Food
A new addition to north London’s underwhelming restaurants: Café Hampstead reviewed
Café Hampstead is a new café in — big reveal! — Hampstead, the gaudiest of the old villages on the…
How Christmas lunch became Christmas dinner
It was a culinary triumph. My hosts do not spend much time in the UK, and are determined to entertain…
It’s survived universal suffrage and two world wars: restaurant Rules reviewed
Rules looks as if it voted for Brexit, and now finds itself inside an eternal Christmas Eve, where it is…
Farmacy’s food is the worst I have eaten in London
Farmacy, which opened last year, is London’s most fashionable ‘clean eating’ restaurant; it is, therefore, a restaurant for people who…
Forget open-plan kitchens – the traditional dining room is back
Dining rooms have been in the doldrums for decades. Even Mary Berry has given up on hers. ‘Most of us,…
The queen of hotels
Jean-Georges at the Connaught — formerly the Prince of Saxe-Coburg Hotel, but it was renamed during the first world war,…
Cabbages and kings
The first pastry cook Chaïm Soutine painted came out like a collapsed soufflé. The sitter for ‘The Pastry Cook’ (c.1919)…
Elle Decoration meets pub food
The Mandrake is a new ‘design hotel’ in London, which means it is for people who treat Elle Decoration magazine…
In silent misremembrance
Foxlow is near Golden Square in west Soho, where drunken hacks used to take long drunken lunches before having stupid…
Our big fat problem
The good news is that Theresa May has dropped the threat to withdraw universal free school meals. Thank God (and…
A perfect feast with Roger Allam
J Sheekey is one of Richard Caring’s older, and better, restaurants. Since he has dowsed the suburbs of London in…
Tapas but no phantom
I am always surprised to remember that Andrew Lloyd Webber has taste; it must be remembrance of Cats. I was…
Cold foam and spindly legs
Bibendum is a hushed restaurant on the first floor of the Michelin House on the Fulham Road. (Bibendum is the…
Stop lecturing fatties – it’s really not their fault
I’ve noticed for some time now that thin people, genuinely slim ones, have a secret loathing of fatties. Kindly though…
Prue Leith: British hotels still serve filthy food
Why do we assume all doctors are good? We don’t think there are no bad cooks or bad plumbers. But…
The RA’s new restaurant prioritises its art over its customers
The Keeper’s House sits in the basement of Burlington House, a restaurant in disguise. It is quite different from the…
Word of the week: 'concept'
‘It was nothing special, but it was a pub,’ said my husband, looking up from his copy of Bar magazine…
Confess your guilty displeasures
It is now entirely cool to adore the uncool. But what about the things we can’t admit to not enjoying?
The horrors of Soho House’s country outpost
It is summer and the listless metropolitan thinks of grass. It cannot afford to stay at Durslade Farmhouse, Somerset, a…
The most beautiful restaurant in London – from the outside
Batman owned the Criterion in The Dark Knight, but could he do anything about British Telecom? Savini at Criterion, an…
It starts with tidying your sock drawer. It ends with emptying your mind
It starts with tidying your sock drawer. It ends with emptying your mind
The Parliament Hill Café is awful. I’m sorry they saved it
The Parliament Hill Café is a drab glass box at the bottom of Hampstead Heath, near the farmers’ market and…
Bellanger review: a posh Islington restaurant for semi-ordinary people
Islington is a bellwether, and also a joke: the most unequal borough in London, where social housing leans against £4…
The new Wheeler’s is the worst thing Marco Pierre White has ever done
Wheeler’s is such a dreadful restaurant that I wonder if Marco Pierre White even knows his name is on it.…
A gastronomic moron’s view of a legendary French brasserie
Before we left for Sunday lunch at the Les Deux Garçons restaurant, Aix-en-Provence, I checked the reviews on Tripadvisor. I’m…
