem. Properly, the feast starts the night before, so Twelfth Night is the evening of the 5th, which in some parts of Europe is the climax of the Christmas season. And, as with
Duck à l’orange is so deliciously retro, it’s almost a cliché of kitsch. It seems hard to believe that there was a time when it was genuinely regarded as elegant, or subtle-flavoured, let alone exciting; that it wasn’t always a byword for naff. But as its name suggests, duck à l’orange had chic origins. And
Alex Dilling at the Hotel Café Royal is a minute restaurant above Regent Street, which has the type of British imperial architecture that looks most like a cake: that is, the most preening, deceptive and pale. For someone who did almost no exercise, the Prince Regent built quite a lot of roads and there my
Allow me to set the scene for you. It is the coldest month of the year and also the darkest. The sun sets not long after lunch, ruling out any after-work revelry more exciting than testing your antifreeze. It’s too chilly to go for a walk; even a trip to the gym looms like an
So 2022 bowed out with one last surprise. Who can honestly say they had ‘crowds queueing outside Aldi at 5 a.m. for a viral energy drink’ on their bingo card? The must-have product in question is Prime, a caffeine-free energy drink created by YouTube influencers Logan Paul and KSI. Since going on sale in the
22 min listen
Amber Guinness is a cook, author, journalist and co-founder of The Arniano Painting School. Her first book, A House Party in Tuscany, is out now. On the podcast she discusses growing up in Tuscany, how to host a successful Tuscan dinner party and the best places to eat in Florence.
It’s the new year, and that means time for resolutions. Many of us will pursue food-and-drink-related goals: eating healthier, eating out less, or trying a ‘Dry January’ – giving up alcohol for the month. Non-drinkers have more interesting options these days than coffee or Diet Coke. Commercially bottled kombuchas are a plausible substitute for something
Back in 2000, not one Indian chef in the UK held a Michelin star. For many people, dinner at a curry house meant a formica table, plastic cutlery and warm salad garnishes on Brick Lane. Two decades later, all that has changed. There are seven Michelin-starred Indian restaurants across London and haute cuisine curry houses
I tend to hunker down on New Year’s Eve, eschewing parties for my own home. Even when I was young, the prospect of sleeping on someone else’s floor or braving the night bus home in the early hours of the morning didn’t really appeal. But sometimes I worry that that can lead to the night
Last time I visited Toronto, Canada, I stayed in Greektown, home to one of the largest Greek communities in North America. Several scenes from My Big Fat Greek Wedding were filmed here, and street signs are in Greek as well as English. On the day I arrived, jetlagged and disorientated, I happened upon a restaurant that was
Being in possession of a well-kept secret is every wine-buyer’s goal, not least because uncorking an unusual find impresses even the snootiest of guests. English wine-makers have long been trying to break up any residual secrecy about the worthiness of their wines. Not quite new world, not quite old world, English wine was always going
I love game, me. Not the great game, of course, which is football. But game, real game, the sort that was running about in hedgerows and copses, and in fields of spent brassicas and wintry stubbles, until you shot it. At this time of year there’s nothing better, to my mind, than a day out
Even if you don’t like Christmas, it’s hard to deny that Christmas dinner is one of the best meals of the year. But for Parisians in 1870, the Christmas meal took an unexpected and macabre turn. While we may think of Paris as being the city of light, good food and fine wine, it’s also
Many of the elements of the Christmas spread have more detractors than admirers. Turkey can seem an undistinguished bird thrust into an undeserved limelight: bland and unwieldy, it’s a far cry from a rich goose or even a regular, moist chicken. Carrots and parsnips – uninspiring. Bread sauce resembles the gruel ladled out to Oliver
Christmas is coming and it isn’t only the goose that’s getting fat – so are you. That’s according to the skinny, pie-dodging miserable lot who make up the public-health lobby. For these people – who are living proof that a lack of sugar makes you cranky – the countdown to Christmas isn’t an opportunity to
Let Bing sing about a white Christmas, if he insists. My kind of Christmas is more eggnog-toned: yellowy, like old-fashioned incandescent string lights; rich, like real velvet ribbon on presents; topped with pale froth of the most non-utilitarian and fluffy kind; sweet, with a kick of rum or bourbon to redeem it from sentimentality; stippled with
No overindulgent gourmand worth his salt fails to own a stilton scoop. Mine has a bone handle and Mappin & Webb silver plate. It has an ingenious contraption to release the cylindrical pellet of cheese: a bit like those retro ice cream scoops that, with a little squeeze, crack like a whip, the metal slicing
I have just been proposed to in a somewhat slatternly tiki bar in Mayfair. Not just any tiki bar, but Trader Vic’s, the Polynesian-themed restaurant and lounge underneath the London Hilton on Park Lane. Approaching its 60th anniversary, the bar has seen better days, but for historical purposes my partner of 12 years decided that
Not everything in the entire world is going to hell in a half-track. A few days ago, I tasted some South African wines. Although there are many reasons for a gloomy appraisal of South Africa’s prospects, wine is not among them. The industry is benefitting from new investment, encouraged by easier export markets made possible
Bacchanalia is the new restaurant from Richard Caring – I sense he would like me to call it a ‘landmark’ or ‘super-restaurant’, so I won’t – in the old Porsche showroom on the corner of Mount Street and Berkeley Square, and all nightingales have fled. Caring, who has doused Britain with his metal Ivys, is
This time last year, I was disgustingly well organised. Awaiting the arrival of my first baby, with a late December due date, I’d ensured everything was squirrelled or squared away. I’d bought all my presents by October, wrapped them by December; I’d made my Christmas cakes and bought my Terry’s Chocolate Orange. For the first
From Geoffrey Chaucer’s Tabard and Martin Amis’s Black Cross to Thomas Hardy’s Buck’s Head Inn, literature is as replete with pubs as are villages and high streets up and down the land. It is no surprise. They are atmospheric settings for a plot, and places of inspiration and contemplation besides; many authors have written their
Christmas is coming – but if the geese are getting fat, the turkeys aren’t terribly happy, cooped up indoors on account of avian flu. Around half of the free-range birds produced for Christmas in the UK have been culled or died due to the illness, according to the British Poultry Council – and for those
‘This dish is very you,’ my husband says, as I serve up 650g of melted, boozy cheese to the two of us for a weekday lunch, alongside a teetering pile of bread cubes. He is, I’m afraid, right: it really is my favourite kind of eating. There’s nothing better than a communal pot in the
