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Food hall overload? I’m more for supporting great new indie restaurants

Why I’d prefer to support ambitious new indie restaurants rather than go down the increasingly commercialised food hall route.

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Having a Barrowland ball, cracking a crustacean – Glasgow belongs to me

Quite a day. Two Glasgow bucket list musts ticked off in a couple of hours: Crabshakk restaurant and Barrowland Ballroom. A feast of fresh seafood in still hip Finnieston, then Father John Misty in full sardonic flow at the legendary Gallowgate venue.

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Calçots charring on the grill – it’s my Catalan party and I’ll cry if I want to

It’s that time of year again and as I prepare to barbecue a big bundle of calçots in my rather blustery backyard the whole celebration is tinged with sadness. Because these long thin Catalan onions that resemble a leek will forever be associated with Lunya and Iberica, now departed.

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I wrote off The Alan too soon – James Hulme has beefed up the menu magnificently

James Hulme is as meat savvy as any chef around. When he ran his own restaurant, The Moor, in Heaton Moor he struck up a working relationship with a farm near Buxton. He has brough that same farm to fork ethos to his new Manchester city centre role, heading up the kitchen at The Alan Hotel

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Arrivederci Panzanella – Wet Nellie must be the best way ever to use up stale bread

What have Panzanella, Pancotto, Ribollita and Bolton Brewis all got in common? And why are they trumped by the ultimate Wet Nellie – a dessert described by Parkers Arms chef Stosie Madi as part of the DNA of the UK’s No.1 gastropub? The answer is stale bread. Frugality made delish by using your loaf, not binning it. Bread and butter pud then? Not on your Nellie!

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