Food
Bitter
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ is one of husband’s stock phrases — jokes he would think them — in this…
Escaping the Fringe
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival: the city is full of glassy-eyed narcissists eating haggis pizza off flyers that say Michael Gove:…
Rebooting the Snail
L’Escargot, or the Snail, is a famous restaurant on Greek Street, Soho, opposite the old Establishment club; the oldest French…
Dear Mary
Q. I live far away from my brother and his family, but went to stay with them recently for the…
Through her eyes only
Sybille Bedford all her life was a keen and courageous traveller. Restless, curious, intellectually alert, she was always ready to…
Dinner with the paparazzi
Here then is Gatsby’s house, after an invasion by the Daily Mail. It is called the Chiltern Firehouse. It is…
Old Harry’s game
Harry’s Bar is a dull pale box. This is remarkable in Venice, which is a hospice for dying palaces, held…
Are investment bankers being kicked to death? And should we care – or cheer?
Do we really mean to kill investment banking, or are we trampling it by accident in a fit of righteous…
Oxford blues
It is now two decades since I lived in Oxford. I was then a drunk and lonely puddle of a…
A far cry from Chelsea
London House is in Battersea, which some people call South Chelsea, but is more East Wandsworth to my mind; or…
New ways to open a bottle
Chefs have a problem. Think of much of the best food you have ever eaten. Caviar, English native oysters, sashimi,…
Dinner with the editors
Moro (‘moorish’ or ‘sexist’) is a Spanish restaurant on Exmouth Market, near the bones of the old Guardian and Observer…
Multi-story dining
The Fable is three floors high and two days old, a monster newly hatched on the Holborn Viaduct; deep below…
Dear Mary
Q. Over New Year I stayed with a man who combines being a generous and exciting host with a punctilious…
London for aliens
Lanes of London serves street food to people who hate streets; that is, it exists to soothe the still-curious mouths…
Burns Night bottles
Give us this day our daily bread: those are also words of great culinary significance. Even if the ‘bread’ takes…
Florence Notebook
Florence was in fog the day I arrived. Its buildings were bathed in white cloud, its people moved as though…
Dear Mary
Q. I have a tattoo the length of my forearm and am worried it will alienate my new boyfriend’s parents…
Don’t blame sugar
Obesity isn’t a matter of addiction. It’s a question of self-control
Meet the parents
Woolley Grange is a child-friendly country house hotel that seems, at first, entirely monstrous — a grey Tudor house in…
French revival
Boulestin is a pretty restaurant on St James’s Street, between the posh fag shop (Davidoff) and the old palace, which…
Is this really a pub?
The Wild Rabbit is a pub in the Cotswolds, that small corner of Britain full of evil grinning cottages; if…
Proper kosher
A restaurant in a synagogue may be too mad even for this column but we are Jews, so why not?…
Jimmy and the chocolate factory
One Aldwych, an Edwardian grand hotel near Waterloo Bridge, is serving a Jimmy Savile tribute tea. It is not explicitly…
A far diet from Kensington
Those of you dieting your way to a svelte physique amid the flesh-exposing terrors of summer should take courage from…
