Food

Fenchurch in the Sky Garden – like going for dinner in Total Recall

30 May 2015 9:00 am

Fenchurch is a restaurant that is scared of terrorists. It cowers at the top of 20 Fenchurch Street, a skyscraper…

Le Perche: every farmyard looks like a painting

Beauty, tragedy and black pudding: the delights of Normandy

16 May 2015 9:00 am

I am compiling a list of the best black puddings. It began in Spain when I encountered my first morcilla…

There’s only one place to mourn another Labour loss

16 May 2015 9:00 am

Ed is a plank. He was always a plank — and now he is in Ibiza being a plank. Plankety–plankety-plank:…

Could any cook help me overcome my terror of tapioca?

9 May 2015 9:00 am

There are those who claim that this column is idiosyncratic. They have seen nothing yet. I am about to mention…

(Photo: Liavittone)

The Portrait restaurant: a secret glade of stone and brick, suspended above Trafalgar Square

2 May 2015 9:00 am

The Portrait Restaurant lives at the top of the National Portrait Gallery, London. It is fiercely modern, but likeable. You…

Does the English language need a Norwegian lesson?

25 April 2015 9:00 am

‘Ten Norwegian phrases that don’t exist in English but should,’ said the headline. So I had a little look, as…

The Ivy Chelsea Garden: Richard Caring has finally built a restaurant I admire

18 April 2015 9:00 am

The Ivy Chelsea Garden is a restaurant inside an Edwardian house disguised as a Tudor house on the King’s Road;…

A cemetery with cocktails: La Coupole and the spirit of the brasserie

4 April 2015 8:00 am

La Coupole, Montparnasse, is the grandest and most famous of the old pre-war Parisian brasseries; that is, if you have…

A censored hymn to motorway misery

28 March 2015 9:00 am

Service record The government is to form a design panel to improve motorway services stations. These have not always charmed…

What to do with a squirrel (without getting prosecuted)

21 March 2015 9:00 am

Squirrels have much to teach us – once they’ve finished eating our nuts

Kitty Fisher’s: proof that the PM has good taste in restaurants, if not in friends

21 March 2015 9:00 am

David Cameron is too cowardly, or too cynical, to debate with Ed ‘Two or Possibly Three Kitchens’ Miliband — which…

Is the Dorchester the designated grand hotel for fat people? The portions at its new grill say so

7 March 2015 9:00 am

The Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, is a cake floating in space. All grand hotels create a parallel universe in which…

Rowleys is Did Mummy Love Me Really? food – and it’s perfect

21 February 2015 9:00 am

I think Rowley’s is the perfect restaurant; but I am really a gay man. Rowley’s is at 113 Jermyn Street…

Rivea: a London annexe to the world’s maddest expensive restaurant

7 February 2015 9:00 am

Rivea (stupid name) is in the bowels of Bulgari in Knightsbridge, a hotel which looks like a vast Virgin Upper…

I want to do for field rations what Jamie Oliver did for school dinners

17 January 2015 9:00 am

Hell’s Kitchen My ambition to open a fish and chip shop in Mogadishu has not happened yet, though I remain…

The real reason there’s a queue outside the Cereal Killer Café

10 January 2015 9:00 am

The Cereal Killer Café is a temple to cereal on Brick Lane, east London. It serves only cereal — and also…

How to win MasterChef - and why salmon is the fish of the devil

13 December 2014 9:00 am

If ever my near-neighbour William Sitwell is killed in a bizarre shooting accident and I end up taking his place…

The most preposterous restaurant to have opened in London this year

13 December 2014 9:00 am

Somerset House, a handsome Georgian palace on the Thames, was once the office of the Inland Revenue, and the courtyard was…

The hotels trying to turn Cornwall into Kensington

29 November 2014 9:00 am

Mousehole is a charming name; it is almost a charming place. It is a fishing village on Mount’s Bay, Cornwall,…

A buffet in an Egyptian tomb

15 November 2014 9:00 am

Atlantico is a vast buffet inside the Lopesan Costa Meloneras Resort Spa and Casino in Gran Canaria. The Lopesan Costa…

Barry Humphries’s diary: The bookshop ruined by Harry Potter

8 November 2014 9:00 am

Do fish have loins? Last Tuesday, in a pretentious restaurant, I ordered a ‘loin of sea trout’. It looked just…

Want to shake hands with your dinner? Beast is your kind of restaurant

1 November 2014 9:00 am

Beast is next to Debenhams on Oxford Street and it is not conventionally beast-like; rather it is monetised and bespoke…

Prue Leith’s diary: I want to be green, but I’ve got some flights to take first...

18 October 2014 9:00 am

‘Please God, make me good, but not yet.’ I know the feeling. As I get older and more deeply retired,…

Gymkhana is morally disgusting – and fortunately the food’s disgusting too

18 October 2014 9:00 am

Gymkhana is a fashionable Indian restaurant in Albemarle Street. It was, according to its natty website, ‘inspired by Colonial Indian…

Today’s Disney princesses look like Russian mafia wives. This is their café

4 October 2014 9:00 am

The Disney Café is a gaudy hell on the fourth floor of Harrods, Knightsbridge. It is adjacent to the Harrods…