In the light of uproar over food critic Jay Rayner’s comments on Cardiff’s food scene, I pick the highlights of my recent visit to the Welsh capital. If there’s one thing to be learned from the recent saga of Jay Rayner vs. the City of Cardiff, it’s that some words are better left unsaid. Little…
Category: Restaurants
Restaurant reviews and features in London and the UK. New openings, latest trends, classic haunts and high end destinations all covered. Regular updates. Absolutely nothing in moderation. Often absurd, occasionally insightful, always honest.
Opinion: Liddle, Padella, Pastor and the no reservations conspiracy
I read an article in The Sunday Times a couple of weeks ago. I say article, in that it contained words printed on the pages of a newspaper magazine, but perhaps ‘piece’ would be more appropriate. ‘Article’ confines it within the boundaries of simple journalism. It’s restrictive. ‘Piece’ is far more generous. It allows the…
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New website!
Those of you who check in on this blog from time to time may well have noticed that not much has happened here of late. After a burst of productivity over the summer, buoyed by an enthusiastic response to my piece on Pitt Cue, best laid plans to produce at least one article per week…
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Travel: The Glutton’s Guide to South Africa, Part 2 – Franschhoek and Stellenbosch
Franschhoek If Cape Town is laid back, Franschhoek is a fully reclined open air sun lounger (aside from the enormous mountains that make up the nerve-janglingly bendy Franschhoek Pass). It’s also breathtakingly beautiful. The town itself, originally a French settlement (Fransch, oui?) is quite touristy in a sort of quaint, Lake District village kind of a way,…
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Travel: The Glutton’s Guide to South Africa, Part 1 – Cape Town
I love South Africa. She took me by surprise and swept me off my feet, and now I don’t know how we can ever be apart. She is undoubtedly the most beautiful country on Earth, and the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. I should state for the record that…
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Review: Bonnie Gull Soho, 22 Bateman Street, W1D 3AN
I love Christmas. Really, I do. It’s another world entirely, the Upside Down, a parallel universe where common earthly notions of what constitutes acceptable and rational behaviour are inverted beyond recognition. Good sense goes out the window. People boil red wine before they drink it and eat turkey of their own volition, a collective lapse in…
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Feature: Wilderness 2016 Part 4 – The End
Sunday And so we get to Sunday morning, the beginning of the end, always a melancholy moment of any festival with its back to school feeling and two day suspended hangover. This one begins with the confirmation of what I knew was coming all weekend but didn’t want to admit; all of the girls are…
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Feature: Wilderness 2016 Part 3 – Virgilio Martinez and the Tough Act to Follow
The Banquet With the rest of the line-up sorely lacking in big draw acts it’s left to the chefs to set Wilderness apart from the crowd, and this year they’ve pulled out all the stops. Years ago at university a friend and I practically expired with laughter when we came up with the notion of chefs headlining…
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Feature: Wilderness 2016 Part 2 – Friday Night/Saturday Morning
Arrival Like all good festivals, there’s absolutely zero sign of Wilderness until suddenly it’s taking up your entire field of vision, and there’s no denying it looks glorious with leaves in bloom and sun blazing down on the hillside. Anticipating late arrival we stumped up for a pre-allocated plot with its own car park, but to begin…
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Feature: Wilderness 2016 Part 1 – Confessions of a Sceptic
It’s 12:05 on a sunny Friday afternoon in Stockwell and I’m on edge. I’m loading up a car that doesn’t belong to me with hastily packed bags from an upstairs flat in the gated mews I’ve gained access to, and it’s attracting the attention of staff working in the office below, which happens to be a…
