Food
Our Zoom seder
This week my son came home from school and asked me if it was true that the Jews killed Jesus.…
Package deal
Restaurant-goers who cannot let go of restaurants — for professional or other reasons — are floating on a sea of…
We’ll always have Paris
Some friends claim to be making marks on the wall to count the days until liberation. Ah, the forgotten delights…
Barometer
Good for the goose The government indicated that it will ban foie gras, out of animal welfare concerns. While it…
Outside the box
The Stein’s at Home steak menu box (£65) says ‘Love from Cornwall’: it is not for people who live in…
The real reasons children are going hungry
‘We’re idiots, babe, it’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves.’ I listened to The Food Programme on Radio 4…
Gritti drama
Dining in catastrophe used to be more interesting: but we must be fair. It was a smaller (and wetter) catastrophe:…
Ticking the boxes
The Compass Group boast of serving 5.5 billion meals a year, so you might think they would be good at…
Low life
I was tipped off to meet a white Hyundai at a French motorway toll rest area at 2.30 p.m. (I…
Consolation fries
The Corbin & King dining and home entertaining box includes dishes from the Delaunay, the Wolseley and Brasserie Zédel ‘delivered…
My recipe for mayhem
Caroline was pretty heroic during the first lockdown. She’s used to having no children to deal with between the hours…
Brain food
The questionable ethics of eating octopus
Punishment stocks
Welcome to the sunlit uplands which, for me, contain small plastic tubs of stock, which is just the opening to…
Segment
In the aisle of Tesco I stood like one thunderstruck. It was not the print of a man’s naked foot…
Theresa May’s festive cake
This recipe was given to me years ago by an old friend — hence the imperial measurements — and I…
Unhampered pleasure
There is straw inside the Fortnum & Mason Christmas Treat Hamper (£100). As the straw drifts through the house, it…
Roots of happiness
Turnips is an haute cuisine restaurant inside a greengrocer in Borough Market in London. I suspect others will try this…
Meal kits have changed my life
Ford’s Kumar Galhotra once remarked that carmaking is 100,000 rational decisions in search of one emotional decision. You spend five…
Me, myself and Thai
Lockdown is hurting everyone except the chickens. I have bought them a conservatory because Philippa, a Light Sussex, looks like…
Bass notes
It’s a good day to stab something and tear out its heart. Elaine Lorys is the only female master fishmonger…
Rich pickings
Pity the gilded restaurants of Mayfair, if you can: they are dying. Some have reopened; they ache on like men…
Diary
I have been in Istanbul, partly to research a French-born collateral ancestor of mine, Aimée Dubucq, who, according to legend,…
Soho: home of the brave
London is gasping — so where to go but Soho, which is so good at despair? It is often necrotic…
A flash of life
A ghost review, now, of a ghost restaurant: the Connaught Grill, which is yet to reopen after pandemic shuttered its…
Right up my alley
I suspect, though this may be romanticising, that if a French lorry driver with hitherto suppressed culinary tastes won France’s…
