Gustav Temple and Alexander Larman set foot in a changed world since lockdown for a splendid Indian repast. Where does one choose to go for one’s first meal in a restaurant since last December? Is the pressure too great to find the perfect establishment, with the ideal food, wine and ambience? Is the sense of… … Keep Reading
Gustav Temple and Alexander Larman grab a final Tier 2 repast before the nation’s second lockdown M’colleague is nothing if not optimistic. When Larman suggested dining in the heart of Mayfair just as London limbers up for Tier 2 of pandemic measures, I thought he had lost his Elgin marbles. Infected by his gung-ho enthusiasm… … Keep Reading
Monday 16th March 2020 was an auspicious day for a long lunch with Chris Sullivan. Coronavirus fever was about to hit London, and full lockdown was imminent, with deserted streets and nearly empty Underground carriages. This could be the last chance we met for some time, and possibly the last chance anyone had of enjoying… … Keep Reading
For many of us in Britain, our experience of Turkish cuisine has usually been taken while standing on a pavement, perhaps slightly swaying in the recollection of a drop taken, bathed in the neon glow from a sign succinctly reading ‘Kebab’. Those of us who were fortunate enough to have lived in the borough of… … Keep Reading
Knightsbridge is the only London Underground station with six consecutive consonants in its name, but this is not the only remarkable aspect of that borough. Once ejected from the tube station into the glittering lee of Harrods, one can be forgiven for thinking one has been accidentally teleported into a Hollywood film with a Christmas… … Keep Reading
When m’learned colleague invited me to join him for a Chinese meal, my first thought was – isn’t at least one of us a little old to be gorging on cut-price fodder ordered in a dank Soho basement by pointing at lurid pictures on a laminated menu, to an oriental chap who makes a virtue… … Keep Reading
The City of London doesn’t look much like the set of Blade Runner. It looks more like the set of a Charles Dickens adaptation that ran out of budget and left the builders behind. One of the few parts of the City that looks complete is the Leadenhall Building, around the corner from Leadenhall Market.… … Keep Reading
Borough Market came to everyone’s attention in the 1990s, when Jamie Oliver pointed out that British food is actually rather good, as long as you spend vast amounts of cash on each ingredient. The market continues to thrive, anachronistically at odds with the vast developments that have taken place around it in Southwark. The change… … Keep Reading
Keith Waterhouse once described Brighton as ‘a town that looks as if it’s helping the police with its enquiries.’ This barbed, if undeniably once accurate, comment seems somewhat outdated in 2019. Yes, there are still parts of Sodom-by-the-Sea, as it was once dubbed, that have the authentic seediness of the dive about them. However, there… … Keep Reading
London’s Cinnamon Club is something of an institution, set in the former Westminster Library and teeming with politicians, journalists and ladies who lunch. Its sister establishment in Oxford, Cinnamon Kitchen, is situated in the rather less grand-sounding Westgate Shopping Centre. But this is Oxford, where everything is nice and shopping centres are nothing like other… … Keep Reading
Where does one go for lunch to mark that fateful descent from one’s early fifties to one’s mid-fifties? Wouldn’t it be tragic to choose some achingly hip joint in Shoreditch, Portland or Berlin, where the menu, mostly consisting of kimchi, is printed in braille on a rusty vintage advertising sign? The venue for such an… … Keep Reading
You cannot miss Boisdale of Belgravia. The strawberry-red frontage stands out like a Highland hunting lodge amid the upmarket estate agents (a set at Albany for £4.3 million, anyone?) and the fly-by-night delicatessens that look like reckless gifts from hedge-fund managers to their trophy wives. En route to our lunch appointment we paused to pay… … Keep Reading