The debut of the youngandfoodish PizzaTuesday series at Datte Foco was no event for sprinters. The entrants on Tuesday night were all analytically minded marathoners of good taste who know an endurance tasting when they see one. So extraordinary was the restraint exhibited by these distance runners in the event’s earliest stages that it threatened to trample the self-confidence of pizzaiolo Herbie Leonelli. He is unaccustomed to people limiting themselves to just 2 or 3 small slices of his authentic pizza bianca romana. It must have killed him to see a sizeable pile of unclaimed pieces left behind on the tray. >>Continue reading

You don’t have to be a pizza obsessive to attend a Pizza Tuesday but you do risk becoming one if you do. With this series, youngandfoodish.com elevates the pizza experience via informal tastings, demos and discussions at London’s most distinctive pizzerias. There is, however, an ulterior motive: by assembling groups of passionate eaters, no one is limited to trying 1 or 2 varieties. Pizza is best played as a team sport. >>Continue reading

These days it’s easy to pick out the Italian expats on Stoke Newington Church St. They’re the ones picking their jaws up from the pavement after having spotted the words DATTE FOCO – slang for “light yourself on fire” – spelled out in white letters on the shop window beside the Three Crowns pub. Datte Foco could be interpreted here in the baking or eating sense. But many Italians recognise it as a Roman way of telling a friend, good-naturedly, to go burn in hell. >>Continue reading

Few clichés in food criticism are as vacuous as this observation commonly applied to exotic cuisines:

Not all dishes will be to all tastes…

The last to use it was Matthew Norman of The Guardian in his Weekend magazine review of the London Szechuan restaurant My Old Place.

I challenge him or anyone else who’s ever shared this revelation to name 20 restaurants – no, make it 1 restaurant – where all dishes will in fact be to all tastes.

While many attack the Chinese for repressing human rights or restraining the value of their currency, The Guardian Weekend magazine’s Matthew Norman may be the first opinion writer for a major national newspaper to call them out en masse for undervaluing their vegetables. In his slapdash review on Saturday, 16th January of My Old Place (not the original of this London Szechuan restaurant – aka Gourmet San – on Bethnal Green Road but its spinoff near London’s Liverpool Street Station), the restaurant critic writes that “the last thing you expect from even the finest Chinese chef is the showing of respect to the veg.”

Oh, really? >>Continue reading

As an amateur barista who’s been through 7 home espresso machines in a dozen years I understand the appeal of a foolproof model that makes you the same beautiful espresso every day. With most semiautomatic machines you need to get the beans, grind, measure and tamping pressure just right and then hope the machine’s volatile brewing pump is not sputtering nonsense to at least have the possibility of a properly extracted espresso falling into your cup. If you’ve received one of these recalcitrant appliances for Christmas you may already be pondering the ethics of regifting the bloody thing, perhaps as a wedding present for your ex-partner who’s marrying your former best mate. >>Continue reading

I could never tell if my friend the French actor Eric Elmosnino was amused, annoyed or merely bored when he was ribbed about being born to play Serge Gainsbourg. Although Eric’s scruffy appearance bears a strong likeness to the late singer-songwriter in his early years, it was the prominent bump in his nose that invariably evoked the profile of the eternally hip French legend. >>Continue reading

photo by Brian Jones

Anyone who came here looking for a Cinderella story will be disappointed: The lead character in this Covent Garden tale is less an Eliza Doolittle than a Danny Didmuch. His fall from grace is revealed on a cold and rainy Thursday in December, when the former food critic of a major daily newspaper and the author of seven books is spotted peddling potato pancakes to posh patrons dashing to the Royal Opera House for a performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Tsarina’s Slippers. The London latke lad cannot get too worked up about the ballet shoes of a Russian princess when his immediate needs are Neoprine wellies and an Astro-Thermo underwear suit. >>Continue reading

The technique used by Rome’s renowned Caffè Sant’Eustachio to produce an astoundingly thick, foamy head of crema atop its signature Gran Caffè is a closely guarded secret. Screens on each side of the Astoria espresso machines block the view of nosey cafenatics seeking a peek at any covert manoeuvres performed by the baristas. Author/blogger David Lebovitz suspects that a small amount of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) is added to the water to agitate the foaming action as espressos are pulled. My contacts at illy in Trieste and the incomparable Caffè Terzi in Bologna agree that some form of foaming agent is used. If so, the powder is likely added out of view and the screens are merely props in a theatrical illusion.

Two dear colleagues would be visiting from LA and I had to plan the meals and coffee breaks for their London stopover. The pressure I felt was considerable: Were these demanding food obsessives coming directly from California and not via Italy my task would have been difficult enough. But knowing they would be arriving with the incomparable flavours of Sicily and Piedmont fresh in their minds made my challenge all the more daunting. >>Continue reading