Zoe Strimpel

Zoe Strimpel

How Gen Z ruined Guinness

James Joyce called Guinness ‘the wine of Ireland’. Now it feels a bit more like the Coca-Cola of alcohol – as much brash branding as beer. Once, it merely had an ugly logo and the rowdy promise of Emerald Isle hedonism which – I confess I have often thought – is crafted to appeal to

How the Groucho lost its lustre

This week, the Groucho Club in Soho had its licence suspended by Westminster Council after a request from the Metropolitan police, who are investigating a ‘serious criminal offence’ said to have taken place on its grounds. Beyond ‘serious’, the crime has yet to be specified. But one thing is certain: the Groucho has gone down

There’s nothing worse than an entitled restaurateur

Going to restaurants used to be fun. So much so that in the first two booze-sloshed decades of the 21st century, restaurants were the key setting for most of my social activity. My friends and I, living in pretty nasty rented rooms, spent our disposable income on two or three meals out a week, where

Canary Wharf is better than ever

For the kind of people who think London ought to be all Farrow and Ball-coated quaintness and whiffs of Dickensianism, Canary Wharf is a rude assault, an obnoxious jungle of the anti-quaint. It is also, to many, an embarrassing paean to a moment that only the 1980s could have produced: one of gauche capitalistic, deregulatory

Flying isn’t what it was – but don’t blame British Airways

It is tempting, confronted with the news that British Airways is to swap out lunch on long-haul flights leaving between 8.30am and 11.29am in favour of a ‘Great British Brunch’, to conclude that flying has simply gone to the dogs. The cost-cutting move, which applies to business and First Class passengers, has raised many an

Ozempic and the sugar coating of reality

Old or young, fat or thin, body-positive or body-embarrassed, man or woman, everyone with money seems to be on a weight-loss drug: Wegovy, Mounjaro or Ozempic (which although a diabetes drug, is so often used off label for weight loss that there have been supply shortages). In the past couple of weeks alone, two freewheeling

The horror – and glory – of Sandbanks

In the showy harbourside enclave of Sandbanks, in Dorset, properties regularly go for upward of £7 million; one bungalow there recently sold for £13 million. Footballers and screen stars call it home. But there are two things money can’t buy when it comes to Sandbanks: sunshine and style. It’s a desperately cramped, traffic-ridden place Estate agents

Admit it, roast dinners are bad

Sunday lunch is a bit like the Edinburgh festival. People make a big thing of it, it’s considered a British treasure, and I am meant to book it, go to it, and like it. But I don’t. If Edinburgh is forever associated in my mind with glowering edifices of grim dark stone, hostile chilly sun

Spain makes for an awful holiday

Spain is busy with an image update. Thanks to a host of savvy media stories, we’re now supposed to think of Spain not just in terms of package holidays, sangria, and Catholicism but also as chic, romantic, stylishly left-wing – the macho anti-fascism of Hemingway’s Spain updated for the #MeToo age – and devastatingly cutesy.

Middle-aged Swifties are weird

The Starmers were supposed to have the moral high ground – at least according to Labour eschatology – and yet we read of their grubby relationship mega-donor Waheed Alli. Alli was given a security pass to 10 Downing Street in return for his money. During the election, he lent Team Keir the use of his

TGI Fridays was doomed from the beginning

Few will mourn the demise of TGI Fridays, whose parent company collapsed into administration this week. The restaurant chain’s 87 branches in the UK have been put up for sale. Only a fool would think they could turn around TGIs’ fortunes. The truth is that the British obsession with American food, and specifically American diners,

Not for the squeamish: The Substance reviewed

Both horribly familiar and wonderfully shocking, this body-horror film written and directed by Coralie Fargeat does a very traditional thing – turning the scramble for youth and beauty into a monster of immeasurable disgust and immorality – in a huge way. There is nothing minimal or restrained or overly clever here; nothing of the nuance

Gen-Z mean girls are aggressive and progressive

When Black Lives Matter created the figure of the Karen, it was a sign of that movement’s darker, bullying qualities. What exactly was wrong with a white middle-aged woman who asked to speak to the manager when things were unsatisfactory? The answer seemed to be in the white part and the woman part, and perhaps

Italy is a land of beauty and death

I was nine. It was Florence, in mid-July. My parents bravely led my younger brother and me through a day of sweaty sight-seeing. We had just been up and down the Duomo and were cooling ourselves with ice cream in an adjacent square when there was a hideous bang. At first, we thought it was

How to shop at Waitrose

Over the years, I have spent a pretty penny on therapy. I have also spent a lot of money in Waitrose, of which there is a big branch that I like to call a ‘flagship’, very close to my flat. Of the two, therapy and Waitrose, it is probably Waitrose that has provided the most

I am a birthday dictator

I am never allowed to forget that at my fourth birthday party I made clear my expectation to my mother and the gathered guests that I expected to win all the games. The logic was clear and to my mind (still) fair: it was my birthday and so I should win. When this wasn’t passed

Ottolenghi has colonised British food

As far as chefs and food writers go, Yotam Ottolenghi has been pretty influential on my life – a life that revolves quite heavily around food. Choosing it, thinking about it, pathologising it, eating it and sometimes even cooking it. I was one of those who was delighted when supermarkets started stocking pomegranate molasses, rose

A beginner’s guide to baby gear

As an urban-dwelling, free-spirited 41-year-old with sleep issues and a whimsical trade – writing – having a baby posed many challenges. The chief of which has been having to constantly work with two other people: baby and baby-daddy. I vowed as the due date approached to get kitted up in ways that would feel reassuring, limiting the cannonball splash effect of

The Starmers are sexy

I’d all but forgotten about David Cameron when he returned as foreign secretary under the last government, and the first thing I remembered about him, when he returned, was his chin. By which I mean its prim absence and how, combined with those thin lips and tiny mouth, more like a fish’s than a person’s,