An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
Food courts appear to be everywhere in London at the moment and, for reasons too boring to go into here, I found myself at three of them across the capital in the space of four days last week. (Yes, before you ask, I am beginning to question my life choices as a result.) Not that
London has become the best place in the world to eat out. Of course, there are a thousand other cities with marvellous food, but for organic vitality, ethnic variety and nose-to-tail creativity, London is unmatched. New York and Paris are parochial by comparison. Two new books locate the source of this revolution of taste and
Alcoholics know that hell is denial, and there is plenty at Disneyland Paris in winter. This is a pleasure land risen from a field and everyone has after-party eyes, including the babies. The Disney hotels operate a predictable hierarchy: princesses at the top, Mexicans at the bottom. We, the Squeezed Middle, are at the Sequoia
Towards the end of the war, a young Guards officer met some Italian aristocrats. They had much in common. Robert Cecil was the heir to a marquessate. The Principe di Venosa’s daughter was married to an Italian marchese. Lifelong friendships have ensued down the recent generations. Nevertheless, the English family would be the first to
Our Santa Pants cocktail is one of our go-to holiday pours when hosting at this time of year. Made with our organic tequila and ginger beer, cranberry juice and fresh lime, it brings all the sparkle and cheer of the season. It is like Christmas in a glass. And while the world doesn’t need another
When Columbus brought chilli back from the New World, the British were indifferent. Strange, really, when our taste for horseradish and mustard was keen, and when we later found a love for Marmite, stilton and Pickled Onion Monster Munch. A culture shaped by drizzle should have been an early adopter. Instead, that part of our
31 min listen
Tom Gilbey, the internet’s most charismatic wine expert, sits down with Olivia Potts for Table Talk. Tom is a winemaker, merchant, educator – and also an author. His new book, Thirsty, is part-memoir, part guide to his life through wine in 100 bottles, and is available now. On the podcast, Tom discusses his family’s love for
‘Be not solitary; be not idle,’ wrote Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy. Now, 400 years later, one bar is taking his instruction to heart and banning solo drinkers. An Altrincham venue which goes by the gloriously 1990s nightclub name of Alibi will only allow groups in after 9 p.m. Owner Carl Peters said
Elizabeth II was a god and a commodity: now she is gone it is time for posthumous exploitation. Lilibet’s is a restaurant named for her childhood nickname at 17 Bruton Street, Mayfair, on the site of the house where she was born. It was inevitable that Elizabeth II would eventually get a personal restaurant. Princess
Where else would you see anyone wandering around with a plate heaped with such incongruous ingredients as bacon, olives, blueberry waffles and a side order of yoghurt and prunes? Nowhere but at a hotel breakfast, of course. More often than not, the food is inedible, and nothing works properly. The coffee machines always seem to
34 min listen
Throughout the years, the only person permitted to drink inside the House of Commons is the Chancellor, so what has been the tipple of choice for each resident of Number 11 dating back to Benjamin Disraeli? Following Rachel Reeves Budget this week, Michael Simmons and James Heale drink their way through the ages, discuss the
I used to be a Christmas pudding denier. I couldn’t see the attraction of a dense pudding made mostly of currants; frankly, I’d rather have a trifle. Of course, I was wrong: I was judging Christmas pudding by poor examples, those that sat on the edge of a Christmas lunch tray at school or were
In Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, when Ben Gunn is found by Jim Hawkins, sunburnt and wide-eyed after three years of being marooned on the island, the first thing he asks Hawkins for is cheese: ‘Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese – toasted mostly.’ As a greedy person prone to daydreaming, I’ve often
The world is in an even greater mess than was apparent. I am not referring to Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan or other swamps of mayhem and misery, although they are bad enough. No: the new crisis is in France, and it has two malign and reinforcing aspects. First, large numbers of the younger French have given
21 min listen
A woman that needs no introduction for regular Spectator readers, Tanya Gold has been the Spectator’s restaurant critic since 2011. On the podcast she tells Lara why – while it might be annoying – fellow critic Jay Rayner is never wrong, why the pandemic was ‘disgustingly great’ for food critics and how she has become
I contemplated this piece over a bowl of porridge; not a ready-mix concoction but the raw stuff: porridge oats mixed with milk and water and eaten without any adornment whatsoever. That will win me brownie points among many nutritionists and policymakers because I was not eating an ‘ultra-processed food’ (UPF). I have a gut feeling
I became sick of bakeries when I lived in Berlin. I alternated between a few of them, doing most of my work in a café-bakery in the then-trendy Neukölln district amid other somewhat directionless snackers and typers. After a while, I felt that commercial premises hawking cakes, pastries and cookies were no place for the
Let me introduce you to the performative chef. The performative chef is a man. He is between 23 and 29 years of age. Both of his arms are covered in fine-line tattoos. His favourite tattoo is a quote from Philip Larkin that reads: ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean
There are few culinary experiences like the first bite of a Domino’s pizza. The finest N25 caviar or a perfectly seared lobe of foie gras surely can’t compare to the ecstasy that comes from that mouth-cutting cornmeal that they sprinkle all over the base, or that sweet, cloying ‘cheese’, or those tart, dancing cups of
A pecan pie has been on my kitchen table for the past few days, due to circumstances rendering every other surface or shelf unusable, thanks to badly timed building work and an absent fridge. A mixing bowl sits over it, protecting it from dust and sticky fingers. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned: everybody loves
Solemn, moving, serious: British. As silence fell and the wreaths were lain, even teenagers joined in the mood of reverence. Suddenly it did not matter what the gossip columns were saying about Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, or what latest mischief might arise from the Duchess of Sussex. The great ship of state and of history sailed
Last month, the founder of the Browns restaurant chain was charged with killing his mother. Shocking news, but it feels somehow appropriate. Browns is the traditional lunch spot for families looking to feed their student child, the place where 2.2s are revealed and doomed university girlfriends introduced. Many parents have found themselves spending hundreds on
No matter how much the cost of convenience food rises, the idea that it’s still cheaper than cooking fresh food at home somehow refuses to go away. People can fool themselves as much as they like. But it’s (overpriced) pie in the sky. To be economical, choose chicken thighs over breast; lamb shoulder over leg.
You won’t find it in any of the ‘best pub’ guides that seem to appear every other week, but our local is the best pub simply because it’s, well, our local. And that is why our village has come together to save it from permanent closure. The White Horse Inn in Westleton – one of
There’s no shortage of catastrophic predictions for New York under Zohran Mamdani’s leadership. While the city probably won’t see breadlines, the wildly expensive, exhaustingly derivative restaurants that dominate its food scene are likely to become more dominant. Mamdani’s big pledge on food is to ‘make halal eight bucks again’. But it’s a ‘false promise’ of
On a grey autumn morning, the apples in the National Fruit Collection look vivid. They pile up in pyramids of carmine, salmon and golden-orange around dwarf trees, which have been bred to human proportions. Their branches are well within reach but picking fruit is forbidden. These trees are part of the world’s largest fruit gene
For the first time in decades, King Charles has a new pet dog, a lagotto Romagnolo called Snuff. Queen Camilla is said to have given him the puppy, perhaps more for her benefit than his. She is thought to be mad about foraging for fungi, especially in the area surrounding her home in Wiltshire, where
That Panzer’s Delicatessen in St John’s Wood is called Panzer’s – for the instrument of Blitzkrieg – is mad, until you remember that Jews love to eat near catastrophe, and then it is merely funny. I love Panzer’s so much I am reluctant to share it, but we need all the friends we can get.
You saw Homicide: Life on the Street, right? You know, that gritty TV police drama set in Baltimore. What? Ah, no, you’re thinking of The Wire, that other gritty TV police drama set in Baltimore, the one with Idris Elba and Dominic West. Homicide predates The Wire and was filmed largely around Fells Point and along Baltimore’s historic waterfront. The former City Recreation
