Restaurants
Damascene moment
Imad’s Syrian Kitchen is an eyrie off Carnaby Street, a once-famous road which seems to exist nowadays to sell trainers…
Cake expectations
Afternoon tea has gone OTT
Barometer
Isolated cases Large numbers of people are still being ordered to self-isolate in spite of having been vaccinated — 137,560…
Paling into insignificance
The Roof Garden is a pale, Nordic-style restaurant at the top of the glorious Pantechnicon in Belgravia — formerly a…
Fork in the road
You cannot have cars and dining tables in the same dreamscape: it doesn’t work, unless you think carbon monoxide is…
Transported
The St Pancras Brasserie and Champagne Bar by Searcys is as expansive as its name, but ghostly. It is an…
Back to the future
The west end of London is still pale and necrotic, but there are points of light. Hatchards the bookseller is…
Letter from Los Angeles
When I arrived a month ago, one wouldn’t believe LA was suffering a major pandemic. The roads were still busy…
Package deal
Restaurant-goers who cannot let go of restaurants — for professional or other reasons — are floating on a sea of…
Suddenly, it’s fast-forward to an electric future for the car industry
Back in November, when Downing Street’s pandemic responses looked daily more incompetent, the announcement of a ban on sales of…
Consolation fries
The Corbin & King dining and home entertaining box includes dishes from the Delaunay, the Wolseley and Brasserie Zédel ‘delivered…
Roots of happiness
Turnips is an haute cuisine restaurant inside a greengrocer in Borough Market in London. I suspect others will try this…
Ivy league
Oxford is not an easy city to homogenise; but that doesn’t mean you can’t try. I found a vast shopping…
Rich pickings
Pity the gilded restaurants of Mayfair, if you can: they are dying. Some have reopened; they ache on like men…
This dead-bat business minister should plead to be reshuffled
What advice can I offer Alok Sharma, who took a pasting in the weekend press for his lacklustre performance as…
A world apart
Plexiglass bubbles hover over diners’ heads in restaurants. Plastic pods, spaced six feet apart, separate weightlifters in gyms. Partitions of…
Soho: home of the brave
London is gasping — so where to go but Soho, which is so good at despair? It is often necrotic…
Dear Mary
Q. Almost a year ago I attended the funeral of my godfather — a bachelor and distant relation whom I…
A flash of life
A ghost review, now, of a ghost restaurant: the Connaught Grill, which is yet to reopen after pandemic shuttered its…
Steak at stake
Pandemic has brought many truths, the most minor of which is: I can’t cook steak. I thought I could. I…
Great Dane
Snaps + Rye is a Nordic-themed restaurant and delicatessen on the Golborne Road, at the shabby and thrilling edges of…
BP, Amazon and airlines light different paths to survival
We should take heart from BP’s £5.1 billion second-quarter loss, accompanied by a halving of its dividend. What’s good about…
Barometer
The other Argos The Argos catalogue, known as the ‘Book of Dreams’, is no longer to appear in printed form.…
Bringing Sexy back
Sexy Fish is an Asian fusion barn in Berkeley Square, near the car dealerships and the nightingales, if they are…
Comfort eating
Brasserie Zédel is a grand salon under Piccadilly Circus and the only place I desired when lockdown (or lock-in) ceased…
