Grüße aus Hansaland – how Hamburg expresses its Baltic Zeitgeist

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 […]

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What a carve up at Kala as guinea fowl rules the autumnal roost

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.  […]

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Autumn is the season – Mont d’Or, the one true Vacherin

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 […]

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The Edinburgh Castle’s ‘Trust the Chef’ is a proper game changer

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 […]

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How the Rocket Man created a launchpad for my edible snail trail

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 […]

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