food

The Lazarides pop-up restaurant/ art experience returns shortly for more strange and atmospheric nights in one of London’s most mysterious (and secret, as it’s yet to be named) sites around town. The last one, entitled ‘Hell’s Half Acre’,was apparently great – I missed that but will go to the next, here. Pics come via Londonist.

Last year I wrote a story called ‘Killing The Cook’, in which an inner city housewife attempts to kill the TV chef Nigella Lawson because she is unable to live up to the cook’s demandingly upmarket lifestyle. The story was inspired by a real problem. In one of Lawson’s cookbooks she said ‘Get your butcher […]

It’s off-putting eating a strawberry when you know it’s been flown all the way from Israel to be on your plate. Yesterday I made a tour of my local farmers’ markets to see what was on offer, and was told that a lot of very British food was returning, from samphire, salsify and sorrel to […]

My mother was such a bad cook that we always lost weight at Christmas – nobody could get through her overroasted meals. But with the new year here, I’ve been looking at the French Paradox, which is the fact that French people have low heart disease but a high fat diet. Apparently it comes down […]

I can never be sure if Bompas and Parr, London’s iconoclastic jellymongers, are merely foisting some kind of elaborate joke on us all. Their neon funeral jellies, architectural foodstuffs and ouija-board tea towels are impressive, but how often do you want desserts that glow in the dark? Be that as it may, they’re hosting a […]

Having dinner in a field in November may not sound like an enticing prospect, but this weekend we were in a Mongolian yurt, courtesy of friends Guy and Lou, which proved warm, cosy and perfect for lamb couscous and convivial conversation. As you get older, you can choose to become more or less adventurous, and […]

This is a Choccywoccydoodah cake that could kill you a/ if you tried to eat it alone, b/ if it fell on you. The extraordinary Brighton cake-makers build towering sculpted beauties that can feature just about anything – I’ve got my eye on their fantastic Hallowe’en skulls – from a one-person cupcake to a 300-portion […]

A friend calls me from Liverpool: ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I’m in Waitrose,’ I reply, ‘looking at Barry Norman’s Pickled Onions (the jar has baggy-eyed Barry holding a clapperboard on the label – what connection could there possibly be between a film clip show and pickled onions?) and organic vanilla pod custard’. ‘You big Southern […]

I had to do it. Don’t start on about fattening geese (nobody complains about hitting a cow with a sledgehammer to make a burger), I had to run the shot of the world’s foofiest starter, as produced by The French. Yes, it’s lobster with foie grass and flowering thyme on a bed of lettuce. Be […]

It’s true that you remember where you’ve been by what you’ve eaten, so here’s today’s Catalan treats – pinchos prepared to look like tiny iced cakes – in fact everything from crab and tuna to, well, I never did find out what the violet thing was. One was definitely creamed cheese and raspberry coulis, though. […]