food you know as you've never known it
The messsage engraved under the lid of the silver hamper made it official: I’d been named Online Food Writer of the Year at the Fortnum & Mason Food & Drink Awards 2013.
I accepted congratulations from television presenter Claudia Winkleman, who was hosting the awards ceremony in Fortnum & Mason’s Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon, and Ewan Venters, this grand English institution’s CEO. [Read more...]
Order a Margherita at the best pizzerias of Naples and you typically get a pizza topped with fior di latte, a mozzarella made from cow’s milk. Don’t believe any Neapolitan who tells you the only mozzarella his brethren will tolerate on a pizza is from the milk of domestic water buffalo. [Read more...]
With a gleaming white La Marzocco FB80 espresso machine for an altar and a pop-up tent for a canopy, barista Gennaro Di Mattia presides on hallowed ground. When the clouds open a path for the sun into the narrow churchyard beside St George’s Bloomsbury, his humble Espresso Base is transformed, as if by divine decree, into one of London’s most enchanted coffee sanctuaries. [Read more...]
I fancy Poppies and it isn’t only because of the Collectif retro dress uniforms modelled by the Popettes, as owner Pops Newland calls his fetching, hard-working servers. I have full confidence in how Poppies chooses, batters and deep-fries its fish, both at the original opened across from Spitalfields in 2011 and the brand new duplex branch in Camden Town. [Read more...]
My quest for the 10 top fish and chip shops in London was initially guided by a host of objective factors: Origin, handling, freshness and shape of the fillets. Cleanliness and temperature of frying fat. Composition and consistency of batter. Cooking time. Draining time.But as my frustration grew, with even London’s most famous chippies proving themselves more adept at cutting corners than potatoes, my focus shifted from objective considerations to more emotional ones. Forget state-of-the-art oil filtration machines. I sought only fish and chips with a taste, texture and aroma so evocative I’d be transported back in time to family road trips along the North Yorkshire coast. For a kid who grew up in New York this was asking a lot. The closest my family ever got to the Yorkshire coast was Brighton. Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. [Read more...]
artist’s model for Golden Patty Award
How bad do the six competitors in the 7/8 April BurgerMonday #LondonBurgerBash at Camden Town Brewery want it? How confident are they of getting the mosts vote?
You might get some idea from reading about their designs for winning the one burger everyone wants most, the one burger you can’t eat: The Golden Patty Award version 2.0 is an original work by artist Lewis Stringer, creator of the Burger Bell Jar.
The half dozen burgers to be served at both the Sunday afternoon and Monday night sessions of the #LondonBurgerBash half marathon are below, in no particular order. The list is followed by beer matches proposed for each burger by Camden Town Brewery’s Head Brewer James Garstang. [Read more...]
Judging six big-league burgers in a single go is no job to be taken lightly. The London Overground may stop at Kentish Town West station, directly over the railway arches of Camden Town Brewery, the competition venue, but it’s up to you to get your mind and body in the right place.
To motivate you for the next @BurgerMonday #LondonBurgerBush 7/8 April I’ve released this video of the inaugural bash held 29 October 2012.
The competitors may not be the same this time as they were in October but the demands on you the voter will be just as great. Promise.
The six new chefs at the April bash are competing in the second of four burger-offs in the group stage. The top vote-getter of this heat books a place in the #LondonBurgerBash finals, to be held in 2014.
What a shame Datte Foco didn’t have a more central location. Or a more stylish look. Or a more hospitable welcome for the stroller mums of Stoke Newington. Or more business savvy. Or more of a story to sell to the food media. [Read more...]
