An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
The BBC made a very odd documentary about the renovation of Claridge’s: The Mayfair Hotel Megabuild. They filmed, agog, as the hotel grew eight new storeys – three above, and five below – between 2014 and 2021 while staying open: guests slept and ate, unaware of ‘Narnia doors’ to the building site. (That Narnia is
Whenever I tell someone that I’m making a pavlova the response is the same: sheer joy. Even the most fervent pudding-denier struggles to resist a slice of pav. It makes sense – fragile, crisp meringue with a tender, mallowy centre, soft waves of cream and some kind of fruit is such a brilliant combination. You
Thomas Straker became famous for his TikTok recipes, although he doesn’t like it when people point that out. He protests that he’s a serious cook – he has worked at Elystan Street, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal and The Dorchester – but most people know him as the butter guy. It’s hard to avoid that label
Rishi Sunak’s strategy for solving Britain’s crippling housing shortage has been revealed: converting redundant takeaway restaurants into homes. It was a strange role reversal for Sunak, so recently cast as the potential saviour of many of these outlets during his Rishi’s dishes period. Yet fast forward three years and here he is as Prime Minister announcing
I hate to pick a fight with a fellow Speccie scribe but, as this august organ’s drinks editor, I must take issue with Dr Andrew Cunningham and his recent dismissal of English wine. Andrew lives in West Sussex and I live in East Sussex. He explains that he’s near Nyetimber, Nutbourne and Kinsbrook (not to mention Ambriel, Roebuck
It was the English summer at its most perverse. We were drinking Pimm’s while hoping against hope for better news from Old Trafford. As the clock ticked and the rain was unrelenting, one of our number emitted a groan which seemed to start from his boot soles. ‘Why can’t there be a bit of global
It is a tenet of neo-liberal economics that there is no such thing as a free lunch. This is obvious baloney. There are free lunches everywhere. The problem is that those free lunches are no longer served to people doing useful work. They are instead handed out to the owners of a few favoured asset
Sales of English wine are booming, soaring by nearly 70 per cent over the least two years, at least according to the industry body. There are now shelves devoted to English wine in just about every large supermarket. I even tried a red wine by a local producer, who had better remain nameless. It tasted
Last year, we grew tomatoes for the first time. And we did so with our characteristic enthusiasm, lack of knowledge and ignoring of instructions. So inside our raised bed we planted out radishes and beetroot, chard and kale, tenderstem broccoli and Brussels sprouts – and one very busy row of tomatoes. We didn’t let this
I am not sure the vast Bierschenke bierkeller in Covent Garden is successful, even if it is skilful: I worry it is the wrong place for it. People go to Covent Garden to buy gym clothes, watch musical theatre and pick up men, not to find Wagner and pigs and the drumbeat of the earth:
Ask someone south of the border for their thoughts on Scottish cuisine and they’ll inevitably offer up thoughts of two Gaelic gastronomic inventions: haggis and deep-fried Mars bars. Despite the wealth of produce available – and exported – from the country, Scottish fare has struggled to shake its tartan-clad clichés Despite the wealth of produce available
36 min listen
Jimi Famurewa is a British-Nigerian journalist, writer, broadcaster and food critic. In 2020 Jimi became chief restaurant critic for the Evening Standard and he has also won the restaurant writing awards at both the Fortnum and Mason and Guild of Food Writers awards. On the podcast they discuss Jimi’s new book Settlers: Journeys Through the Food, Faith and
My grandmother, and many like her, kept an account book for household spending. This was not the product of an overbearing marriage or mistrust on anyone’s behalf – it was simply how things were done at a time when habits had been formed during rationing after the second world war, and banking was manual and
It would be an insult to call rice the staple food of Japan. For centuries it has been so much more than that. In Japan, rice has long been treated with a respect that borders on reverence. The emperor blesses the rice crop each year and in Shinto culture rice and rice-based sake are two
Choux pastry can inspire fear in even the most confident of cooks. There’s a good reason for it: it’s difficult to give a very precise recipe for choux pastry, as the amount of egg needed to create the correct texture depends on the flour you’ve used, how long the choux has rested, and how fast
Burn the formal white tablecloths and fling open the kitchen doors. The latest craze in restaurant culture is open-fire cooking – where chefs sweat it out over roaring flames in full view of their customers. And the simple, raw nature of this method of food preparation seems to have set diners’ imaginations alight. ‘Cooking outside
Some subjects invite an eternal recurrence. One such is Tuscany. The other day, I wrote about that glorious region: its mastery of la dolce vita, its almost effortless command of civilisation. Indeed, Tuscan civilisation is a tautology. Since then, I have paid a brief visit. There was only one shadow. How can one find the
It was the afternoon of the first day of the second Ashes test at Lord’s. In the brief lull between overs, the camera panned, as it often does, to a recognisable face in the crowd: Jacob Rees-Mogg. The traditionalist Tory presented exactly as you’d expect: Savile Row suit, tie and cufflinks. But there was one
British media wouldn’t be British media without endless stories of possible health risks in food and drink. The news cycle turns and we land on whether butter is good or bad, or whether having a glass of red wine in the evening is toxic or therapeutic. Another long-running, oft-studied and frequently-discussed topic of debate is
Whenever it is suggested travelling south or north of the Thames to visit an ‘amazing’ restaurant I usually start conjuring up excuses. Across London seems a journey too far for food – but going across an ocean for it can be worthwhile. In NYC last year, I found myself with an evening off and, staying
I could map out my life geographically and temporally in scoops of ice cream. From the oyster delights handed over in tracing-paper napkins from Minchella’s hatch in South Shields on the beachfront, to the little silver coupe bowls of ice cream we ordered every night on family holiday in France (always the same, one ball
As the government withers this column falls to ennui and visits Pizza Express. As David Cameron, who left the world stage humming, said of Tony Blair: ‘He was the future once.’ So was David Cameron, and so was Pizza Express: I bet they meet often. It was founded in 1965 by Peter Boizot, who shipped
Even Michelin-starred chefs, it seems, aren’t immune from the cost-of-living crisis. In a bid to make fine dining more affordable, Jason Atherton has cut prices across the board at Pollen Street Social, his flagship Mayfair restaurant (the three-course set lunch now costs £49.50 – down from £75 – and wines start from £7.50 a glass).
38 min listen
Amy Newsome is a Kew-trained horticulturalist, beekeeper and author of the new book Honey: Recipe’s from a beekeepers kitchen. On the podcast, she tells Lara and Liv how beekeeping saved her mental health, why you should always keep at least four types of honey in your pantry and details her desert island meal.
Considering its status as the canon’s most iconic cocktail, it’s remarkable that the martini doesn’t have a single agreed upon recipe. Like many great drinks it comes with more of a template than exact specifications, which basically dares us to riff on the formula. Historically, this has meant altering the garnish – swapping the olive
Barbecue is a fact of life in America. Long summer evenings and reliably good weather make it an easy choice – plus turning on the oven heats up the house to an intolerable level, so if you want a hot meal, outdoors it is. When I was a kid my mom wouldn’t turn on the
I’m in Tuscany, where the piazzas glow orange at dusk, not only from the sunsets but also from the profusion of Aperol spritz. The bright orange drink has exploded in popularity in the past five years. Everyone’s drinking it: young women, middle-aged couples, groups of wrinkly tanned men, all sucking from straws sticking out of
In Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the hopes embodied in the title dissolve into grimness and black irony. It was all Mussolini’s fault. Despite the endless opportunities Italy offered for enjoyment, Fellini never trusted his own country, or his countrymen. He could not relax into dolce far niente. For decades, many Italian wine-makers churned outa mass-market
The days when ‘barbecue’ meant a lukewarm beer, bun and burger are long gone. We’re putting more effort than ever into our outdoor dining – from whipping up zingy marinades with ingredients you’d barely heard of five years ago to diligently waiting for that perfect halloumi char. All this extra effort on the food front
