Restaurants
Pig heaven
Labour is 30 points ahead, and in honour of this I review the Impeccable Pig in Sedgefield (Cedd’s field), a…
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…
My lunch with Liz
Sometimes this column has a guest reviewer: a dining companion. It was Liz Truss in late summer 2011, for the…
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…
Into the labyrinth
I am never bored with Harrods, only disgusted, and it is disgust of the most animated and exciting kind. It…
Maine offender
Last week Chris Corbin and Jeremy King lost controlof the restaurant group they founded: Corbin & King, which made theWolseley,…
Market mischief and bad politicsmean business is never dull
Enough of stagflation forecasts, each more frightening than the last. Enough – for now – of energy policy sermons, as…
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…
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…
A slice above
It is a truism that there is never enough schnitzel (‘slice’, German); or, rather, schnitzel does not get the attention…
Gastro-nomics: a foodie’s guide to a changing world
Twice recently I’ve been asked my opinion of ‘Doughnut Economics’. The first time, I was tempted to cover my ignorance…
Revenge is rarely sweet
‘Who,’ asks Stephen Bayley, in one of the ‘S.B’ chapters of this irresistibly spiky co-written book, ‘could countenance working for…
Faking it
Whitcomb’s is in The Londoner hotel on the south-west corner of Leicester Square. The Londoner calls itself ‘the world’s first…
The silence of the critics
A world without criticism is just advertising
Fit for a king
A French creole restaurant rises in the sullen ruins of London. It is called Louie, for French king or trumpeter,…
Your country needs you at the wheel of a lorry
Here’s a patriotic proposal: let’s form a Dad’s Army of lorry drivers, of which the Road Haulage Association reckons there’s…






























