Restaurants
Dear Mary: Can I run out on an apprenticeship for my dream interview?
Q. I have been trying to get an apprenticeship in fashion for over a year without success. I just had…
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…
Rextail: a restaurant for billionaire children
Rextail is a restaurant for billionaire children, such as Richie Rich. Its owner, Arcady Novikov, has already opened a restaurant…
Fischer’s is like visiting Vienna without having to go to Austria (thank God)
Fischer’s is Austria made safe for liberals, gays, Jews and other Untermenschen riffraff, because it is a restaurant, not a…
Rhubarb has the loveliest, craziest dining room I have ever seen
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival: the city is full of glassy-eyed narcissists eating haggis pizza off flyers that say Michael Gove:…
L’Escargot is Soho as Soho sees itself
L’Escargot, or the Snail, is a famous restaurant on Greek Street, Soho, opposite the old Establishment club; the oldest French…
At the Chiltern Firehouse, smugness should be on the menu
Here then is Gatsby’s house, after an invasion by the Daily Mail. It is called the Chiltern Firehouse. It is…
Harry’s Bar, where a slice of cake costs €32 – and is worth it
Harry’s Bar is a dull pale box. This is remarkable in Venice, which is a hospice for dying palaces, held…
The rudest restaurants in London
Wong Kei is a mad Chinese restaurant on Wardour Street, Chinatown. Until recently it was considered the rudest restaurant in…
After visiting the Cherwell Boathouse, I might spare Oxford from burning
It is now two decades since I lived in Oxford. I was then a drunk and lonely puddle of a…
Dear Mary: How can I escape the tyranny of teacher presents?
Q. It’s only April and yet I am being emailed by parents who have already taken charge and are drumming…
Gordon Ramsay joins in the posh invasion of Battersea
London House is in Battersea, which some people call South Chelsea, but is more East Wandsworth to my mind; or…
So is Moro a Tory restaurant now?
Moro (‘moorish’ or ‘sexist’) is a Spanish restaurant on Exmouth Market, near the bones of the old Guardian and Observer…
The Fable would do better as an American Psycho theme bar
The Fable is three floors high and two days old, a monster newly hatched on the Holborn Viaduct; deep below…
Dear Mary: What do I do now I haven’t sent a thank-you letter?
Q. Over New Year I stayed with a man who combines being a generous and exciting host with a punctilious…
Dear Mary: How can I hide my tattoo from the in-laws?
Q. I have a tattoo the length of my forearm and am worried it will alienate my new boyfriend’s parents…
Tanya Gold: Child-friendly, sex-free, nut-heavy – just the hotel for my 40th birthday
Woolley Grange is a child-friendly country house hotel that seems, at first, entirely monstrous — a grey Tudor house in…
A restaurant in a synagogue. How strange can it be?
A restaurant in a synagogue may be too mad even for this column but we are Jews, so why not?…
How new food rules could ruin restaurants
Stricter food rules won’t make you any safer – but they could ruin many small restaurants
Tanya Gold on eating at the Shard
What to say about the Shard that isn’t said by the fact it is 1,020 feet high and looks like…
