Food
Fischer’s is like visiting Vienna without having to go to Austria (thank God)
Fischer’s is Austria made safe for liberals, gays, Jews and other Untermenschen riffraff, because it is a restaurant, not a…
A bitter struggle with the dictionary
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ is one of husband’s stock phrases — jokes he would think them — in this…
Rhubarb has the loveliest, craziest dining room I have ever seen
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival: the city is full of glassy-eyed narcissists eating haggis pizza off flyers that say Michael Gove:…
L’Escargot is Soho as Soho sees itself
L’Escargot, or the Snail, is a famous restaurant on Greek Street, Soho, opposite the old Establishment club; the oldest French…
Dear Mary: How can I tame my brother’s savage table manners?
Q. I live far away from my brother and his family, but went to stay with them recently for the…
The nervous passenger who became one of our great travel writers
Sybille Bedford all her life was a keen and courageous traveller. Restless, curious, intellectually alert, she was always ready to…
At the Chiltern Firehouse, smugness should be on the menu
Here then is Gatsby’s house, after an invasion by the Daily Mail. It is called the Chiltern Firehouse. It is…
Harry’s Bar, where a slice of cake costs €32 – and is worth it
Harry’s Bar is a dull pale box. This is remarkable in Venice, which is a hospice for dying palaces, held…
Are we killing investment banking? And if we are, should we care?
Do we really mean to kill investment banking, or are we trampling it by accident in a fit of righteous…
After visiting the Cherwell Boathouse, I might spare Oxford from burning
It is now two decades since I lived in Oxford. I was then a drunk and lonely puddle of a…
Gordon Ramsay joins in the posh invasion of Battersea
London House is in Battersea, which some people call South Chelsea, but is more East Wandsworth to my mind; or…
What Quique Dacosta knows that Picasso didn’t
Chefs have a problem. Think of much of the best food you have ever eaten. Caviar, English native oysters, sashimi,…
So is Moro a Tory restaurant now?
Moro (‘moorish’ or ‘sexist’) is a Spanish restaurant on Exmouth Market, near the bones of the old Guardian and Observer…
The Fable would do better as an American Psycho theme bar
The Fable is three floors high and two days old, a monster newly hatched on the Holborn Viaduct; deep below…
Dear Mary: What do I do now I haven’t sent a thank-you letter?
Q. Over New Year I stayed with a man who combines being a generous and exciting host with a punctilious…
Lanes of London is dining for Martians
Lanes of London serves street food to people who hate streets; that is, it exists to soothe the still-curious mouths…
Our daily haggis
Give us this day our daily bread: those are also words of great culinary significance. Even if the ‘bread’ takes…
Clarissa Tan's Notebook: Why I stopped drinking petrol
Florence was in fog the day I arrived. Its buildings were bathed in white cloud, its people moved as though…
Dear Mary: How can I hide my tattoo from the in-laws?
Q. I have a tattoo the length of my forearm and am worried it will alienate my new boyfriend’s parents…
Don't tax sugar - it doesn't make you fat. Gluttony does
Obesity isn’t a matter of addiction. It’s a question of self-control
Tanya Gold: Child-friendly, sex-free, nut-heavy – just the hotel for my 40th birthday
Woolley Grange is a child-friendly country house hotel that seems, at first, entirely monstrous — a grey Tudor house in…
Boulestin has nothing to do with Marcel Boulestin — but could entice Mary Berry
Boulestin is a pretty restaurant on St James’s Street, between the posh fag shop (Davidoff) and the old palace, which…
The Wild Rabbit's food may be organic - but nothing else there is
The Wild Rabbit is a pub in the Cotswolds, that small corner of Britain full of evil grinning cottages; if…
A restaurant in a synagogue. How strange can it be?
A restaurant in a synagogue may be too mad even for this column but we are Jews, so why not?…
A Roald Dahl tea? It reminds me more of Jimmy Savile
One Aldwych, an Edwardian grand hotel near Waterloo Bridge, is serving a Jimmy Savile tribute tea. It is not explicitly…
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