IT IS CUSTOMARY for most websites to start with a short manifesto explaining just what kind of site you have stumbled across… but let’s not get too philosophical about this. I am in favour of hospitable restaurants; inventive chefs; local ingredients; eating fresh food; shopping carefully. I am against over elaborate presentation on the plate; dumbed down food television; blunt knives; and anybody who takes photographs of everything they eat. I don’t much like those dim sum chickens feet. I am a great fan of sweetbreads and pork scratchings. I think that beer gets a raw deal in the context of gastronomy. I usually side with comfort rather than style. This site is mainly about food and restaurants but it also touches on trends and books. I hope that it can be dipped into and that it reads like a magazine rather than a diary - I make a great effort to avoid just writing down where I have been and what I have eaten. Please feel free to use the “Contact” page to send brickbats, bouquets, corrections and comments. Welcome aboard, and as our American cousins would have it…Enjoy!

Hot Picks

SOME RESTAURANTS OPEN quietly without the assistance of a frontal assault by the shock troops of restaurant PR. Every new opening generates an undercurrent of gossip (because that is the nature of gossip) but only rarely are the comments of reviewers and the Fooderati universally benign. 10 Greek Street has been open for several months now and continues to get a consistently good press. The only obvious niggle being grumbles about the “no booking” rule which applies in the evenings. In the kitchen is Cameron Emerali - recently at Wapping Food - and out front is Luke Wilson whose track record includes a stint with Liberty Wines and time spent at the Ambassador in Exmouth Market. Read More...

Questions of Taste

THERE ARE MANY SIMILARITIES between joining the army and working in a kitchen. In the days of Escoffier the kitchen “brigade” was just that and promotion followed a closely defined path; you worked your way up through the ranks from commis through chef de partie, and eventually from sous chef to head chef. Kitchens were also the home of obscure ritual, cruel jokes and camaraderie in the face of tyrannical head chefs. Simon Boyle sees things very differently and he has developed the “United Kitchen” a concept driven by altruism that aims to give people at risk, or those who have experienced homelessness, a life changing opportunity. Read More...