Olivia Potts

Olivia Potts is a former criminal barrister who retrained as a pastry chef. She co-hosts The Spectator’s Table Talk podcast and writes Spectator Life's The Vintage Chef column. A chef and food writer, she was winner of the Fortnum and Mason's debut food book award in 2020 for her memoir A Half Baked Idea.

What makes a pasty Cornish?

12 June 2021 9:00 am

This week, world leaders are doing what countless Brits do every summer: unpacking their bags in a charming corner of…

Comforting brown food from the Domestic Goddess

7 November 2020 9:00 am

Nigella Lawson is many things to many people: the perfect hostess, the TV star, the thinking man’s crumpet. To me…

While Dutch schools ban birthday cakes, the British pine for the next Bake Off

30 March 2019 9:00 am

The Way We Eat Now begins with a single bunch of grapes. The bunch is nothing special to the modern…

Tesco’s new Brexit supermarket doesn’t stack up

29 September 2018 9:00 am

Supermarkets have always moved with the times. After the recession we wanted affordable luxury, so we got M&S’s ‘Dine in…

Two new books by barristers chronicle the perilous state of our justice system

7 July 2018 9:00 am

‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,’ says Dick the Butcher in Henry VI, Part II. Mostly,…

Fad fury

1 July 2017 9:00 am

Anthony Warner is angry. He’s angry about diets. He’s angry about detoxes. He’s angry about pseudoscience — and he has…

Just suet!

22 September 2016 1:00 pm

I am standing outside my house in an apron and a pair of slippers, holding kidney offcuts in my hands.…