Trump's drug war | The Spectator

The best bargain burgundies

Apropos the subject of this column, videlicet, wine, a friend told me an arresting story about the once-famous British theater critic and playwright Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980). Sometime in the 1960s, when the prickly Gamal Abdel Nasser ruled Egypt, Tynan went sailing on the Nile. One night, he came ashore to enjoy dinner at the Luxor Hotel. The wine list was impressive. He ordered a famous bottle that cost practically nothing. The head waiter swept over to tell him, so sorry, they’d drunk the wine out. Tynan manfully looked again at the list and asked for the second best bottle. Alas, the waiter replied, that wine, too, had been exhausted. “Well, what do you recommend?” Tynan asked. To which the answer was: “We have no wine of any kind.” That hasn’t happened to me yet.

Zoe Strimpel

The cult of Erewhon

“So naturally the first thing I did when I got to California was go to Erewhon and get their hot bar because I have no self-control. I personally love Erewhon,” says Marianna Moore, a food influencer with nearly one million followers, a beautiful face, slightly gross online recipes and comic flair. She then tucks into a plate of tofu sticks, kelp noodles, Japanese sweet potato and buffalo cauliflower. At the end, she says with a smirk: “Was this worth $28? I don’t know! I couldn’t tell you.” She keeps on munching. I’ve not been able to find the seaweed gel or lion’s mane mushrooms in the form they are sold in Erewhon Having been studiously following food content on Instagram for nearly a year, I am finally finding my feet in the thicket of viral trends.

Loyd Grossman

Locatelli has entered the premier league of museum dining

Does your museum feel tired and run down? Is the entrance unwelcoming? The bookshop shabby? The restaurant a mere café? If so, call Annabelle Selldorf, the German-American architect whose talent and sensitivity have made her the go-to person for reviving weary museums. Her recent transformation of the Frick in New York has been widely acclaimed and she will soon start work on the Wallace Collection in London. But the latest masterwork has seen Selldorf sprinkle her fairy dust on the Sainsbury Wing of London’s National Gallery. Those with long architectural memories will recall how in 1984, the then Prince of Wales christened the proposed new wing of the Gallery “a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.

Marc Oestreich

Beneath the foam of the Pisco Sour cocktail lies a border feud

The Pisco Sour is poured by Maria, my business partner’s wife and the quiet boss of a small empire of bars and restaurants. It is served in the living room, the windows cracked open, friends drifting in and out, the kids out of school. It has rained and something in the air has lifted. Then comes the coupe glass: perfectly chilled, capped in silken foam, dots of bitters shaped like a closing parenthesis. I’ve had Pisco Sours before. But this one makes sense. In Peru, the drink is practically sacred, served at protests and presidential inaugurations alike The ingredients shouldn’t work – harsh grape brandy, raw citrus, egg – but in the glass, they harmonize. Chocolate at the edge, grape in the middle, something like spring itself underneath.

Food & Drink