Spectator Life

Spectator Life

An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.

Lara Prendergast

With Ash Sarkar

25 min listen

Ash Sarkar is a journalist, academic and political activist known for her commentary on social justice and democratic socialism. She is a senior editor at Novara Media, and her work has been published extensively. Ash’s debut book, Minority Rule: Adventures in the Culture War, examines how ruling elites exploit cultural divisions to maintain power. On the podcast,

The rise of protein washing

I bought some pork scratchings the other day, and the packet said it was ‘high in protein’. Gruntled, the brand, is distributed by the Keto Shop and is now being marketed as some type of health food. I had to laugh. Wolfing down a packet of pork scratchings in the pub is now part of

The restaurant where time (and prices) have stood still

Walking into this crowded and clattering restaurant for the first time in more than 30 years, two things strike me almost immediately: 1) it seems to be largely unchanged and 2) the prices have scarcely risen. I can’t claim to have tried every wine list in Soho, but I can tell you with certainty that

Olivia Potts

In defence of red velvet cake

I will admit to having been dismissive of red velvet cake in the past, considering it to be bland in flavour and garish in colour. It tended to come in cupcake form with towering hats of super-sweet buttercream, which made it unpleasant and difficult to eat. The cult love for red velvet, inspiring scented candles

Stop scoffing food on trains!

I’m on the 10.45 slow train to Ipswich. It’s not even lunchtime, yet everyone around me is already gorging on food. The corpulent man opposite is posting fistfuls of cheesy Doritos into his gaping maw, washing them down with cheap lager. A woman is noisily chomping her way through a limp burger that reeks of

Ross Clark

Why the left hates Gail’s

Is there any more evil influence on the world than Gail’s the bakery? It has thrown thousands of poor people out of their homes by gentrifying their neighbourhoods; it has destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of hard-working owners of independent coffee shops by drawing away business; it has scorned the poor by throwing away its

Last orders: farewell to my 300-year-old local pub

The Cherry Tree on Southgate Green began life as a coaching inn on one of the historic routes from London to York and beyond. It has been trading since 1695, when what are now the north London suburbs were open fields. But the other evening, the pub – my local – rang last orders for

Something to relish: in praise of Patum Peperium

In a social media age, certain ingredients – long esteemed by those in the know – suddenly burst on to the scene. One morning we woke up to all the supermarkets stocking Mutti tinned tomatoes. Ortiz sardines and Perello Gordal olives are now in the limelight. I wonder – given the current zeitgeist for all

Olivia Potts

With Emma Fox, CEO of Berry Bros & Rudd

28 min listen

Emma Fox is the chief exec of Berry Bros & Rudd, the world’s oldest fine wine and spirit merchant. A retail veteran, Emma’s broad experience has been shaped by a career spanning over 30 years.  On the podcast, Emma tells Liv about early memories of ‘sugar butties’, what’s the best bottle to bring to a

The real benefit of wind power? Lobster for all!

In a world of bewildering uncertainty and breakneck change, where a pack of butter now costs about the same as a small family saloon in the 1950s, there is at last some good news to cheer the soul. It concerns the lobster, that culinarily appealing crustacean which has sustained us nutritionally since the Stone Age

A pint, a punch and a scotch egg

My local gastropub, which is very popular, serves a hot, freshly made and runny-yolked scotch egg. It’s billed as a ‘Cackleberry Farm Scotch Egg with Maldonado Salt’ because part of hospitality is marketing. If you just chalk up ‘scotch egg’ on a board, it doesn’t entice the appetite in quite the same way. But call

Should you bother decanting wine?

We were almost having a symposium and I was invited to define Toryism in one sentence. I replied that one book would be easier: the late Roger Scruton’s On Hunting, which ought to be subtitled: ‘From Horse-Shit to Heaven: the Search for Love, Order and God.’ ‘But what if you leave out God, and therefore

Olivia Potts

The secrets of the perfect potato rösti

You may be forgiven, if you are a regular reader of this column, for thinking that my primary motivation in cooking is showing off. I’m always banging on about lovely dishes you can serve to unsuspecting guests that will guarantee plaudits and amazement. But while there is more than a kernel of truth in this,

In defence of lard

It’s somewhat risky to make the case for lard for a publication whose cookery columnist is the author of a book on butter. But so be it. Because lard has generally been at best overlooked and at worst openly maligned, and that is madness. The cost of cooking oils has rocketed in the past couple

The great Valentine’s Day con

When a press release for solar-powered sex toys popped into my inbox on 3 January, it dawned on me it could only mean one thing: we were already in the build-up to Valentine’s Day. A few days later, it was followed by the new aphrodisiac version of the Knorr stock cube, Knorrplay, and a set

Why Gen Z worships the pickle

If something can be squeezed into a jar with brine, Polish grandmas will do it. Walk into the kitchen of the average babcia and you’ll see jars lining the shelves filled with mysterious experiments, as if in an old-fashioned Slavic science lab. Here are pickled cucumbers, pickled peppers, pickled mushrooms, pickled cabbage and pickled beetroot.

Tanya Gold

How to get a table at Audley Public House

The Audley Public House is on the corner of North Audley Street and Mount Street in Mayfair, opposite the Purdey gun shop where you can buy a gun and a cashmere cape, because the world has changed. The Audley is a vast pale-pink Victorian castle, and it meets Mayfair in grandeur and prettiness. If the

Lara Prendergast

With Groove Armada’s Andy Cato

19 min listen

Andy Cato is a musician, record producer and DJ, and is perhaps best known as one half of the Grammy Award-winning electronic music duo Groove Armada. Andy is also a farmer and now puts his energy into championing a better food system as co-founder of Wildfarmed, the UK’s leading regenerative food and farming company. Backed by Jeremy

Michelin’s relaunch is a recipe for disaster

The Michelin Man is in trouble. In fact, his job is on the line. For 125 years, the Michelin Man, real name Bibendum, has been the face of the Michelin Guide: a coveted series of publications that award restaurants for excellence. But last week, news broke that the guide is attempting to reinvent itself in

Olivia Potts

The time-poor woman’s perfect chocolate cake

Isn’t it awful that the older you get, the more you know yourself? It’s supposed to be a good thing, attributed to wisdom, experience and a deeper understanding of our place in the world around us. But good lord, self-awareness can be a cruel mistress. I have realised that my greatest culinary goal is simply

The best way to approach sake 

We were discussing civilisation, as one does, and its relationship with cuisine. Pasta in Italy, paella in Spain, the roast beef of Old England; wurst in Germany, burgers in the States –though with those latter examples we are moving away from the concept. What about Japan, a complex society which is full of paradoxes? For

Olivia Potts

Why are we going nuts for pistachio?

You could be forgiven for thinking you’d walked into Oz: in the past couple of years, the whole world has gone green. Pale green, to be precise. Suddenly, pistachio is everywhere: it’s in our pastries, our chocolate, our coffees, our puddings, and even showing up in perfumes, paint charts, scented candles and on our fashion

The key to finding the best pubs in Britain

Entering the New Inn in Llanddewi Brefi in Ceredigion is like stepping back in time. The only pub in the village (since the Foelallt Arms closed down four years ago), The New Inn seems to hail from the 1970s. Its till is a pull-out wooden drawer full of coins and notes. There’s a coal fire in

Can you still afford to eat out?

Many of us will remember, misty-eyed, how things changed around the turn of the century. How Britain ceased to be a nation brutalised by rationing and rissoles and instead blossomed into a utopia of celebrity chefs, endless food TV and a population seemingly willing and able to eat out most nights of the week. We

Tanya Gold

Is a soul the only thing unavailable in Harrods?

The Harrods bookshop, which I browse for masochistic reasons, is mesmerising: an homage to the lure of ownership. The first book I find is called, simply, 150 Houses. Is that enough? Then I find Luxury Trains, the Porsche Book, the Lamborghini Book and the Jaguar Book. Then I find a book designed for a lifelong

Lara Prendergast

With Jeremy Chan

19 min listen

Jeremy Chan is the head chef and owner of Ikoyi, and the author of a cookbook of the same name. On the podcast, he tells Liv and Lara about growing up with a number of different food influences – from Hong Kong to Canada – and why his two-Michelin-starred restaurant should never be pigeonholed. Photo credit:

Julie Burchill

In praise of hospital food

I’ve been in hospital, bed-bound, for six weeks; because I can write it’s not so bad, but between deadlines time passes slowly, so landmarks in the day come to mean a lot. Most of all, I look forward to my husband visiting at 3 p.m.; secondly, the meds trolley trundling towards me like a dear