Wish me luck. I’m about to embark on recreating the Roasted Chicken Wing Garum that is a party piece at Noma in Copenhagen. I’m scaling down the portions required by the Fermentation Lab of the global game-changing three-star restaurant and adapting my own less hi-tech equipment for the experiment. They’ve allowed me to share the […]
Jonathan Meades pontificating on Expressionist Architecture’s debt to the Gothic. Classic Meades. Against a backdrop exemplifying his polemic – Hamburg’s Chilehaus. Ten storey 1920s office block built on wealth from a South American saltpetre venture; ornate, curved showcase for 4.8 million dark bricks, UNESCO World Heritage Site. As Meades proclaims to camera in his 2008 […]
One bane of a food writer’s life is reviewing a restaurant only to discover post haste that the menu’s about to change. Big time. Fortunately when I wrote up a September visit to Kala in Manchester my focus was on the glories of their featherblade steak, a signature dish across all the Elite Bistros group. […]
Food heroes – there are many claimants. Few are a patch on a monocled Major credited with saving traditional British cheese. From the Fifties onwards war hero Patrick Lowry Cole Holwell Rance promoted the real thing through his polemical writing and regular stock of 150 cheeses at his village shop in Streatley, Berkshire. Current champions […]
Those Facebook memories to share that pop up are a relentless reminder of time passing. Was it really 11 years ago I laid out an unplucked pheasant alongside a seasonal red cabbage on our garden table to pictorially celebrate my personal ‘Game for a Laugh’? (that cultural reference dates me instantly) during Manchester Food and […]
Serendipity brings on a random snail trail. Flicking through the index of Brown and Mason’s magnum opus, The Taste of Britain, to clarify my thoughts on Kentish cobnuts – for the first of my ‘Autumn Is The Season’ vignettes – I encountered the Mendip Wallfish and was immediately intrigued. Since when my mind has been […]
Denver, San Diego, Portland, Seattle, Boston, and in a few one horse towns in between, the magnet of new wave American brewhouses and tap rooms has proved irresistible. So much less concentration required compared with serious winery tastings. Not that I don’t take beer seriously – but more as serious refreshment. No swirling, sniffing and […]
This is Kingston Black. An awkward specimen. Not the most yielding of cider apples. The tannins in the juice can be raspingly bitter. And yet aficionados seek out gnarled old trees with a grudging affection. Getting its fermentation right is a kind of Cider Holy Grail – to achieve the perfect, refreshing balance between savoury […]
Damn it. I’ve never been in Kent on St Philibert’s Day to join in the green nutting and maybe never will. August 20, traditional start of the cobnut picking season, has come and gone again. ‘’Garden of England’ or ‘One Big Lorry Park’, whatever, in late summer the county produces one of my favourite foodstuffs, […]
It’s always great when some of your favourite food and drink acts get the major plaudits. The weekend buzz was all about Erst in Ancoats being praised to the skies by Observer critic Jay Rayner. Deservedly so. I last reviewed it pre-pandemic and still remember a remarkable experience. Equally immense has been the contribution of […]