If you have ever received a hamper, you will be familiar with that delicious quiver of anticipation as you unbuckle the creaking wicker lid to see what lies within. How often have you then suppressed a twinge of disappointment to find that, apart from a pretty tin of lapsang souchong and a bottle of decent
At a House of Commons cocktail party I suddenly noticed a friend’s face contorted like ‘The Scream’ of Edvard Munch. Could it be yet more bad news for Labour? No, she was being offered a plate of smoked salmon, probably her thousandth munch for the year. I entirely sympathised; the stuff usually served up is
What passes for summer is finally upon us in the British Isles. Between bouts of rain, we can finally inhale the sun-tan oil, note that last year’s swimsuit seems to have shrunk over the winter and fire up the barbecue. Cooking outdoors connects us to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, and, while the Oxford Culinary Conference undoubtedly
Recently I enticed my niece to a gastronome’s dinner during the London Food Festival. She is about to enter university, and I thought it was about time she learnt to taste. The evening proved a disaster; after a lengthy discussion of saffron she turned to me and asked, with quiet rage, ‘How can they carry
This week’s column should be guest-written by Hillary Clinton, who has shown herself a master at sinking the knife into Barack Obama’s all-too-yielding flesh. But at home we can learn valuable lessons in wielding the knife from our own politicians. The knife itself is not, sadly, a glorious child of Britishness. The first knives made
‘No buffalo-thyme pizza?’ The grazing grounds around Naples are poisoned, grounds on which herds of water buffalo feed to produce Italy’s most delicate cheese. This ecological disaster has had a knock-on effect even here in Texas, where a rather-too-elegant youth and I are taking a snack break from the rigours of the Obama campaign. Sales
‘Ecraser l’infâme!’ Voltaire proclaimed in his war on corrupt priests and crooked government officials. Delia’s Smith’s new book How to Cheat at Cooking opens up a whole new field of infamy: the culinary crime. As in 18th-century politics, so in 21st-century cuisine, it’s the public who gets cheated. Madame Smith’s sassy title is meant to
In the midst of an author tour for a new book, I am confronting both the worst evils of fast food and some surprising exceptions. Writers today cannot simply write books; readers want to see you in the flesh, talk to you, send you thoughts or their own fledgling manuscripts. I actually enjoy the human
The new champagne bar at St Pancras Station — sorry, St Pancras International — is said to be the longest in Europe, which is fine, although I pity the poor person — a workie, probably, they get all the duff jobs, if they get any jobs at all — who had to find this out.
With the holidays approaching, foodies are grumbling again about turkey. The domesticated bird is overweight, too fat to fly; in cooking, turkeys easily dry out; their meat, especially the breast, is tasteless. Why bother? So I thought many years ago, when I served instead at Christmas a suckling pig, beautifully stretched out on the platter,
My partner has bought a wood. Seriously, he has. He simply came home one day and said, ‘I have something to tell you.’ Oh good, I thought, he’s leaving me. Now at last I can get on with my life. ‘I’ve bought a wood,’ he said. My partner likes the outdoor life and camping. He’ll
Do you remember when, the other week, I went to St Alban, got lost and ended up in the wrong restaurant entirely, where I said, ‘Am I in St Alban?’ and was told, ‘No, we’re Divo, a Ukrainian restaurant. St Alban is over the road’? Well, what I didn’t say was that while in Divo
Since I wrote in The Spectator a fortnight ago about the ‘Say no to foie gras’ campaign, my email has been flooded with protests. Animal-rights groups have claimed that I am wet, limp, cravenly judicious; I should have said that force-fed geese are a symbol of the evil Man everywhere does to animals. Partisans of
St Alban, 4–12 Regent Street, London SW1 St Alban is the latest restaurant from Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, who have almost mythic status as restaurateurs, and rightly so. They are, after all, the team that at various times have been behind The Ivy, Le Caprice, J. Sheekey and The Wolseley but never Garfunkel’s, which
Now, let me see if I can get this right. My sister’s husband has a brother who has a friend who is friends with a couple in Zimbabwe who read The Spectator and are ‘very big fans’ of mine. I think that’s it. Anyway, might I email them, just to say ‘hello’? They’d be really
In New York, I head for Citarella on Broadway only to be confronted by a noisy demo at the entrance. (Among New York foodies, Citarella is to Whole Foods what in London Waitrose is to Tesco.) People in straw sandals and peasant dresses are handing out leaflets proclaiming ‘Say no to foie gras!’ Citarella is
The game season is upon us, and game is rather shaming. We have so much of it in Britain but we don’t cook it very adventurously. This is particularly true of game birds like partridge, quail and wild duck — wonderful birds which deserve better than over-roasting and gooey fruit sauces. Most of the game
It happened in New York. As I reached for a small basket of ‘heirloom tomatoes, Little Compton Farms’ I felt my lips curling slightly — was it out of pity or contempt? — on account of the poor soul next to me who had merely chosen ‘vine-ripened organic’. It happened in New York. As I
This is about a mother who takes her son out for dinner for his 15th birthday. Normally the son would not agree to go out for dinner with his mother. Normally the son treats his mother as something of an embarrassment, as well as a middle-aged nag, drag and bore. The mother is perplexed by
My friend Nick — OK, he’s not exactly my friend, he’s my brother’s friend, but my brother lets his friends be mine, as he knows I’ve always struggled to make any of my own. Anyway, Nick says he’d like to take me to what is possibly his favourite restaurant in London. I like Nick. I