Oh the sun, the sun. I spent most of last week in Norway, and happily returned to a gloriously sticky London on Friday, feeling utterly like a tourist in my very own city. There could be no better than now to loaf around in a…
It wasn’t long ago when pizza was simply a decision of who to call to coincide with prime-time TV. I am referring to the myriad of takeaway menus regularly shoved through the front door of course. I’d always pick the one which sold Haagen Daz…
I attended a mega steak tasting dinner very recently put together by Douglas who writes the magnificent Intoxicating Prose, and the good people over at Chapters All Day Dining in Blackheath. One of the few London restaurants which has installed a Josper Grill. It was…
There is collective praise for this bare-bones Udon-ya, specialising in thick wheat flour noodles that hail from Shikoku Island in Japan. Slippery, stick-to-your-chopsticks elasticity is the result of a traditional kneading process, carried out on the premises, with wheat imported from the mother land. Affordable,…
We already know that Pearl Liang’s dim sum menu is more than formidable, however for a Chinese restaurant to have an equally capable dinner menu, that is a definite rarity in London. The word on the street is that Pearl Liang is one such rarity.…
Sam Harris must be the merriest restaurateur in town right now. Zucca is enjoying near universal adulation; Critics and blogs are raving about his fresh take on Italian food and it has even been compared to River Cafe, The Quintessential Institution that launched a billion…
It must be the name. It does something to the wiring of my brain causing me to associate it with many adjectives such as magnificence, opulence, ecstasy, paradise, exorbitance, Sophie Dahl. It must also be the attractive old-world quality it exudes, a quality which has…
I never had confidence in museum mess halls. Having memories only of torrid experiences both locally and abroad. It is the logical thing to do, after taking in centuries of culture, to then breathe in stereotypical food. Of course, that was until I became a…
Rather embarrassingly, I allow myself to get lost along the cramped sidewalks of Soho, on the odd occasion. Even with my eight years as an avid London restaurant collector and in the face of advancing technology (Turn the phone around. And again.), I still can’t…
One of the major themes of my restaurant collecting this year involves expanding the catchment area. It occured to me last year when I felt like a tourist in Liverpool street station; circling it many times until I eventually found out that Andaz was just…
I associate fish and chips with the impending arrival of the weekend. Back in the day when I was a spring chicken exploring the dark arts of jellied petrol, I also tended to the student bar. Ah the days of minimum wages – £4.80 an…
There was a time when Gordon Ramsay was the darling of the nation, the once protege who displaced his mentor, then the king of British gastronomy, Marco Pierre White. Like his mentor, he has achieved three stars and so much more. I remember my first…
