“There’s no good tea, there’s no bad tea,” Didier Jumeau-Lafond of Dammann Frères, the exclusive Parisian sellers of 3,500 fine teas, told the 13 September gathering at the Galleria Illy pop-up. “There is just one tea, the one you like.” [Read more...]
For Galleria Illy Tea Talk, Didier Jumeau-Lafond of Dammann Frères Brews Cup of Anti-Snob Snobbism
21 September 2011 By 2 Comments
Review of my Paris local, before bistro was named world’s 11th best restaurant
I wrote this review of Le Chateaubriand for bloomberg in Feb 2007. Back then it was not yet the world’s 11th best restaurant, but merely the local bistro, albeit a magical one, in my Paris neighbourhood. The only thing “11th” about it was the arrondissement. [Read more...]
28 April 2010 By 2 Comments
Being drunk is not an excuse to eat crap
When I’ve put London food obsessives in the position of defending their high praise for the rubbery salt beef at the Beigel Bake on Brick Lane they’ve invariably blamed their lapse in good taste on drunkenness. It’s open 24 hours. It’s quick. It’s cheap. It’s filling. Blah. Blah. Blah.
Likewise, discriminating young Londoners who, when within three Chardonnays of sober, wouldn’t be caught dead with a Tesco tomato in their organic jute carrier bags can be seen stuffing their reddened faces with questionable kebabs from an Upper Street shop that recycles its moulded and fully cooked meat, unrefrigerated and unprotected, for hours at a time.
At the risk of sounding like a drunken pensioner, things aren’t what they used to be, at least not for me. [Read more...]
2 October 2009 By 24 Comments
A sucker for honesty
In his pedestrian review of Le Bouchon Breton’s new sibling at Spitalfields, The Independent’s Terry Durack begins with the observation that “an honest waiter is hard to find”. This ostensibly explains why he was both surprised and impressed by the candour of François Bertrand, the brasserie’s restaurant manager:
Tell him you are dithering between the steak frites and the moules frites, and he will tell you the steak frites is good, but no better or worse than any other steak frites around town. The moules, on the other hand, he says, are done better at only one or two other places.
It’s odd that Durack would single out Bertrand as that rarity, an honest waiter, when he identifies Bertrand as the restaurant manager. And even if, as Durack might argue, Bertrand was assuming the responsibilities and posture of an honest head waiter, he might have been doing so only because he recognized the critic and thought it advisable to take charge of his table and do whatever was necessary to prevent him from ordering and ultimately slamming the mediocre steak frites. [Read more...]
30 October 2008 By 1 Comment
