Food
‘The food is as good as you will find in London’: Saison at Raffles London, reviewed
The Old War Office (bad acronym OWO) on Whitehall is now a Raffles hotel: you can stay in Winston Churchill’s…
‘They do better spaghetti bolognese in Hampstead for a tenner’: The Lobby at The Peninsula, reviewed
The Peninsula is a new hotel at Hyde Park Corner. It is part of the trend for absurd expense: rooms…
Revised Criterion
There are cursed restaurants and cursed women, and this makes them no less interesting. One is Maxim’s in Paris, which…
Stark realities
Lawyers, teachers, architects and engineers all enjoy sex behind the scenes at a Houston gay bar in a novel focusing on relationships among black urban men
Market values
Origin City is a good name for this restaurant, whether it knows it or not. It is at West Smithfield,…
A pastiche pub
Poundbury is the King’s idealised town in Dorchester, built on his land to his specifications: the town that sprung out…
Aussie rules
Why is Australian MasterChef so much better than the English version? You’d think, with a population less than a third…
Et tu, Bruton?
At the Chapel, Bruton, is a restaurant and hotel in a former chapel in Bruton. This was once an ordinary…
Fish and chips
The last meal my parents had before I graced the world with my presence was fish and chips, so I…
Homage to Hobbiton
Sarehole Mill is four miles south of the centre of Birmingham. If this were a fairy tale, and it should…
Plainly perfect
The BBC made a very odd documentary about the renovation of Claridge’s: The Mayfair Hotel Megabuild. They filmed, agog, as…
Pavlova
Whenever I tell someone that I’m making a pavlova the response is the same: sheer joy. Even the most fervent…
First draught
I am not sure the vast Bierschenke bierkeller in Covent Garden is successful, even if it is skilful: I worry…
Museum pizzas
As the government withers this column falls to ennui and visits Pizza Express. As David Cameron, who left the world…
Roar of approval
The Red Lion, East Chisenbury, is in the Pewsey Vale on the edge of Salisbury Plain. Wiltshire’s strangeness surpasses even…
Strangeness and charm
The restaurant 2 Fore Street lives on Mousehole harbour, near gift shops: the post office and general store have closed,…
There will be no price cap on ‘basic items’
Sometimes it’s the little things that depress most. I groaned last week to hear the news item. The government is…
No mucking about
The Pilchard Inn sits at the entrance to Burgh Island, a minute tidal island off the coast of south Devon.…
Alice in gastroland
The Alice lives in a ground-floor room of the Randolph Hotel in Oxford, which venerates the fantastical and the savage,…
