Food
Fenchurch in the Sky Garden – like going for dinner in Total Recall
Fenchurch is a restaurant that is scared of terrorists. It cowers at the top of 20 Fenchurch Street, a skyscraper…
Beauty, tragedy and black pudding: the delights of Normandy
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
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?
There are those who claim that this column is idiosyncratic. They have seen nothing yet. I am about to mention…
The Portrait restaurant: a secret glade of stone and brick, suspended above Trafalgar Square
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?
‘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
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
La Coupole, Montparnasse, is the grandest and most famous of the old pre-war Parisian brasseries; that is, if you have…
What to do with a squirrel (without getting prosecuted)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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...
‘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
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
The Disney Café is a gaudy hell on the fourth floor of Harrods, Knightsbridge. It is adjacent to the Harrods…