Food
Fine diner
Electric Diner is from the Soho House group, which has done terrible things to private clubs, luckless farmhouses, domestic interior…
Hot cakes
Cakeism is offering the voters everything they desire, knowing you will never give it to them because you live in…
A personal best
In 2014, Nuno Mendes, a chef from Lisbon by way of Wolfgang Puck’s kitchens and his own Viajante in Bethnal…
Barometer
An idea past its sell-by date Waitrose has announced the removal of ‘best before’ dates from many food products. –…
My lunch with Liz
Sometimes this column has a guest reviewer: a dining companion. It was Liz Truss in late summer 2011, for the…
Flageons
‘Don’t you know the answer?’ asked my husband with mock surprise, throwing over to me from his armchair a copy…
Sack Heathrow’s boss? No, put him on the front line
Airports are on my mind, since I’ve just stepped off an on-time early-morning flight from East Midlands to Bergerac –…
Ukraine and Russia sign grain deal – what next?
This afternoon Kyiv and Moscow signed a UN-backed agreement to free up at least 20 million tons of grain from…
Letters
Boris’s legacy Sir: It is grossly unfair to assert that Boris Johnson’s legacy was the lockdown (Leading article, 9 July).…
Civilisation in a sausage
When the Tory party set itself on fire last week a restaurateur told me: ‘Don’t worry, Tanya, we’ll still be…
Gorgeous George
The George, Fitzrovia, was Saki’s local, and a pub for men talking about cars when Great Portland Street was called…
A tea fit for a Queen
I went to a garden party at Buckingham Palace once. It is coloured in my memory like childhood. There are…
Off the table
Restaurant prices are no longer worth it
Et in Arcade ego
I should know better than to visit restaurants assembled as if from disparate bricks, like thrift-shop Duplo: but the ever-credulous…
Salmagundi
‘It makes me hungry,’ said my husband when I mentioned the word salmagundi. That is his reaction to many words.…
Into the labyrinth
I am never bored with Harrods, only disgusted, and it is disgust of the most animated and exciting kind. It…
Easter lamb
Greek-style marinated lamb, Greek salad and tzatziki
Barometer
Palm substitutes Palm Sunday was so-called because of the palm fronds thrown before Jesus on his entry into Jerusalem. But…
Maine offender
Last week Chris Corbin and Jeremy King lost controlof the restaurant group they founded: Corbin & King, which made theWolseley,…
Sweet dreams are made of this
As I’ve got older my tastes have generally become less refined. During my youth I dutifully slogged through Kafka, Camus…
For the chop
Blacklock is the fourth restaurant of that name – there are others in Soho, Shoreditch and the City of London.…
The waste land
I was going to be jolly this week, for variety and denial, but I changed my mind. Instead, I wonder…
Vital organs
Real men eat raw offal
A victim of its own mythology
Langan’s, a brasserie off Piccadilly with curling orange neon signage calling its name, is under new management after it fell…
Making a meal of it
‘The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be…
