Olivia Potts is the Guild of Food Writers’ Cookery Writer of the Year 2025. She hosts The Spectator’s Table Talk podcast and writes Spectator Life's The Vintage Chef column
I am, for the most part, a rule follower and a people pleaser. It’s one of the reasons I love baking, which essentially amounts to a set of instructions designed to make something to be shared and bring joy. But if someone recommends something to me, I can be resistant to it for ages. The
33 min listen
Candice Chung is a food writer whose work has been featured in many publications, including the Guardian. Her first book, Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You, is out now. On the podcast, she tells Liv about her earliest memories of food growing up in Hong Kong, why trying lasagne for the first time was
27 min listen
This week: Sophia Falkner profiles some of the eccentric personalities we stand to lose when Keir Starmer purges the hereditary peers; Roger Lewis’s piece on the slow delight of an OAP coach tour is read by the actor Robert Bathurst; Olivia Potts reviews two books in the magazine that use food as a prism through
When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, the chef Olia Hercules lost the will to cook. With food so deeply connected to pleasure and to her Ukrainian roots, it somehow felt like an unbearable frivolity to be thinking about recipes while family members were under fire. ‘How,’ she asked, ‘can I cook while my brother
Salad cream makes me feel oddly patriotic. It’s one of those products that is so distinctively British that it has not travelled. Elsewhere, it is eschewed as a poor man’s mayonnaise. Its chief ingredients are hardboiled egg yolks, English mustard, vinegar and thick cream, and it was, in fact, the first product that Heinz produced
A few years ago, a friend wrote a cookery book for the UK market, full of gorgeous dishes, many of them esoterically British. It was snapped up by an American publisher who, as well as converting my friend’s careful metric measurements into loosey-goosey volume-based cup measures, queried a couple of her more British ingredients, one
22 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Sean Thomas reflects on the era of lads mags (1:07); John Power reveals those unfairly gaming the social housing system (6:15); Susie Moss reviews Ripeness by Sarah Moss (11:31); Olivia Potts explains the importance of sausage rolls (14:21); and, Rory Sutherland speaks in defence of the Trump playbook (18:09).
47 min listen
OnlyFans is giving the Treasury what it wants – but should we be concerned? ‘OnlyFans,’ writes Louise Perry, ‘is the most profitable content subscription service in the world.’ Yet ‘the vast majority of its content creators make very little from it’. So why are around 4 per cent of young British women selling their wares
Be under no illusions: this is not a food memoir. Chopping Onions on My Heart is a linguistic exploration of belonging; a history of the Jewish community in Iraq; and an urgent endeavour to save an endangered language. Above all, it is a reckoning with generational trauma. The subjects of Samantha Ellis’s previous books include
‘Sausages,’ my son says to me, leaning forward from the back of the car, with the authority and confidence only a three-year-old can truly muster. ‘Sausages?’ I reply distractedly, while navigating a particularly awkward roundabout. We’ve been talking about my job, but I assume his train of thought has taken a lunchier direction. ‘Yes, sausages.
‘Nothing will surely ever taste so hateful as nursery tapioca,’ wrote Elizabeth David. She’s not alone in her hatred of the stuff: tapioca pudding has become a shorthand for those childhood dishes we look back on with horror. It’s exactly those dishes that I’m trying to restore to their former glory – if such a
33 min listen
Daria Lavelle was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and raised in New York. Her work explores themes of identity and belonging and her short stories have appeared in The Deadlands, Dread Machine, and elsewhere. Daria is the author of the critically acclaimed new novel Aftertaste which explores food, grief and the uncanny. On the podcast she tells Liv
Iam standing in my kitchen preparing kidneys for devilling. Snipping their white cores away piece by piece until they come free and I’m left with just the wibbly, burgundy kidney, ready for their spiced flour, I pause. There is no denying that even fresh raw kidneys can smell a little… challenging. And for one moment
25 min listen
Mary-Ellen McTague is a chef based in Manchester. She is the culinary driving force behind Aunbury, 4244, the Creameries and her newest venture, Pip at the Treehouse Hotel. Mary-Ellen is also the co-founder of Eat Well MCR, which has delivered almost 100,000 meals across Greater Manchester since 2020 to those sidelined by poverty. On the
I have never seen a baked Alaska in the wild. Have you? I knew what they looked like, of course, all meringue cheekbones and technicolor interior, but I haven’t actually come across one. For whatever reason, they seem to be an endangered species – so I took to making them myself. The pudding was invented
Have you ever suffered from museum blindness? A complete overwhelm at the sheer amount of stuff – often quite similar stuff – that prevents you from focusing on any one item? I know I have. Two-thirds of the way around a museum, even one I have true enthusiasm for, I find my eyes sliding off
20 min listen
Roger Pizey is a baker, chef and one of the most influential pâtissiers in the UK. He started his culinary journey as an apprentice at La Gavroche under Albert Roux before taking on the role of head of pastry at Marco Pierre White’s Harveys, during the time it achieved three Michelin stars. He has since
40 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Would Trump really bomb Iran, asks Paul Wood (1:38); Katy Balls interviews Health Secretary Wes Streeting on NHS reform, Blairism and Game of Thrones (8:38); Olivia Potts examines the history – and decline – of the Easter staple, roast lamb (18:25); the explorer Benedict Allen says Erling Kagge and Neil
While the US continues to use the price of chicken eggs as a political (American) football, closer to home our concern is with eggs of a sweeter kind. This year has seen chocolate prices rise dramatically. The price of cocoa had remained stable for decades, but in November 2023 it rocketed and has remained high
Roast lamb is as expected on the Easter table as turkey is at Christmas. But as a nation, we are falling out of love with lamb. Meat consumption in Britain is at its lowest level since records began, and according to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), lamb has been in particular decline for
