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...]
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...]
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...]
My punishing quest for the best fish and chips in London hit a new low on a return visit to Fish Bone, a much-praised chippie on Cleveland Street in Central London. At lunchtime there is always a queue.When the young man in a hygienic trilby hat (right) served me the lone cod fillet idling in the heated fish display cabinet I told him I wanted a freshly fried one. He balked, insisting it had only been sitting two minutes. I relented.
Bad move. [Read more...]
