Restaurants

My gastronomic tour de France

On holiday in the Dordogne, I face an annual dilemma. My weekly Any Other Business column ruminates on the financial world with occasional restaurant tips to lighten the tone – and many readers tell me they frankly prefer the menus du jour to the boardroom dramas. My difficulty is that in a single page of The Spectator there’s never space to do justice to both. Last week, I ended up cramming seven restaurants into one short paragraph, a paltry snack where I’d like to have offered a banquet. So here’s my 2025 tour de France, as I called it, at somewhat fuller length, perhaps one of these days to be

A fictional Edwardian waif’s hungry fantasy: Fortnum & Mason’s food hall reviewed

I like a picnic weighted with history and class terror, which means Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly, which is historical re-enactment with dreaming. I have written about this for years or tried to: food is never just food, only fools say that. You can learn almost everything about people from the food they want. And here is St Narcissus in the form of a department store that works more powerfully as an idea than a mere shop, though it is a very effective shop. Fortnum’s sells a Great Britain that never was, designed for people who no longer exist, if they ever did. It has much to say to Brexiteers

The deculturalisation of Britain

It has been a disastrous summer for France’s restaurants. On average, visits have dropped by 20 per cent on previous years, but at many coastal resorts they’re down by 35 per cent. ‘Consumption is well below previous years,’ says Laurent Barthélémy, president of a hospitality union. ‘Restaurant owners see customers passing by, but they don’t come in to eat.’ Various reasons have been propounded to account for this decline. Barthélémy points to the cost-of-living crisis as a leading factor, as does Thierry Marx, one of France’s top chefs and president of the restaurant owners’ association. He describes a catch-22 situation where restaurants are obliged to raise their prices to cover ‘the

In defence of fat cats’ growing pay packets

News from the High Pay Centre – the revolutionary guard of left-wing thinktanks – that average FTSE100 chief executive pay rose 16 per cent to a record £5.9 million for 2024-25 comes as a double blessing for Rachel Reeves. On the one hand, she can cite executive greed as a pretext for her forthcoming autumn tax raid, while at the same time claiming that if rewards are soaring, then business conditions under Labour can’t be as bad as boardroom whingers say. On the other, she can rejoice that each UK-domiciled boss is contributing to the Exchequer a sum roughly equal to the tax take from 440 average earners. Meanwhile, is

‘Italian that just works’: Broadwick Soho reviewed

This column sometimes shrieks the death of central London, and this is unfair. (I think this because others are now doing it.) It is not the city we mourn but our younger selves. Even so, the current aesthetic in restaurants is awful and needs to be suppressed: beiges and leathers, fish tanks and stupid lighting, all are nauseating. But I hated Dubai. You say Atlantis, The Palm, I say enslaved maid crying for her dreams. But there is refuge, at least from the aesthetic, and it is as ever the child of imagination and nostalgia. Broadwick Soho, the newish hotel in the street where typhus was chased down to a

Lunch with Thomas Straker, the chef the restaurant world loves to hate

‘It was a heavy week,’ sighs Thomas Straker, explaining why he recently ended up on a drip in New York. He’s been nicknamed Britain’s ‘bad boy chef’, and his fans love him. He owns two restaurants in Notting Hill and has 2.6 million Instagram followers: not far off Nigella. Another restaurant is coming in Manhattan, so he has been spending a lot of time there. ‘Post-service, out late, every night,’ he says. ‘So I was in Soho at 3 a.m. the day before I ran the London marathon… I got carried away’ Straker Industries has many divisions: he runs a YouTube channel, has a butter range and is about to

Tanya Gold

The chef does not understand sandwiches: Raffles London at the OWO reviewed

I am mesmerised by the restaurants of Raffles London at the OWO (Old War Office) because war approaches and the Old War Office is now a stage set for food, floristry and linen. If this is civilisation – it isn’t really, but it thinks it is – who will protect it now? Will we even know if war has started – or care? It was a fine building when I first came – I have reviewed its chilly Mediterranean food, its manic Italian and its tepid French – and it still is. Grand hotels exist to suppress time. It is a preening Edwardian palace with crazed plinths, over-pliant staff and

Dogs have no place at my table

I love dogs. I love lunching. I love seeing dogs in restaurants where I’m lunching. But one thing I don’t love one bit is a dog being brought to a luncheon which I’m participating in – and, most likely, paying for. Luncheons are for humans – not for our furry friends. Let’s face it, it’s not like they’re particularly thrilled to be indoors while their owners indulge in a little light character assassination. They’d be having far more fun running around outside eating vomit and sniffing each other’s bums. They can be big dogs, like the one belonging to my friend K. His gentle nature is swamped by the physical reality

Picture perfect: Locatelli at the National Gallery reviewed

I feel for Locatelli, the new Italian restaurant inside the National Gallery, whose opening coincides with the 200th anniversary of the gallery and a rehang which I can’t see the point of because I want to watch Van Eyck in the dark. Locatelli must compete with the Caravaggio chicken, which is really called ‘Supper at Emmaus’ if you are an art historian or an adult. In the publicity photographs the chef Giorgio Locatelli is actually standing in front of the Caravaggio chicken. It looks as if Jesus is waving at Giorgio Locatelli but the chicken is unmoved. It stole all the gravitas. ‘Locatelli is the National Gallery’s new Italian master

‘This is as good as food gets in London’ – Town, in Drury Lane, reviewed

Town – well-named, it has vitality – is on the ragged part of Drury Lane WC2 near the Majestic Wine Warehouse and Travelodge. Like musical theatre, whose home this district still is, it is so ebullient and desirous of being loved that it is impossible not to love it back, because it seethes with that rare thing in days of ennui: enthusiasm. It is Judy Garland before the drugs won out and Max Bialystock of The Producers before he lost the pearl in his cravat pin and fell to shagging little old ladies to fund bad plays. It is not exactly the fag end of Covent Garden reborn – we

War and peace, why restaurants are going halal & the great brown furniture transfer

45 min listen

This week: war and peace Despite initial concerns, the ‘Complete and Total CEASEFIRE’ – according to Donald Trump – appears to be holding. Tom Gross writes this week’s cover piece and argues that a weakened Iran offers hope for the whole Middle East. But how? He joined the podcast to discuss further, alongside Gregg Carlstrom, the Economist’s Middle East correspondent based in Dubai. (01:51) Next: why are so many restaurants offering halal meat? Angus Colwell writes about the growing popularity of halal meat in British restaurants. This isn’t confined to certain food groups or particular areas – halal is now being offered across restaurants serving all sorts of cuisine, from

Is your restaurant halal?

Dos Mas Tacos opened recently next to Spitalfields Market, one of London’s trendiest and busiest areas. Two beef birria tacos cost £11.50; two mushroom vegano are £10.50; a ‘can-o-water’ is £2.50. But look a little closer at their menu, and something jumps out: no pork and no alcohol. You’d expect a carnitas option at a taqueria, and you’d want a Corona with it. You can’t get either at Dos Mas Tacos. Huh, and hmm. I came across the place on TikTok, via a video of the two founders, Rupert and Charlie Avery, outside their shop. They’re well-heeled lads, twins with posh accents. They used to work in the superyacht industry.

A man’s restaurant: Victor Garvey at the Midland Grand reviewed

The Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station is George Gilbert Scott’s masterpiece: his Albert Memorial in Hyde Park (a big dead prince under a big gold cross) has just too much sex to it. Late Victorian architecture seethes with erotica. The facetious will say imperialism was really just penetration, and there’s something in that. It is now the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, London – oh, the fretted imaginings of marketing departments – and, on a more conscious level, the closest you will get to the great age of rail, though spliced with plastic now. The modern station is ugly and translucent and sells face cream to tourists, and buns.

Is the Lake District still as Wainwright described it?

The Lake District isn’t really meant to be about eating. It’s about walking and climbing and gawping. The guide one carries is not that by Michelin but Alfred Wainwright, whose seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells turns 70 this year. Food is mainly to be consumed from a Thermos rather than a bowl, and eaten atop a precariously balanced upturned log rather than a restaurant table. The culinary highlight should be Kendal mint cake, gratefully retrieved from the pocket of your cagoule. And so I was as surprised as anyone to find real gastronomic delights on a recent trip. Not from Little Chef, though that was where Wainwright religiously

‘Rushed and under-loved and lacking conviction’: Hawksmoor Canary Wharf reviewed

Hawksmoor is the finest steak chain in London, because it lacks pretension and cares about blood. Years ago, at the Guildhall branch in a basement near Old Jewry, I ate the best breakfast of my days: hot bacon chops in a restaurant named in homage to the architect of the English Baroque. This is Dr Johnson’s steak house for populists. Further branches have sprouted in Borough, Knightsbridge, Seven Dials, Manchester and the Isle of Dogs. This was the West India docks, built with slaver gold on Stepney Marsh. When they closed in 1980, they threw up Canary Wharf, an eerie impersonation of Manhattan, which expressed all the preening blankness of

Food that’s both serious and serene: Babbo reviewed

After a week in which Israel triumphed at the Eurovision Song Contest with second place – western Europe is for them, eastern Europe slightly less so (plus ça change) – I review Babbo, the new neighbourhood restaurant in St John’s Wood. Restaurants tend to drift in, settle and drift onwards here. The Victorians knew it as a land of mistresses and smut; now it is a world of private hospitals, bad parking and MCC members, who seem bewildered by it all, as if Lord’s landed like a spaceship in an alien land. Only Oslo Court seems impregnable, because it manifests Jewish solidity – it is disguised as the home of

How to save Britain’s pubs

In Bradford a few weeks ago, I popped into a pub called Jacobs Well. It’s a squat old building, all but submerged behind the stultifyingly ugly road that grinds around the edges of the town centre. The Well was fairly quiet on a Monday night, but everyone there was congregated around the bar and it was immediately apparent that this was a place where long friendships are nurtured and strangers are welcomed. There were interesting cask ales, free hotpot and doorsteps of bread on a side table for anyone who fancied a meal, wonderful photos of old Bradford on the walls and a blackboard chock-full of handwritten notices advertising upcoming

Everything Ottolenghi should be but isn’t: Delamina Townhouse reviewed

Delamina Townhouse is on Tavistock Street in Covent Garden. It is an Israeli restaurant, and a very fine and subtle one, though Israeli restaurants are rebranding as ‘eastern Mediterranean’ these days due to growing Jew hate on London’s streets, which fills me with rage. (I am not talking about criticism of Israel. I welcome all criticism. I am a critic. I am talking about demonisation, and the glib urge to annihilation. Plenty of restaurant critics have a line on the war. I have checked.) But not enough rage to stop eating. I ate for Ukraine at Mriya in Hammersmith: now I eat here. If you think I am decadent, well,

My Marco Pierre White obsession

Pierre White, Marco. Chef. Michelin stars: five (all handed back). Wives: three (all handed back). Restaurants owned: number unclear. Hours in a cell: 14. Party: Reform. Brands promoted: Knorr stockpots, Lidl, P&O Cruises. Protégé: Gordon Ramsay. YouTube views: hundreds of millions. Current residence: the countryside, somewhere near Bath, far far away from anyone who tries to talk to him. The obituaries will all call Marco Pierre White a ‘rock star’, and they will be correct. In the 1980s, he was all shaggy verve and sweat and ash. He ‘changed the game’ – as they all say – not so much through his cooking, but through his good looks. He had

Long live the long lunch!

I keep on my bedside table, where others might place religious texts, Keith Waterhouse’s seminal The Theory and Practice of Lunch. Waterhouse, that magnificent chronicler of Fleet Street’s liquid lunches and disappearing afternoons, understood what modern efficiency cultists cannot: that civilisation is measured not by what we produce but by how elegantly we pause. His gospel preaches that a proper lunch requires ‘two-and-a-half hours of quality time at a quality establishment’, a commandment I try to observe with monastic devotion at least twice a week. The book’s spine is cracked at the chapter entitled ‘The Lunch Bore’. I have found this section invaluable in identifying – and subsequently avoiding –