Tanya Gold is The Spectator's restaurant critic.
A ghost review, now, of a ghost restaurant: the Connaught Grill, which is yet to reopen after pandemic shuttered its renovated self, which opened only in January this year. Cut off at the knees then; or strangled at birth. It feels apt to review something thwarted. I heard it may reopen for Halloween. I hope
Pandemic has brought many truths, the most minor of which is: I can’t cook steak. I thought I could. I burnt butter and seared meat and — lo! — perfect steak. Then I asked Matt Brown, the executive chef at Hawksmoor, the best steak restaurant in London excepting Beast (and Beast is a charnel house
Snaps + Rye is a Nordic-themed restaurant and delicatessen on the Golborne Road, at the shabby and thrilling edges of Notting Hill, just north of the Westway, a road I uncomplicatedly love, probably because it takes me from Notting Hill to places I like better. Notting Hill fell to gentrification long ago — it gasps
Sexy Fish is an Asian fusion barn in Berkeley Square, near the car dealerships and the nightingales, if they are still alive. It used to be a bank — NatWest! — and it still feels like it cares for nothing but money, even as it deals in sticky chicken, which means a good deal more
Brasserie Zédel is a grand salon under Piccadilly Circus and the only place I desired when lockdown (or lock-in) ceased and I was allowed to visit London. It is, for me — and everyone is different in their yearnings — everything a restaurant should be: very beautiful; well run (by Corbin & King of the
Pandemic creates the oddest phenomena: here, for instance, is a British drive-in cinema. They exist for people who won’t go to a conventional cinema for fear of infection, which sounds like a film in itself. But that is the charm: attending a drive-in cinema feels like living inside a film, because every British drive-in cinema
We cannot bear more drive-through or take-out or near-fatal snack. I am convinced of the boredom of my female ancestors, which is another truth pandemic threw out, and eventually all gags run out to dust. I am happy to leave my review of Penzance McDonald’s where it belongs, which is unwritten. Food is love after
Drive-through restaurants were invented so Americans could spend more time in their cars. I don’t blame them. American cars are wonderful if you like cars with fins; so, in theory, is fast food, which is more accurately called fast death, even if they did not know that in 1947. There is a contradiction to the
14 min listen
Fraser Nelson reads his cover piece campaigning for the British government to offer citizenship to the Hong Kong Chinese; Douglas Murray asks – why do the Black Lives Matter protestors get to be exempt from the lockdown? And Tanya Gold reviews: Monster Munch.
Now that I have considered Monster Munch I decide to eat one mindfully. I put it in my mouth, and it is as if I can taste it for the first time. It is repulsive, and I feel cheated. This is, then, an intervention. My husband wrote in these pages that I am always watching
What does a critic do when her genre collapses? Mostly I panic. I speak to restaurateurs who believe that without government help into 2022, many British restaurants will close. Most restaurants rent their premises; even if landlords defer collection, the debt will be unpayable. Most restaurants operate on slender margins; they cannot secure finance even
You don’t dine in the age of pandemic: you scuttle about in the wreckage. If you can afford food, and you aren’t afraid of your neighbours, who don’t understand the government strategy and believe that if they stay indoors for eight years they will survive, and so should you, you can eat out; or rather
24 min listen
It’s the 10,000th edition. This week’s episode features historian Tom Holland on the Spectator’s winning recipe; Douglas Murray on why he loves journalists; Mary Wakefield on coronavirus uncertainty; and Tanya Gold on what it’s like to be the magazine’s restaurant critic.
A fictional Spectator restaurant critic called Forbes McAllister appeared on Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge. He was played by Patrick Marber and was obviously based on Keith Waterhouse — bow tie, mad eyes — even if Waterhouse was never the restaurant critic at this magazine. McAllister was on TV to show off Lord
Stop the clocks: Fortnum & Mason is still delivering hampers. I am not surprised, because this shop — or rather this myth disguised as a shop — sold condiments to the Empire, and it wouldn’t let a global pandemic thwart the consumption of those condiments. It was among the earliest fans of globalisation, which is
Lamorna Ash came to the fishing port of Newlyn in south-west Cornwall to write a memoir. This is not unusual. There is a tendency, as old industries die, to watch them covetously and with awe; to paint them a paradigm of all that is lost. In the 19th century, fishwives posed for the artists of
17 min listen
The Spectator is meant for sharing. But in the age of coronavirus, that might not be possible. This new podcast will feature a few of our columnists reading out their articles from the issue each week, so that you don’t miss out. It’s a new format, so tell us what you think at podcast@spectator.co.uk. Douglas
I love eating while watching bad films like Battleship, so I love takeaway food from local restaurants. I am not rich enough to like the idea of takeaway from Simpson’s in the Strand and a plastic lid does not have the drama of a silver-plated dome. But eating takeaway food while watching Battleship is not
It was sunny on Monday so I took the children swimming in Mousehole harbour. It was almost empty but a woman sanding a boat on the quayside scowled at me. She couldn’t hear the children’s Cornish accents, which might tell her that I live here. There have been tensions for years between native Cornish and
‘Miss World 1970’ is the rather glorious title that Jennifer Hosten won. That was the year that the contest, then the greatest show on earth, was disrupted by feminist activists, who threw flour bombs at the host, Bob Hope. It is retrospectively called the foundation of the woman’s movement.The immediate trigger was Hope’s gag that
