Restaurants like Sonder put our politicians to shame
‘Why can’t our politicians be more like chefs?’ came up at dinner the other evening, and it needs a short reply. For a start, politicians at the moment seem especially…
The endless reassurance of British tea time
The morose and boiled-cabbage bleakness of the National Library of Scotland conceals a kind of perverse beauty. Strip lights and sticky green chairs. Smelly books and smellier bookish types. Retirees…
You can’t sample the finest in the capital ‘under one roof’
Cais do Sodre is one of those scabby-chic areas on the brink of gentrification. It is not best viewed first thing in the morning, with sprawling homelessness and graffiti-stricken lanes….
You say tomato, I say ‘Not in February’
A century ago a tomato in England, in February, might have been unthinkable. But then this February just been felt unthinkable: two sunny weeks with twenty-degree afternoons. It was with…
For tonight’s special we have communist nostalgia
Simple food is in. Nothing makes the well-to-do of London drool at the moment like authenticity, seasonality and a bit of fashionable grubbiness. Olia Hercules, a recent champion of said…
Don’t buy into Silicon Valley’s huel-fuelled hell
I almost failed to write this article. I was exiting Huel’s website in exasperation at its fruitlessness (pun intended), when one of their founder’s names caught my eye. The name…
You either love or you nitrate ham
My friend can’t afford any ham without Nitrates. For shame. To be honest I wouldn’t know the difference between ham treated with nitrates, acrylic paint or cyanide. I received a…
Goat milk: the unsung hero
Nobody has ever kept a goat simply for the sake of it. Goats are singularly hideous, make a startling array of screaming noises and smell like the office bathroom after…
Am I a sellout?
The Christmas boom offers students the instance to swap textbooks for poorly-fitted suits, B&Qshirts or waiting pinafores. Temping. I am an unashamed ’Temp’ (Tempest, Tempura?). But mundane jobs always come…
Charity is for life not just for Christmas
Around a year ago I was sorting a chicken. It was spatchcocked, spine-out and spread-eagled, rubbed down with garlic and sage butter, then sprinkled with salt and pepper. The potatoes…
Tom Kitchin proves gentrification and local greengrocers can coexist
I wouldn’t bother trying to get hold of cavolo nero in December. Too tender to survive the harshness of early winter frosts, the dark green brassica even struggles in late…
Egg tarts are available worldwide because they hit the spot
It can be easy to feel out of place when you travel, nothing does for it like being the solo white man and nothing tickles my not-so-dormant narcissism as when…
Earlier dusk means different dinners at Fhior
As the sun leaves us about half-way through our day, we have to find our way back across town with heads down, hoods up, between puddles of streetlight and actual…
The hunt for ‘authentic’ tapas doesn’t bother me
‘Authentic’ Tapa are hard to come by. Talk to any Spaniard or Spanglophile (a term I have coined for Spain enthusiasts) about a Tapas restaurant in the UK and they…
The concept of a ‘green city’ is too rigid
Palermo crept into conversation on three separate occasions this week. First, a conversation with a Sicilian over the delights of arancini, second to recommend Palermo for a romantic escape, then…
In Cyprus, food can be a symbol of unity
Last summer I experienced Nicosia for the first time. It is the world’s only divided capital, rent in two by a UN ‘Green Line’ enforcing partition of the unrecognised Turkish…
Food should be about people, not marketing
‘’You need this Kinder Bueno cheesecake in your life’’ I do not. Watching the fork slowly drag through the fecal-coloured, Philadelphia nightmare reassured me it was perhaps the last thing…
Pho the love of food
Emily Waldon Harris cooked me lunch the other day. It wasn’t me personally. Though, for proximity we could have been in Waldon Harris’s front-room. I could see her in the…
