An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
22 min listen
Amber Guinness is a cook, author, journalist and co-founder of The Arniano Painting School. Her first book, A House Party in Tuscany, is out now. On the podcast she discusses growing up in Tuscany, how to host a successful Tuscan dinner party and the best places to eat in Florence.
It’s the new year, and that means time for resolutions. Many of us will pursue food-and-drink-related goals: eating healthier, eating out less, or trying a 'Dry January' – giving up alcohol for the month. Non-drinkers have more interesting options these days than coffee or Diet Coke. Commercially bottled kombuchas are a plausible substitute for something stronger. Non-alcoholic beers, wines and cocktails are also multiplying, judging from the crush of Instagram ads I receive. As someone in a semi-permanent state of trying to drink just a bit less, I’m always interested in tactics to facilitate sobriety. This year, I tried out mocktail recipes that might help a Dry January feel livelier.
Back in 2000, not one Indian chef in the UK held a Michelin star. For many people, dinner at a curry house meant a formica table, plastic cutlery and warm salad garnishes on Brick Lane. Two decades later, all that has changed. There are seven Michelin-starred Indian restaurants across London and haute cuisine curry houses are taking over swathes of Mayfair and other upmarket areas that were previously the domain of chic French bistros and Italian osterias. So what’s behind the rise of the high-end Indian restaurant? And which are the dishes not to miss? We spoke to four top chefs at our favourite upmarket Indian eateries in the capital to find out.
I tend to hunker down on New Year’s Eve, eschewing parties for my own home. Even when I was young, the prospect of sleeping on someone else’s floor or braving the night bus home in the early hours of the morning didn’t really appeal. But sometimes I worry that that can lead to the night being a damp squib. The way to fix this is a little bit of luxury. Perfect bitesize tastes of luxury. And for me, that means blinis topped with the fanciest, most delicious morsels I can lay my hands on. Drink them with something cold and sparkly, and you won’t regret staying in for one moment. If you are more sociable than I am, these also make the most impressive party snacks – and ones that suggest far more preparation and skill than they actually require.
Last time I visited Toronto, Canada, I stayed in Greektown, home to one of the largest Greek communities in North America. Several scenes from My Big Fat Greek Wedding were filmed here, and street signs are in Greek as well as English. On the day I arrived, jetlagged and disorientated, I happened upon a restaurant that was so authentically Greek I imagined I could smell the pine trees and hear the soft chirp of crickets. A couple of elderly men sat drinking ouzo at the bar, and rather than being led to a table I was taken into the kitchen where Maria (reader, that was her name, what can I do?) was stirring various pots, including a green bean and tomato dish (fasolakia giaxni) and meatballs (soutzoukakia).
Being in possession of a well-kept secret is every wine-buyer’s goal, not least because uncorking an unusual find impresses even the snootiest of guests. English wine-makers have long been trying to break up any residual secrecy about the worthiness of their wines. Not quite new world, not quite old world, English wine was always going to fill an odd space in the market. Confession: I never buy wine from the British isles. Almost anything else has always struck me as both better value and nicer to drink. And then I met Matt Hodgson. Hodgson runs Grape Britannia, a modest but expert shop and bar in Cambridge that sells only English wine (plus some Welsh and one from the Scottish borders).
I love game, me. Not the great game, of course, which is football. But game, real game, the sort that was running about in hedgerows and copses, and in fields of spent brassicas and wintry stubbles, until you shot it. At this time of year there's nothing better, to my mind, than a day out in the country with a gun and a dog, shooting a few brace of pheasant or duck, and then taking them home for a bit of butchery. People talk about from farm to fork. Good for them. I think from trigger to tongue is even better. I know that butchery sounds grisly and may be shocking to the sanitised ears of Tesco man or Waitrose woman. But the fact is eating meat or fish is a grisly business. Regardless of the posh packaging, there’s been blood spilled along the way.
Even if you don’t like Christmas, it’s hard to deny that Christmas dinner is one of the best meals of the year. But for Parisians in 1870, the Christmas meal took an unexpected and macabre turn. While we may think of Paris as being the city of light, good food and fine wine, it’s also the city that once produced a Christmas Day menu of stuffed donkey head, elephant consommé and roasted camel – all courtesy of the Jardin des Plantes zoo. In the late stages of the Franco-Prussian war, Paris found itself surrounded by enemy forces. The Germans aligned themselves with Prussia with a plan to bombard and starve Parisians into submission. All supplies to the city were cut off, meaning there was no meat, fresh vegetables, butter, milk or cheese to be found.
Many of the elements of the Christmas spread have more detractors than admirers. Turkey can seem an undistinguished bird thrust into an undeserved limelight: bland and unwieldy, it’s a far cry from a rich goose or even a regular, moist chicken. Carrots and parsnips – uninspiring. Bread sauce resembles the gruel ladled out to Oliver Twist. Christmas pudding – dense and gluey. And Brussels sprouts, well, enough said. Every year, Christmas dinner-haters crawl out of the woodwork to air their disgust at the traditional meal and find themselves given a surprisingly sympathetic hearing. A 2020 YouGov poll indicated that only around half of us, for example, consider turkey part of our ideal Christmas dinner (it hardly needs saying that for Gen Z the figure is even lower).
Christmas is coming and it isn’t only the goose that’s getting fat – so are you. That’s according to the skinny, pie-dodging miserable lot who make up the public-health lobby. For these people – who are living proof that a lack of sugar makes you cranky – the countdown to Christmas isn’t an opportunity to excite kids about Santa’s sack or splurge on gifts for loved ones; no, it’s an ideal time to freak people out about the dangers of eating and drinking too much. Every year it’s the same. It starts in November. An alcohol-awareness group (a fancy term for the neo-temperance movement) and obesity experts (a grand title for fat-shamers) rattle off press releases about the awful things we’ll do to our guts and livers.
Let Bing sing about a white Christmas, if he insists. My kind of Christmas is more eggnog-toned: yellowy, like old-fashioned incandescent string lights; rich, like real velvet ribbon on presents; topped with pale froth of the most non-utilitarian and fluffy kind; sweet, with a kick of rum or bourbon to redeem it from sentimentality; stippled with a dark sprinkling of freshly grated nutmeg on top to ginger up the olfactory receptors. Uncanonical as it may be to view this time of year through an eggnog-tinted lens, it seems to me that food and wassail are more essential to Christmas than snow. What is the celebration without culinary traditions, even though one man’s festive favourite may be another’s pet peeve?
No overindulgent gourmand worth his salt fails to own a stilton scoop. Mine has a bone handle and Mappin & Webb silver plate. It has an ingenious contraption to release the cylindrical pellet of cheese: a bit like those retro ice cream scoops that, with a little squeeze, crack like a whip, the metal slicing under ice as vicious as a mousetrap. My stilton scoop is gentler. One releases the mouldy blue at one’s own pace, until it falls sensuously on to the plate. It is used just once a year, at Christmas, like the cookie-cutter and the nut-cracker. Why this extended detour about a kitchen utensil? Because one cannot talk about cheese at Christmas without talking of stilton.
I have just been proposed to in a somewhat slatternly tiki bar in Mayfair. Not just any tiki bar, but Trader Vic’s, the Polynesian-themed restaurant and lounge underneath the London Hilton on Park Lane. Approaching its 60th anniversary, the bar has seen better days, but for historical purposes my partner of 12 years decided that this dimly lit den would be the location for the proposal of a lifetime. Then wouldn’t you know it – just two weeks later I discover that this cavern of delight where I spent many birthdays is being evicted and will close on 31 December. Trader Vic’s began in the 1950s, when Victor Jules Bergeron Jr. (Trader Vic himself) teamed up with Western Hotels in the US to turn his already popular tropical-themed bar and restaurant into a franchise.
Not everything in the entire world is going to hell in a half-track. A few days ago, I tasted some South African wines. Although there are many reasons for a gloomy appraisal of South Africa’s prospects, wine is not among them. The industry is benefitting from new investment, encouraged by easier export markets made possible by political change. Even under the previous dispensation, there were excellent vine-yards in the Cape, the product of a fruitful racial compact. When the Huguenot refugees arrived at Table Bay, they brought their oenophile lore and rapidly assimilated with the Dutch settlers who were already establishing themselves. The name Franschhoek survives, as do many French surnames, although the language largely disappeared.
Bacchanalia is the new restaurant from Richard Caring – I sense he would like me to call it a ‘landmark’ or ‘super-restaurant’, so I won’t – in the old Porsche showroom on the corner of Mount Street and Berkeley Square, and all nightingales have fled. Caring, who has doused Britain with his metal Ivys, is the Ludwig of Bavaria of Mayfair. If he hasn’t bought the silver swan tap at Neuschwanstein Castle, he should open negotiations. I will review his interpretation when it appears: what will he do with the Bavarian Alps? Marshmallows I suppose. Or mashed potato.
This time last year, I was disgustingly well organised. Awaiting the arrival of my first baby, with a late December due date, I’d ensured everything was squirrelled or squared away. I’d bought all my presents by October, wrapped them by December; I’d made my Christmas cakes and bought my Terry’s Chocolate Orange. For the first time in my life, I sent Christmas cards to everyone in my address book. I’d even made and frozen the gravy weeks in advance. It was my way of nesting – the baby could arrive when it liked. I was prepared. It can feel that every homemade edible component of Christmas demands commitment: puddings, cakes, mincemeat, it should all be made wildly in advance, and given time to mature. Well, that level of forward-planning has gone out of the window.
From Geoffrey Chaucer’s Tabard and Martin Amis’s Black Cross to Thomas Hardy’s Buck's Head Inn, literature is as replete with pubs as are villages and high streets up and down the land. It is no surprise. They are atmospheric settings for a plot, and places of inspiration and contemplation besides; many authors have written their novels while sitting within them. Above all, they are one of the essential stitches in the fabric of British life. In the words of Hilaire Belloc: ‘But when you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves – for you will have lost the last of England.’ Before my father came to this country in 1971 from East Africa, he read that the British socialised in pubs.
Christmas is coming – but if the geese are getting fat, the turkeys aren’t terribly happy, cooped up indoors on account of avian flu. Around half of the free-range birds produced for Christmas in the UK have been culled or died due to the illness, according to the British Poultry Council – and for those that remain, the government’s anti-infection measures mean they aren’t ranging anything like as freely as before. Some butchers, including the Ginger Pig chain, have announced they aren't selling turkey at all. So if we can’t get a happy turkey, what should we be eating on Christmas Day? Turkeys might seem like the stalwarts of the Christmas feast but they are, after all, New World birds, so latecomers to the festive table in these islands.
‘This dish is very you,’ my husband says, as I serve up 650g of melted, boozy cheese to the two of us for a weekday lunch, alongside a teetering pile of bread cubes. He is, I’m afraid, right: it really is my favourite kind of eating. There’s nothing better than a communal pot in the centre of the table, with everyone leaning over each other. Fondue is fun, as well as being pleasingly old-fashioned, its gooey and silky texture demanding dunking and swooping. And I’d probably treat anyone who didn’t leap at the chance to eat a lot of stringy cheese and bread with mild suspicion. Until now, my life has been mostly fondue-less, thanks to not owning a fondue set. The caquelon, or cauldron, has a low flame underneath it, which keeps the cheese hot while diners eat it.
In early 2020 my family and I were due to fly home from visiting a friend in Oman when the plane encountered a technical problem. We returned to departures and were rebooked on to a flight the following day. British Airways then sent us to a very decent hotel, where we were given rooms and a food voucher. The next day we were taxied back to the airport, and flew to London without incident. What if money went on improving trains instead of pandering to whingers who claim for every minor inconvenience? I then learned that under EU regulations, this relatively minor inconvenience entitled us to additional compensation of £600 each. We were in business class, but had bought all four tickets with frequent-flyer points.
Mriya lives at the end of Old Brompton Road where South Kensington turns into Earl’s Court and, as if by some alchemy, becomes interesting. It is a Ukrainian restaurant, but something more touching too: a memorial and a retreat. It opened in August, in the sixth month of Putin’s war. Twelve of its 15 staff are displaced Ukrainians and their stories are common immigrant stories of renewal and loss. The kitchen porter is a mathematics teacher, the waiter is an English teacher, and the chef, Yurii Kovryzhenko, is one of the most famous in Ukraine. Mriya is the name of the largest cargo aircraft ever built, designed by Ukrainian engineers, which was destroyed by the Russians at the beginning of the war.
Canapés are one of life’s delights and surprises – surprises because drinks party invitations usually give nothing away. Perhaps because ‘nibbles’ is such a hideous word, or perhaps just because of invitation convention, hosts tend simply to put ‘Drinks, 6.30 to 8.30’ on the Paperless Post card. So you arrive with no idea whether you’re in for two hours of fizz on an empty stomach, or for a culinary treat in a succession of miniatures. Always braced for the worst-case scenario – starvation in high heels – I’m overjoyed to spot a tray of canapés coming towards me through the throng, and am pathetically grateful to the host for this beneficence.
25 min listen
John-Paul Flintoff is a journalist, writer and artist who has written a number of books including his most recent, Psalms for the City: Original poetry inspired by the places we call home. On the podcast they discuss John-Paul's early aversion to peas, memories of his mother's experimental cooking and how food aided his recovery from a mental breakdown.
The British playwright Somerset Maugham once said that ‘to eat well in England you should eat breakfast three times a day’. I think he meant it as a jibe, but we should take it as a compliment. Our breakfast is as powerfully evocative of England as any part of our cultural heritage. In The Lion and the Unicorn, stirred to patriotism amid the country’s daily bombardment in the Blitz, George Orwell opined that English civilisation was ‘somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes. It has a flavour of its own’. That flavour is of sizzling bacon, straight from the pan. Rare is the Englishman who doesn’t have strong views on how they like it: toasted bread or fried? Mushrooms or tomatoes?
Some simpering bishops are urging their clergy to make sure that carol services do not interfere with the ship of football. That leads to an obvious conclusion: Christmas is too important to be left to the Church of England. The vulgarities of commercialisation are distressing, but survivable. Last year, one friend became fed up with his brats’ lust for presents and upbraided them: ‘If this goes on, you’ll be given nothing but bibles and prayer books.’ He remembered his father saying the same to him. No doubt his grandparents delivered similar thunderbolts in their day. Thus life rolls on.
Many things about Belgium are impenetrably mysterious to the incoming foreigner: the commune system, which language to use, how to politely eat moules. But few are as cryptic as the menu of sauces that accompany Belgian frites. Ketchup, tartare, barbecue and mayonnaise seem fine. But what is Samourai? Andalouse? Mega? Unlike many great Belgian things that have successfully been exported (Trappist beer, chocolate, Tintin, speculoos biscuits, Audrey Hepburn), frites can only be experienced on home turf. And my, aren’t they so Belgian. First, the friteries or fritkots in Dutch – chip shop kiosks found wedged on to street corners and in city squares – are totally egalitarian and the service is totally grumpy.
There is no shortage of foodstuffs (or people) jostling for admission into the hallowed hall of ‘national treasures’. Perhaps the best litmus test for right of entry is time-proven popularity, and appeal across class and generational divides. No mere passing flavour of the month or millennial indulgence. Something that unites us all in affection. Branston Pickle ticks the boxes. Branston and cheddar cheese were made for each other. Like jam and clotted cream, or rhubarb and custard; brought together they become more than the sum of their parts. One brings fruity tartness in perfect juxtaposition to the other’s creamy richness. Many a grand dinner party features an elaborate cheeseboard accompanied by membrillo and pickled figs.
I am incapable of throwing anything away in the kitchen. In my fridge, there must be at least half a dozen pots of bits and bobs, dishes of leftovers and scraps. In my freezer, a bag of parmesan rinds has filled slowly, each intended to be chucked into a pot of soup or stew to bring savoury depth, and there’s even an optimistic box of pea pods that I’m convinced I will one day turn into a stock to make an authentic risi e bisi. All await a future transformation, some kitchen wizardry that will rescue something that is a little past its best. Although I confess I sometimes find myself buying a bunch of ingredients just to use up something I’ve squirrelled away, or plain forgotten about and left a touch too long.
At the end of last century, when there were grounds for optimism about Russia’s future, an increasingly popular word expressed this: stabilnost – stability. Russians would roll it round their mouths as a Texan would use ‘goddam’, or an English after-dinner drinker of an earlier vintage might evoke his enjoyment of the beverage by letting the word ‘port’ linger across his palate. I do not suppose that there is much talk of stabilnost in Moscow these days, and we could do with some of it here. Still, there are ways of banishing dull care, if only for a few hours, and drinking fine claret is one of them. The other evening, I was at a tasting of Branaire-Ducru and my first conclusion was that I had not drunk it nearly often enough. It is a St Julien.