I love the writings of chef Fergus Henderson. I’m not really one for his experimentations with offal – even he can’t convince me that pigs eyes and cows knees are a lovely thing to eat, sorry – but my goodness can this fellow cook a sterling pud and write about it wittily. I chanced across […]
I love this country, especially when I feel as though I am being sucked into a timewarp, being the retro enthusiast that I am. On my recent travels, I was constantly reminded how the 1970’s – or the 1950’s for that matter – are all around us in certain parts of this splendid isle. […]
What else can be said about Barrafina except for this: make haste and go there – it serves probably the best tapas I have ever eaten, even better than in Spain itself. You can’t book, but don’t fear the queues – just order a sherry and some nibbles while you wait, and the charming Spanish […]
Had a mediochre day blighted by tedium and annoyances? Feeling lacklustre and needing gastronomic comfort and a back rub? Well, Joanna’s in Crystal Palace doesn’t do back rubs, but their food is the next best thing. It’s the kind of place that every neighbourhood should have, serving delicious and well-executed food that is reasonably priced, […]
Tomasina Miers (victorious maiden chef-ess of Masterchef several years hence) has several very successful outposts of her Mexican streetfood restaurant under her belt, spanning Canary Wharf, Covent Garden, Westfield and now Soho. I had been a devotee of the first branch when it opened in the restaurant wasteland that is Covent Garden a few years […]
So many photos of gluttonous moments, so little time to write about them all properly – so feast your eyes on this lot: The best ‘pan con tomate’ I have ever eaten, at London’s Barrafina tapas restaurant in Soho. Had anyone attempted to share this with me, I might have stabbed them with a fork: […]
For months I had wanted to make a really big, luxurious cake – one that, if I was a lady who lunched, I would have positioned on an elegant cake stand when my friends visited for afternoon cocktails. Sadly my life is not an endless succession of tea parties, and the moments I have to […]
Halloween is a great time to eat some really wacky food. At my friend P’s fancy dress party at the weekend, the food did a bit of dressing up too. R made a delicious pair of carrot cakes and decorated them with an assortment of paper parasols, a vintage toy car, a Spanish flamenco doll […]
I had never eaten a damson in my life before this year. The past month or so, I’ve made up for lost time – it’s literally been ‘damsons ahoy’ since we picked a whole bunch of these inky blue-skinned plums on our recent holiday in the Cotswolds. If ‘purple’ had a flavour, cooked damsons would […]
A few years ago, the cheese-starved inhabitants of Crystal Palace, South London, only had a dismal branch of Morrisons in which to buy their fromages. It was a sorry state of affairs – anaemic cheddar and Edam, and not a lot else besides, sold under fluorescent strip lights. But then, lo! Rescue came in the […]
Toast & Butter 