Food

J Sheekey is one of Richard Caring’s older, and better, restaurants. Since he has dowsed the suburbs of London in multiple outposts of the Ivy (there is one in Wimbledon, another in Richmond and presumably one pending in Penge), J Sheekey increasingly feels like an island in a sea of pointlessly aspirational green. The rise of the Ivy — the original celebrity brasserie, which is code for an indifferent restaurant full of awful people eating shepherd’s pie — is an inevitable consequence of the rise of celebrity culture. This is anti–culture, and the Ivy is, therefore, an anti–restaurant. So many celebrities, and now so many Ivys to put them in.

I am always surprised to remember that Andrew Lloyd Webber has taste; it must be remembrance of Cats. I was surprised, for instance, to learn that he once owned Pablo Picasso’s portrait of d’Angel Fernández de Soto, which I always thought of as my Picasso because it looks like my friend Hadrian Wise, who used to come to Merton College bar in his pyjamas. We once rolled a joint as long as The Spectator because he loved The Spectator. High as I was after the Spectator-length joint in 1994, I never thought I would write for it. Neither did he. Now Lloyd Webber, whose masterpiece is Phantom of the Opera,

Bibendum is a hushed restaurant on the first floor of the Michelin House on the Fulham Road. (Bibendum is the name of the Michelin Man; as such, he is the only restaurant mascot I can think of who is a morbidly obese drunk, and here of all places. It is a noble gesture in a district full of Prada and control). The building is extraordinary — an art-deco whim standing on a corner like Cinema Paradiso without the dreams. It was once the headquarters of the Michelin tyre company; as such, I admire the ambition of placing a tyre company in what is essentially a Venetian palace, but perhaps tyres

Why do we do it? We really need to stop supporting the snake-oil industry. We know there is no such thing as a miracle diet, a magical health cure, a mystical practice or a strange (and always expensive) product that is going to make us youthful, happy and, above all, thin. When Planet Organic first opened in Westbourne Grove, it was a great shop, with a butcher, fishmonger and baker as well as a good range of veg and groceries. Now a third of the shop is shelf upon shelf of supplements, beauty preparations and diet books; another third is a café; and what meat and fish there is comes

To the Ned, as diarists say when they can’t provide a rational reason for their voyage: the colossal banking hall transformed into ten restaurants, or one super-restaurant with ten menus, by the owners of Soho House, who are sucking up all the press coverage the age of churnalism can grant. I cannot yet decide what is more chilling: a Soho House open to all or a Soho House safely hidden behind its semi–weaponised membership criteria. I began to loathe the brand when I saw the table-tennis tables and selfie booths at Shoreditch House. I wouldn’t care if the media class played table tennis and took selfies until their hands and

Ah, butter. Salted, unsalted, English, French, garlic, spreadable, straight from the fridge – just thinking about the many forms of butter make me salivate. Then there’s what to pair it with – crumpets, teacakes, toast, jacket potatoes. The list goes on and on. So it comes as a blow to learn that butter is selling at record prices. Forget those low fat and faddy diets, butter is now a ‘big trend globally’. That’s according to Michael Oakes, a dairy farmer and spokesman for the National Farmers’ Union. He told Radio 5 live this morning that one major driver is the decision by McDonalds to use butter in it products again, eschewing

Pollen Street Social lives in a Georgian house on Pollen Street, Mayfair, a narrow curve between Hanover Street and Maddox Street. Vogue House, HQ of Condé Nast magazines, is nearby, and Pollen Street is very like it: almost nothing can get in or out. The Tatler in-house dachshund Alan TBH Plumptre tried leaving Vogue in 2013, and was murdered by the revolving doors. Did he want better — or fewer — things? We will never know. Pollen Street Social is a ‘modern urban meeting point’ according to the babble on the website, which is ever more deranged, and makes me think: as opposed to what? It is the flagship restaurant

I argued that it was unnecessary to have made sacrifices during Lent in order to celebrate its conclusion. It is the thought that counts. Others were less sure, though none of them exhibited the stigmata of austerity. Anyway, we ate some magnificent Pascal pig, plus a delicious lamb which would have been scampering around a neighbouring field during last year’s Lent. The one which we were feasting on and its cohorts have been replaced by some sweet little spring lambs, now playing regardless of their doom. They have all been earmarked for the next phase of their education: in local deep freezes. I pointed out that there was no reason

Against my better judgment, I agreed to go to Center Parcs for an Easter weekend break. We chose the one in Sherwood Forest, not because of any sentimental attachment to Robin Hood, but because it was the most inexpensive. Even then, it was hardly cheap: £804 for three nights and that didn’t include breakfast. First, the good news. I was sceptical about the website’s promise of free Wi-Fi, imaging it would be similar to the ‘free Wi-Fi’ on Virgin Trains, but it actually worked. The connection speed was impressive, as good as my set-up at home, and it didn’t matter where you were in the resort, as far as I

It is rare for me to write a love letter to a London restaurant, but Joe Allen, which is 40 this year, deserves it; if you have any sense you will throw off misery and go there now for hamburgers. It is not really a London restaurant, which may be why I love it, but a Manhattan restaurant (established on 46th Street in 1965 by a man called Joe Allen) that was transplanted to London in 1977; the idea of Manhattan, anyway, which is more vivid in imagination than in life. I like to imagine the cast of All About Eve in Joe Allen, talking nonsense about ‘the theatre’ as

Many farmers, asserted the Earl of Sandwich in a Lords debate last July, were now experiencing ‘regrexit’ – having voted to leave the EU they were now realising that the £3.2 billion worth of subsidies they had received from the EU in 2013 were now under threat. Or were they? Whether any farmers really did suffer from pangs of regret last July, they will since have grasped that whatever happens to agricultural subsidies post-Brexit they might actually do rather well – not from collecting handouts but by growing food and selling it. Today, the Food and Drink Federation published its latest statistics on food exports. In common with so many economic figures