Posts Tagged ‘food blogs’

The Week in Food

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

Breakfast of Champions

The World’s Original Marmalade Awards festival is taking over the Dalemain Mansion and Gardens in Cumbria this Saturday and Sunday, 12 and 13 February, and it promises to be one sweet, family-friendly food and outdoors event though devotees of serious food will find the talks and workshops worthwhile too.  Paddington Bear starts the festivities by greeting visitors at the Glendridding Pierhouse of Ullswather Steamers, then there will be talks and demonstrations by food historian Ivan Day, Pam Corbin (the preserve expert from River Cottage, yes they have one), Dan Lepard (the Guardian’s baking guru) and Jonathan Miller who is the new product development buyer at Fortnum & Mason — doesn’t that sound like a dream job?  On Saturday evening there’s Marmalade Bonfire, on Sunday morning a Marmelade Church Service, and throughout there will be an artisan food and homemade craft market, citrus themed don’t you know?  The whole thing sounds just divine.  And if you’re looking for a restaurant nearby, we have some.

A Load of Scallops

At the other end of the country, Rye Bay Scallop Week also kicks off on 12 February and runs through a week and a bit to the 20th.  This is a local festivity that is just brilliant because, one way or another, it seems as if half the town is involved and having a whale of a time.  Webbe’s Cookery School and chef Bruce Wilson (formerly of The Greenhouse in London) of The Beach Bistro at The Gallivant Hotel both offer lots of terrific scallop cookery courses.  There’s a Scallopship Award Ceremony for local GCSE pupils who have created their own scallop sauce dish, a farmer’s market with lots of tastings and demos and a scallop lucky dip to win a hamper, a six-course Scallops of the World Unite dinner at The Ship Inn, a Scallop Bash at the Landgate Bistro, a benefit dinner with the entertainment of Mr Wurlitzer Len Rawle MBE, a Scallop Race and loads more.  If you doubt the importance of these tasty, succulent treats of the sea just ask yourself, when Botticelli painted Venus arriving with her blonde hair floating all around her, on what was she posing?  You got it in one: a scallop shell.  Come celebrate these delicious molluscs with the people who bring them home.

Chocolate in Any Tongue

In France, Marseille hosts the huge, irresistible Salon du Chocolate event this weekend 10 – 13 February at Parc Chanot where you are invited to ‘discover and taste chocolate and cacao in all its forms’.   Well, certainly more forms that we had imagined.  The chocolate fashion show, for instance, boggles us a bit, but we’re intrigued by the Cacao Show space that presents dances, songs and rituals of the producers of cacao.  There are demonstrations, a children’s area, a teaching kitchen, vast array of exhibits from producers and artisanal chocolate makers and the whole thing sounds like a slice of heaven on the Mediterranean coast.  And if you’re going, we have a few particularly fab restaurants in Marseille to recommend.

Fire & Knives

A don’t-miss culinary day out in London is nearly sold out but if you move fast you might get a spot.  This Saturday starting at 10 am that amazing and beautiful magazine Fire & Knives is hosting Mixed Grill, a day-long even to include (we don’t have the exact programme, but we trust them totally) lectures and talks, performances, debating panels, ‘rants’ and presentations all about food.  MsMarmiteLover is doing a one day only popup restaurant and you can make a reservation to eat there too.  We’re pretty sure it’s BYO, but here’s the link.  It’s at Conway Hall but if you can’t make it they’ll have a live twitter feed ‘so you can heckle’.

New restaurant signings on toptable:

Wheeler's of St James's Fernhurst

Once Marco Pierre White revived the historic and delicious Wheeler’s of St James’s in London, he decided to spread the good news far and wide by opening other branches in delightful spots

Wheeler's of St James's Maresfield

outside the capital.  Now there’s a Wheeler’s of St James’s in Fernhurst in Sussex.  It’s set in a quintessentially English pub, the Kings Arms, with charm from cellar to roof, higgledy-piggledy walls, excellent modern art work, pastoral scenes beyond the door, high quality food and — as it’s in a pub — real English ales to have with your superb meal.  The Wheeler’s of St James’s in Maresfield, Sussex, in the heart of the Sussex Weald has found a home at Chequers Inn, a coaching inn dating from the 18th century.  This stylish and historic spot is the perfect setting for Wheeler’s thoroughly British menu, and the bar area is a terrific spot for friends to gather and relax.  Both are easy drives from London and the south coast and each one has four superb special offers right now –we’d say that seals the deal.

Caffe Concerto at One New Change overlooked by the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral is a bright and charming addition to the City of London dining scene.  The menu is incredibly popular Italian featuring the time-honoured favourites with a tempting array of cakes to make the meal complete.  Live music is always on the menu here, with the grand piano in near-constant use from 7pm each day, adding to the pleasure of the dining experience with a range of music from jazz and bossa nova to classical and ballads.  A romantic, upmarket restaurant.

La Trompette

How does a Michelin star and a triple crown of AA rosettes strike you?  Intriguing?  If you haven’t heard of La Trompette in Chiswick, owner of all those awards, before now, then let this be the instigator of a visit very soon.    The menu is inspired by the rich and classic cooking of

Bardoulet's Restaurant

southern and southwestern France and it perfectly balances tradition with creativity in a way that enhances them both.  The dining room is both smart and relaxed, just as the service is both friendly and professional.  La Trompette is one of London’s treasures.

Bardoulet’s Restaurant in Peebles just outside Edinburgh is another holder of the triple AA rosette crown named for its Chef Director Patrick Bardoulet.  The menu is thoroughly French with a nod to the restaurant’s Scottish location and the decor is opulent and fabulous, the sort of restaurant that makes every meal a special event.  There are both a la carte and tasting menus and you should expect superb service.

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The Week in Food

Monday, January 24th, 2011

High-Flying Fish

The National Fish and Chips Awards 2011 has named  a Yorkshire chippie, Fish and Chips at 149 in Bridlington, as the Fish and Chip Shop of the Year 2011. Congratulations to owners Matthew Silk and Tracy Poskitt, and let the passionate arguments begin!

It’s quite a slog to get to the finals of this national competition, sponsored by Seafish, as shops must wend their way through judging, a customer vote, taste tests, two shop inspections and a presentation to a panel of industry experts.   Sourcing and hygiene matter as well as flavour, staff training and community spirit.  Any shop that makes it to the top on those very demanding criteria deserve the gong.

Here’s a list of the top fish and chip shops for each region:

Scotland: Doms Chip Shop, Thornton, Fife
Wales: Finnegans, Bridgend
Northern Ireland: Pit Stop Fast Food & Bistro, Kikeel
North-east England: Fish and Chips at 149, Bridlington
North-west England: Seniors at Marsh Mill, Thornton, Lancashire
Midlands: Alfie Grimshaw, Kenilworth
Eastern England: Seafare at the Boundary, Peterborough
London and South-east England: Scooby Snax, Brightlingsea
Central and South England: Wigmore Fish Restaurant, Luton
South-west England: Peck Ish Fish and Chips, Camelford

Observer restaurant critic and columnist Jay Rayner handed out the awards and said that he’s looking forward to visiting the whole top ten.  That would be a blog worth following.

Heston’s Restaurant Almost Open

Dinner by Heston, Heston Blumenthal’s new London restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, is due to open a week from today, 31 January and can you feel the shiver of excitement in the air? If you haven’t been dialling frantically since booking opened in December — the number is 0207 201 3833 — then you’ll have to wait until at least April to get a table and, no surprise, there’s more flexibility during the week and at lunchtime than for weekend suppers.  There’s also a website where you can try your luck.  Contrary to expectations and playing against his highly experimental reputation, Dinner by Heston harks way back to our late medieval culinary heritage for its inspiration.  And we quote, ‘The menu will feature simple, contemporary dishes inspired by Britain’s historic gastronomic past and recipes dating as far back as the 14th century, such as Hay Smoked Mackerel, Lemon Salad and Gentleman’s Relish; Roast Scallops, Cucumber Ketchup and Bergamot and Slow Cooked Beef Royal.’  Will there be mead?  We are seriously intrigued and are planning a spring outing.

Polpo, Polpetto, Polpettest?

Both Polpo and Polpetto restaurants in Soho featured high on our end-of-year bloggers’ top ten restaurant listings, though, sadly, their ‘no reservations’ policy excludes them from the toptable family.  Polpo earned a Bib Gourmand from the Michelin people in the last round of awards — well done.  Now co-owner Russell Norman is expanding yet again, this time to the basement of Polpo where the Polpo Cicheti Bar opens on 8 February.  Polpo Cicheti will continue with the highly successful and delicious theme of Venetian bacari small plates and drinks and the design will be a combination of rustic zinc bar, exposed brickwork walls and long shared tables.  That’s really what Polpo started out to be, a place for quick snacks and small drinks in an informal atmosphere and we send our good wishes for another success for Norman and company.

Take the Family to Food Glorious Food

‘Food Glorious Food’ is the name of the new exhibition at the V & A’s Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green.  It opens this Saturday, 29 January, it’s free, and looks at how we British grow, prepare and eat food and if that doesn’t sound exciting then you just have to trust us that the Museum of Childhood is absolutely brilliant and everything they do is worthwhile.  Grab some children and head east and you’ll see what we mean.  The blurb says, ‘Foodies young and old can explore eclectic displays of labour-saving gadgets and historic culinary devices and explore a kitchen larder, packed with interesting food stories and nostalgic packaging.’  It’s a particularly fun way to open the eyes of urban youngsters to the life cycle of food and its fascinating history.

And, as ever, we at toptable have restaurants nearby.

Hail Pascal Aussignac, Your Excellency

Brilliant chef Pascal Aussignac of the Club Gascon group, including Comptoir Gascon and Club Gascon, has been made an Ambassador of the Universal Cassoulet Academy in France, one of only three such ambassadors worldwide.  This ultimate honour was bestowed by a delegation from Carcassone in the southwest of France who presented the award wearing the traditional scarlet robes of the academicians with miniature cassoulet dishes hung round their necks.  There was also a cassoulet song.

Cassoulet is a complex stew of haricot beans and pork fat simmered slowly and served with crusty French bread and an occasional green salad on the side.  In Toulouse, you’ll find Toulouse sausage and duck or goose as well, while in Castelnaudary it’s all about pork, though a bit of goose might make its way into the mix without sacrificing authenticity.  And in Carcassone, home of the revered Academy, mutton and fresh game might appear.  There is as much heated debate about what constitutes a ‘true’ cassoulet in France as there is about chilli in Texas or, see above, the best fish and chips in the UK, and it looks as if the red-robed chaps from Carcassone have tried to settle the matter by setting up an official body.  Clever.

Cassoulet is a perfect dish for these chilly dark days.  Book into Comptoir Gascon for a taste of the — officially — real thing.

New restaurant signings on toptable:

Coco Momo Cafe Bar and Restaurant in London SW7 may be right on the Gloucester Road but it looks every inch — if we’re allowed to say ‘inch’ — the French brasserie, from its smart double-fronted building in sage green to the awnings over the alfresco seats to the wainscoting, wooden tables and private banquettes.  The menu is more international, with burgers and Sunday roast and fish and chips alongside charcuteries, grilled steak, duck and fish.  Coco Momo is open from breakfast, has a

Yamal Alsham

super lunch deal and an early evening prix fixe to put a smile on your face.  This is a great choice for pre or post-shopping expeditions in High Street Ken, or pre-concert bites before heading to the Royal Albert Hall.

Yamal Alsham is an impressive Syrian and Lebanese restaurant with real style in Imperial Wharf in Fulham.  The warehouse setting gives the thing scale, while the charming lanterns, silks and bright colours recall the Mediterranean.  The menu combines the earthy, robust flavours of Middle Eastern home cooking with creative adaptations of regional favourites.  The deli lets you continue the experience at home, and the belly dancers at the weekends make you glad you came out.  Shisha pipes are available on the terrace for a complete Middle Eastern evening.

The Garden Restaurant

The Garden Restaurant near Heathrow gives you a flavour of holiday ease before you’ve even left the ground.  It’s in the Sheraton Skyline Hotel and overlooks the hotel pool while basking under the  soaring glass canopy and nestling amid tropical plantings.  Are we getting you salivating for a minibreak yet?  Then The Garden Restaurant is your spot.  The modern European menu has flavours from around the globe, with dishes like spicy Thai chicken broth and  baked parrot fish in banana leaf as well as more western dishes like brick pressed roasted poussin with roasted garlic and bubble and squeak.

Bread Street Brasserie

The Bread Street Brasserie in Edinburgh is part of the gorgeous Point Hotel though it has earned accolades as a relaxed, sophisticated dining spot in its own right.  Typically Modern European, The Bread Street Brasserie menu includes excellent steaks, creative British dishes and a very good selection of vegetarian and gluten free dishes that don’t for a moment scrimp on flavour.  The dining room is stylish and contemporary, with one eye on style and the other on fashion.  There are currently a couple of super special offers to entice you to give Bread Street Brasserie a try.

Fatty Fish

Over the seas now to Fatty Fish, the hottest sushi restaurant in Manhattan  and a sister of the famous Fatty Fish Glen Gove on Long Island.   It’s actually a modern Asian fusion bistro whose chef incorporates a vast array of traditional Asian spices in the creation of his fine innovative dishes.  The dining room is chilled Zen in atmosphere, smart and relaxed in tones of cream, aubergine and wood.  The well-dressed clientele from the Upper East Side are already great fans of the menu and the fine service, and the sushi, for this part of town, is very reasonably priced.

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Best of the Blogs

Friday, January 14th, 2011

You Can Make A Difference

The Catty Life, one of our favourite bloggers, writes to say, ‘My hometown is flooded! :( PLEASE HELP!!!’.  She’s from Brisbane, her family is still there and she’s gutted at the destruction the floodwaters have wreaked.  There’s a link on her blog if you’d like to donate funds to help in the overwhelming cleanup effort when it begins.

We know there have been debates raging in the comments sections of the newspapers along the lines of ‘Australia is a rich country, why should we send them money?’ vs. ‘What a disaster and we’re so far away, all we can do is send money’.  Both are completely valid points.  But The Catty Life is one of us, part of the toptable community.  And she asked.

Triple Rosette Winners — Lucky Thirteen

The AA’s triple rosette winners have been announced and just thirteen of them exist throughout Britain.  Congratulations to all because this is a super award for incredibly high standards of cuisine and service.  We’ve said it before: we’re in the middle of a golden age of restaurant dining.  Carpe diem.  That’s toptable talk for: Book Now.  There are six London restaurants who have earned or retained three rosettes: The Ritz in Piccadilly, Maze in Mayfair, Roussillon in Belgravia, Koffmann’s in Knightsbridge,  Gauthier Soho in Bishops Stortford, no just kidding, it’s in Soho, and Viajante in Bethnal Green, which featured fairly heavily on our Best of the Bloggers posts.  Well done! You can see the entire list by clicking on the link.

Racine Makes Another Conquest

Add Greedy Diva to the list of diners who have had the Racine experience: take far too long to get there, finally go and have an absolutely terrific meal, declare Racine a new favourite restaurant.  We’ve seen it again and again, but Greedy Diva goes one step further and performs the service of reminding us all that Racine has a ridiculously good value prix fixe menu at just £15 for two courses and £17.50 for three, from opening right up to 7.30 pm.  This regional French restaurant is like the ideal neighbourhood restaurants you find, or once found, in Paris, a one-room space that’s packed with regular diners at lunch and again and supper, where the sourcing is impeccable, the room is comfortable and attractive, the pride of place almost tangible and the entire experience one that feeds both body and soul.  We urge you to have the Racine experience yourself.  Let us know how you get on.

Happy Birthday, Essex Eating

Essex Eating has posted a charming, rambling blog celebrating his second year as a food blogger and in true-to-life fashion, wondering at the road that has led him in one short year from employed IT guy  (that’s I.T. as in ‘information technology’, not IT guy, though he is cute) working in London and living in Essex to new cheesemonger living and working in Bristol.  He rounds up his adventures in food with bests and worsts in restaurants, dishes, cookbooks and cooking experiences.  Corn on the cob with anchovy butter does sound nasty.  If you’ve got five minutes as you sip your afternoon tea, take a wander through his post.  We particularly like:


Weirdest Google searches that have led to my Blog 2010

Car Sick South Cornwall
Hiring a bodyguard in buenos aires
How do i cook pock cheak
Places in essex that sell fernet branca
Scotch egg heat supermarket
Small petite porn tube

Not a coincidence, we’re sure: we notice that Essex Eating has put Racine on his Must Eat in London list for 2011.  We’ve got five quid right here that says he has the full Racine experience as well.  Watch this space.

Michel Roux Jr Speaks

Hot Dinners managed to grab a few minutes with chef Michel Roux Jr as he is promoting his new tv series Michel Roux’s Service that started this past Wednesday on BBC 2.  (It’s available on iPlayer for another few weeks if you missed it.)  We’re so accustomed to these real life drama series that we could almost write the thing ourselves: the candidates start out lippy, clueless and charmless though their energy and youth are attractive, some demonstrate hidden resilience and capabilities, one goes right off the rails, as the backstories are revealed our heartstrings are fully engaged, the final episode goes out and we argue over the watercooler for a week.

But we do think Michel Roux is onto something important here.  Again and again on toptable — and in real life — we read or hear that a restaurant experience has been spoiled by surly or incompetent service or worse, even though the food was worth the price of admission.  We in Britain are not attracted to service as a career.  Doesn’t that sound funny?  ‘Service’ and ‘career’ in the same sentence?  Yet we love dining out in restaurants and they have become a crucial part of our national life.  The kitchens in this country have risen and risen over the past two decades and we are now absolutely at the top of our culinary game as a nation, but the front of house has lagged woefully behind.  That’s a vast generalisation of course and is not meant to insult the brigades of expert waiters out there who have been instrumental in their restaurants’ success and brought dining delight to thousands of happy clients.

M Roux Jr knows quite a lot about the whole restaurant business of course, witness Le Gavroche, Roux at Parliament Square and Roux at The Landau, among others, so he is in a brilliant position to change the lives of these young people, but also — possibly — to shift our national attitude a bit on the subject of working as waitstaff.  Though his argument might have had a bit more oomph if he had made the programme with longtime supermanager Silvano Giraldin at his side as equal partner in the enterprise, this series looks as if it has the potential to make a real difference.  As the winter turns to spring, we’ll watch it unfold.

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Best of the Blogs

Friday, January 7th, 2011

Guardian Readers Are Salt of the Earth

Though the Biblical reference would probably annoy most of them, even in this celebratory month of the King James Version.  But this is about salt.  Kerstin Rogers has written about humble and not-so-humble salt in her Word of Mouth blogpost in today’s Guardian. And it’s quiiiite interesting, once you get past the old chesnut about Roman soldiers being paid in salt hence the word ‘salary’.  Ms Rogers has tried a variety of different salts in her cooking: Maldon, fleur de sel, Hawaiian black lava salt and red salt (a detoxifier, she reports), kala namak from Darjeeling, Halen Mon vanilla salt and she discusses some fascinating pink Himalayan salt that you cook on rather than putting on the food you cook.

But it’s in the comment section that the page really takes wing.  A beardy chap named ‘dickpountain’ gets earthy in his riposte to Ms Rogers’ assertion that Hawaiian red sea salt ‘reputedly’ detoxifies.  He says (the delicate should look away now), ‘My arse reputedly plays the Mozart Horn Concerto.’  So, not really in agreement with the whole detoxification thing then.  Other commenters take issue with the alleged ‘flavours’ of different salts, saying that NaCl is the same no matter where it comes from and that anyone who pays £10 for a pot of gourmet salt is a fool, or words to that effect.  Then other commenters weigh in, saying they can too tell the difference between salts because their palates are so delicate.  Then the first lot challenge the second lot to do a blind tasting.  It may come to blows before the day is over.  If you want a piece of it, click on the link above and start commenting.

The Customer is Always Right — Discuss

In a reprint from Fire & Knives food magazine, Taccuino Spuntino (the bloggy name for Russell Norman, owner of Polpo and Polpetto) writes about us, the customers, and how he deals with our complaints.  It won’t surprise you to know, especially if you deal with the public in your own line of work, that we diners can be a tricky bunch.  Sometimes we send food back that is absolutely fine or we refuse wine that’s not corked just because we don’t fancy it.  Sometimes we have legitimate complaints, but we don’t voice them at the time so the restaurant can’t do anything to fix the problem, then we write letters of indignant complaint the next day.  It’s clear from the tone of the article that it’s no mistake that Polpo and Polpetto are such raging successes as restaurants, because Mr Norman seems to welcome complaints so he has the chance to have a dialogue with the customer and dazzle them with his care for their problem.  He encourages us to complain about things both large and small.

He quotes supachef Heston Blumenthal at length about the importance of service in his restaurants.  HB believes that service is more important than the food, because while great service can rescue a mediocre food experience (possibly not at those prices, Heston), poor service can absolutely torpedo any prospect of enjoying even superb food.  That’s an idea to chew on.

Then there’s a bit of a rant from Meemalee’s Kitchen about Heston Blumenthal’s attitude about service in comparison with her experience of The Fat Duck in Bray.  She probably would like to have been able to comment on the customer service there, but never actually managed to eat in the restaurant, despite redialling desperately.  She did succeed in getting a reservation at one point that she had to relinquish because her husband might have been stuck abroad during the Icelandic volcano ash emergency and she couldn’t risk the megabuck penalty if they canceled too late.  And the attitude from the front desk was, to Meemalee’s mind, way less than helpful.  We’ve heard of mystery shoppers who shop incognito and then report on their experiences so shops can improve their services.  Are there mystery diners who tell restaurant owners what the experience of dining in their restaurants is really like?  Or even just trying to get a reservation?  If not, there should be.  We’re available.

Star Chart

The Michelin stars should be out on 18 January and right across the industry the gossip is rife about who’s rising, who’s falling, who’s arriving and who’s being kicked off the list.  Richard Vines on the Bloomberg website polled fifty eminent British chefs on their views about who should be getting what from the Michelin Man, if life were fair.  Top of the list was Pierre Koffmann with a dozen colleagues on record as recommending a Michelin star.    Koffmann, of course, had three Michelin stars once upon a time when he was the chef at La Tante Claire, so there’s every reason to believe that history will repeat itself at least partially.  Tom Kitchin of The Kitchin in Edinburgh goes so far as to say, ‘Koffmann’s not chasing stars but if he doesn’t get one, we should all stand down.’

Eight chefs were in favour of l’Anima gaining its first star, the same number that thinks that Marcus Wareing of Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley should rise to three stars.  Two chefs thought that Le Gavroche was due for a third star, though Michel Roux Jr tactfully declined to comment.  Several people thought Claude Bosi was owed a third star for Hibiscus.

There’s lots more in the piece and it all comes across like one big lovefest, especially among the chefs who favour a classically French-based cuisine, even if they filter it through their own fabulous sensibilities.  What’s interesting to us are anomalies like this: four chefs think La Petite Maison should get its first star, but toptable diners rate it an overall 7.8, not enough to put it in the Top Diner Rated category.  And three chefs, including Jamie Oliver, think Odette’s in Primrose Hill is worthy of a star, yet you diners have rated it just 7.4 overall.  It will be fascinating to see who’s closer to the Michelin Man’s thinking.

Vintage Italian

London Eater took a trip into the past and went to Zafferano in Belgravia right on the border with Knightsbridge at the absolute epicentre of a sort of ascot-tie, blonde highlights, clanky gold jewellery kind of audience for traditional Italian food.  This is the place where Giorgio Locatelli earned his first Michelin star in London and it’s still there, under the careful watch of chef Andy Needham.  The food is brilliant, says London Eater, and we know you agree.  But it is a teensy bit like stepping back into 1995.  The decor was cosier before they expanded a few years ago, and LE remarked on the blandness of the surroundings though we think that may have been a bit harsh.  The gaps between courses weren’t pleasing either, but the quality of the food made it one of the top three Italian restaurants in London in his opinion, the other two being Locanda Locatelli and The River Cafe.  The overall verdict?  ‘Zafferano remains one of the great Italian institutions in the Smoke….I can only recommend that you put Zafferano on your list.’


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Best of the Blogs

Friday, December 17th, 2010

En Sweet

Yet another reason to make a visit to The Langham Hotel: London’s biggest gingerbread house is on display in the Palm Court to amuse guests taking tea.  If you’ve got small children to whom the scale will be even more impressive, this is definitely a detour worth making from Oxford Street or Regent Street if you’re visiting the lights or doing Christmas shopping.  The Londonist has a terrific pic.  We particularly like the macaroon roofing tiles and the icing sugar trailing ivy.  We chatted earlier this week about the exciting new restaurant, Roux at The Landau at The Langham Hotel.  The hotel is doing its best to lure you in for a visit.  We say go ahead and be lured.  Whether you’re going for tea or a meal, you will be glad you were.

Hiding Place

We don’t know if it’s true or not, but there is a rumour afoot that Julian Assange, the wikileaker, used The Frontline Club as his main hangout during the last few weeks while the world awaited the outcome of the various legal actions pending against him.  We begin our description on the toptable website of the restaurant as ‘a welcome haven’.  Guess we got that spot on.  But what we don’t understand is, how can a club that is literally rammed with journos every day of the week manage to keep shtum on the location of the world’s second most wanted man?

Hot Roots

Headed for Mexico, Oaxaca in particular? Then you won’t want to miss the Noche de Rabanos on 23 December.  It translates as ‘Night of Radishes’ and it’s a huge deal there.  There will be an enormous display of radish sculptures in the form of saints, regular people and animals in front of the Government Palace.  Then everyone eats bunuelos, a sweet pastry that’s sold from a shop by the cathedral, and breaks the dish their bunuelo was served on to foretell their future for the year to come.  The last time we were in Oaxaca, we had our wallet stolen, but we’d consider going back just for this.  And if you’re feeling culturally superior, then all we can say is, hey, we roll cheeses.

Quotes of Note

‘Believe it or not, Americans eat seventy-five acres of pizza a day.’

‘Green bell peppers have twice the vitamin C as oranges and red and yellow bell peppers have four times as much.’

‘When helicopters were snatching people from the grounds of the American embassy compound during the panic of the final Vietcong push into Saigon, I was sitting in front of the television set shouting, ‘Get the chefs! Get the chefs!’ (Calvin Trillin)

We discovered a website, foodreference.com, and there went an hour and a half when we should have been doing more Christmas shopping.  Sorry, mum.  It’s got Food Trivia sections and Food Quotes sections and a Who’s Who and recipes and we don’t know what all.  Absolutely absorbing.  Did you know that there are 49 million bubbles in a bottle of champagne?  Neither did we before we found foodreference.

We especially like the alphabetical sorting of the Food Quotes section, particularly ‘Ice to Italians’, ‘Mackerel to Millionaires’, ‘Pot au Feu to Purgatory’, yes we’ve had that culinary disaster too, and ‘Baby to Bed’.  There’s a short story lurking in that list.

Hot Holiday Viewing

The sixth annual British Curry Awards took place in November, a massive and glittering event at the Grosvenor House ballroom with Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles, and superchef Heston Blumenthal, and the winners are listed below.  But if you are so devoted that you’d like to see the entire spectacle – you know who you are – you’ll find the award ceremony broadcast on Christmas Day on Star Plus so set your digibox now.

Huge congratulations to these superb restaurants who distinguished themselves from among more than 3500 entrants.  Well done.  We can’t wait to visit each and every one of you and offer our heartiest best wishes in person.

The regional winners were:

Ashoka Johnstone, Johnstone (Best in Scotland)

The Spice Cube, Newcastle (Best in the North East)

The Millennium Saagar, Douglas, Isle of Man (Best in the North West)
Lasan, Birmingham (Best in the Midlands)
Rajpoot, Bath (Best in the South West)
Aziz, Oxford (Best in the South East)
Bengal Dynasty, Shotton, Flintshire (Best in Wales)
Brilliant, Southall (Best in London Suburbs)
Bombay Brasserie, London SW7 (Best in London Central & City)

In addition Mem Saab, Leicester, was named Best Newcomer and Brighton’s Chilli Pickle the Most Innovative restaurant.

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Best of the Blogs

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

The best restaurants of the bloggers is what our title means this week.  A few weeks ago we surveyed the toptable diners’ favourite restaurants, that is, your favourite toptable restaurants.  This week lucky thirteen of our favourite bloggers told us their top ten restaurants.

An aside: how do these people find the time?  They’re mostly working at other jobs or raising children or both, they’re dining out, they’re blogging, they’ve gotta sleep sometime and do their laundry and taxes and things.  We gaze on in awe at their output.  And thank them for their thoughtful submissions, too.

As in all ‘Best of the Blogs’ posts, the restaurants here are not necessarily toptable restaurants. We wanted the bloggers’ truest rankings.  But an awful lot of their top tens are toptable restaurant members and we say with pride that we’re not surprised one little bit.

Just as you’d expect in any group that’s passionate about a topic, there is some overlap in the bloggers’ rankings of excellence but almost complete disagreement about what restaurant is their top fave.

Hawksmoor restaurant

For instance, The Best of the Best, the collated top ten of our thirteen bloggers, starts with Hawksmoor at number one, a heavenly steak joint that blogger Tehbus described as ‘a meat emporium extraordinaire’ with ‘perfect English steaks’.  Most recommend the beef dripping chips. To be fair, Hawksmoor is now two restaurants, the original in Spitalfields and a new branch in Seven Dials in Covent Garden, and both appear on bloggers’ lists.  You should also know that Monday nights at Hawksmoor are ‘Wine Club’ nights when you can BYO from home for just £5 corkage.  It is clearly a brilliant restaurant.

But only Pig Pig’s Corner actually put it at the very top of their list, though Hawksmoor did appear on a massive and convincing seven other bloggers’ lists of favourites. That’s what we mean about overlap plus disagreement among the passionate.

So who did appear in the first slot of the bloggers’ lists?  (Note: we didn’t ask bloggers to rank number one, number two etc and just like us they have their favourite for meat or romance or partying or whatever.  But in this analytical age we’re taking the restaurant at the top of each list as a subliminally-chosen favourite of all.  Hey, we could be wrong, but we think it’s worth exploring.)

The Catty Life put Byron, the incredibly good burger chain, at the top of her list, especially for the Byron’s cheeseburger with your choice of cheese.  Interesting, as we read her post on The Ledbury not long ago and would have put money on it being at the head of the queue.

Bob Bob Ricard

Now Cheese and Biscuits puts Bob Bob Ricard at the top of his list and partly for the very same reason: top burger.  But any place that has Pol Roger 1999 by the glass, milkshakes, lobster, caviar, toast, superb sourcing, a fun ambience and brilliant British cuisine and Russian dishes as well as comfort food on the menu and makes it all work?  That’s a brilliant restaurant.

Essex Eating thinks so too, glorying in Bob Bob Ricard’s ‘sheer bonkers elegance, even the toilets are incredible.’  And he agrees that ‘it works beautifully’.  His list is more West Country than some of our other bloggers, rating restaurants St Ives, Dartmouth and Bristol, his new home, as well as London spots.  Very useful.

Racine

The Epicurean landed Racine in Brompton Road at the top for its ‘perfect French bourgeois cooking’ with unsurpassed Cote de Boeuf and the best crème caramel in the UK.  It wasn’t long ago that one of the toptable staff had his first meal there and came back to the office the next morning saying the very same thing: new favourite restaurant, rebooked that very evening to go again.  Great restaurants have that effect on people and Racine is definitely in that group.

Gastroenophile chose newish Italian restaurant The Dock Kitchen in Ladbroke Grove for his top of the list for its ‘haute paysan cuisine’ from a former River Café chef, and he likes the supper club theme nights.  Is there no end to the elevating effect the River Café has had on the capital’s cuisine?  Long may it wave.

Greedy Diva, we love her name and we love her blog, chose double Michelin starred The Ledbury for its ‘brilliant, original fare which is a joy to eat’ and definitely names it as her favourite London restaurant.  It will be fascinating to see

The Ledbury

how the career of young Australian chef Brett Graham develops as time goes on.

Hollow Legs also put The Ledbury at the top of her list for its ‘jaw-droppingly excellent food’.  Her list is particularly eclectic, ranging from Michelin stars to a takeaway jerk spot.  Now that’s a real Londoner.

Pied à Terre

Intoxicating Prose choose another double Michelin-starred restaurant, Pied à Terre, for the first on his list, a Fitzrovia landmark for nearly twenty years under the stewardship of restaurateur David Moore.  It’s the big sister to l’Autre Pied in Fitzrovia, but for IP the original is where it’s at.

PalAtTable gives Indian restaurant Dishoom the top spot for authenticity, luxurious décor, pride of service and a menu that’s a combination of traditional biryanis and tandooris with ‘playful options’ like Bombay sausages.  It’s also excellent value.

Zucca Restaurant

Rocket and Squash adores Zucca, the Italian restaurant in Bermondsey, for every detail: ‘the food, the booze, the vibe, the staff’.  He says, ‘Good luck getting a booking.’  Yeah, thanks, R&S, especially now you’ve let the cat out of the bag.

Gourmet Chick put Polpo in Soho foremost for its small plates of Italian food and the buzzing atmosphere though she doesn’t rate the queuing system.  The wine pricing system gets a mention too – you can order much of the list by the bottle, half litre or quarter litre.  Cool.

Tehbus went out of the capital for his ace in the deck, a Whitstable seaside restaurant called The Sportsman, serving the freshest of local cuisine.  It’s actually

The Sportsman

a bit remote, on the road between Faversham and Whitstable, and combines nicely with a walk on the windy beach.  Sounds perfect for sweeping away the post-Christmas cobwebs and seeing the new year in with a clear head.

Having read through all the bloggers’ Top Tens, we find our New Years resolution has suddenly stormed into focus: we pledge to try at least one of each of the bloggers’ listed restaurants over the next year.  Thirteen bloggers’ choice restaurants, twelve months.  It very nearly works and that’s a sign, of sorts.

As for you, toptable blog-reading friends, what do you think?  Whose list are you closest to?  Did you find some surprises?  And where are you going next?

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Things To Do In London at Christmas

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

Just when we were starting to draft our list of great things to do in London at Christmas, a brilliant blogpost arrived from The Happiness Project called 99 Awesome Things to Do in London and suddenly our work seemed done.  A straight steal and go out to lunch.   But that’s not how we do things at toptable towers, so while we’d like to steal a few of THP’s awesome things because they were already on our list — promise — we’d love to add some more of our own, though we can’t pledge as many as 99.

1.  Walking along the South Bank between Tower Bridge and Westminster Bridge, enjoying the Christmas lights and the London skyline, doing some Christmas shopping at the Tate Modern, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, the shops at the Southbank and the Christmas market there too.  We end up tired and happy with our bags full of arty and unique gifts, and ready to eat.

2.  Visiting Covent Garden about which we posted a long piece yesterday.  We just love the Kissmas theme this year and the kiss-and-make-the-lights-go-mad Christmas tree.  And there’s all the world of restaurants, especially  restaurants with deals, everywhere you turn at Covent Garden.

3.  Going to panto.  Oh yes we do.  Granted, panto isn’t solely a London activity, but we love it here because this is when the non-West End theatres really shine.   Like the Hackney Empire‘s Jack and the Beanstalk, the Lyric Hammersmith‘s Dick Whittington and His Cat, the Theatre Royal Stratford East‘s Red Riding Hood, the Richmond Theatre‘s Sleeping Beauty, the New Wimbledon‘s Peter Pan, and the Greenwich Theatre‘s Cinderella. And we’ve go great restaurants and deals for before or after the show.  Click on the theatre name to take you to toptable restaurants nearby.

4.  Ice skating in gorgeous, historic surroundings right across the capital from the Tower of London and Somerset House to the Natural History Museum and Hampton Court Palace as well as cool spots like Broadgate and Canary Wharf.  For once the weather has cooperated so we’re actually zizzing across shiny ice instead of slogging through slush.  And toptable has restaurants nearby to warm up in — click on the name of the ice rink location to get a list of toptable restaurants nearby.

5.  Taking in the lesser lights of Christmas.  Sure, we love the big installations of Oxford Street and Regent Street, but for a cosier community ambience, we love strolling along the neighbourhood shopping streets with their own pretty Christmas displays.  Like Elizabeth Street and Pimlico Road in Belgravia before falling into The Ebury, The Orange, 101 Pimlico Road, The Thomas Cubitt, Boisdales or Roussillon.   Or Marylebone High Street before nipping into Odin’s, Fishworks, Orrery, or Michael Moore.

6.  Doing the season up bigtime by hitting Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park and the many Christmas markets throughout the capital.  All that Christmas excitement smushed into one place and crammed with children and the adults who are living the season anew through their eyes.  Dining after?  Click here.

7.  Going to carol services and singing our lungs out.  We know that many of you don’t do church, so how brilliant that there are loads of places in London to join in a group of people singing joyously and literally get on the same (sound)wave length.  Every evening between 5 and 9 pm choirs perform in Trafalgar Square, there’s a huge singalong concert at the Royal Albert Hall on the 12th and the divine Kings College Choir will be singing there on the 20th as well as host of other Christmas concerts there.  Then the Hampton Pool is hosting an evening of Christmas Carols with the St Mary’s Church singers accompanied by a display of synchronised swimming.  And that sentence right there is why we love London.

For terrific toptable restaurants near Trafalgar Square, Royal Albert Hall and the Hampton Pool, click the name and get booking.

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Best of the Blogs

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

Gaga-ing Out to Eat

The first huge piece of news we have to tell – and we are breathless with excitement – is that Lady Gaga has invested in a restaurant in New York City, specifically Vince & Eddie’s restaurant on the Upper West Side.  Well, so says NDTV Movies website, but we can’t confirm it on Lady Gaga’s own website.  She is currently ‘digitally dead’ along with a host of other major tweeters like Lenny Kravitz, Justin Timberlake, Khloe and Kim Kardashian, Usher and Serena Williams.  They have all promised to stay off the internet, meaning no tweeting or facebooking, until fans contribute $1M for the Keep A Child Alive Charity to benefit children with AIDS in Africa.

So since the Gagaster isn’t tweeting, we don’t know if the alleged plans to ‘Gaga-fy’ the Italian menu at Vince & Eddie’s have legs.  But we do know she’s joining an illustrious company of entertainers who have invested in restaurants, from Robert deNiro (Nobu) to Michael Caine (Langan’s and many others).  Hope it’s true, though.  We can’t wait to see what the waiters might wear.

Japanese Adventure

Bincho Yakitori

Super blogger Cheese and Biscuits has discovered Bincho Yakitori restaurant in Soho.  After passing it a hundred times, he finally darkened its door and found it to be, if we may quote, ‘a rare example of a restaurant unafraid of introducing Londoners to unusual and audacious Japanese textures and flavours’.

How audacious?  Pigs’ tripe and miso stew, beef tongue yakitori, chicken hearts and gizzards and chicken neck skewers followed by grilled chicken cartilage.  An awful lot of this stuff is off-menu, discovered by Cheese and Biscuits when he found the head chef’s own blog, Blood and Wasabi, which is itself a thoughtful and beautifully photographed thing.

Cigalon in the City

Cigalon in London

Cigalon on Chancery Lane in the City of London is a newly-opened Provencal restaurant that was recommended to TwelvePointFivePercent by a restaurateur he respects and that was all it took.  He found it charming even before he went inside and continued to be delighted throughout his meal, particularly recommending the braised Camargue beef cannelloni, the rib of veal with Mentonaise sauce and the desserts in general.  He mentions that a couple of the dishes were on the ‘bijou’ side, so side dishes may be in order if you decide to go — another thing he recommends.

Om Nom Launceston

We liked Launceston Place in Kensington fifteen years ago when Rowley Leigh was the chef and we like it just as much if not more now that Tristan Welch is in charge.  We have a feeling that Om Nom London wasn’t around in the old days, but she is delighted with the current establishment.  In fact, she says, ‘Launceston Place was one of my favourite meals of the year’.  Gosh.

Launceston Place

She doesn’t say that she booked through toptable, but she did have the ridiculously good value three-course lunch for £22.  She only just posted this week though she dined in the summer, so we’re not sure that listing the dishes is completely worthwhile as the menu will have changed utterly by now.  Okay, beef, beetroot and wild garlic risotto, Denham Castle lamb, pomme purée and herb consommé, and apple tart and homemade clotted cream for two, which made her ‘squeak with glee.’  Wish we’d been there.

If you’re tempted at all, and believe us you should be, the £22 lunch menu is still available and so is a three-course early evening special supper for £38 and a brilliant three-course Sunday lunch for just £26, on toptable right though the end of December.

Hi-End Dining at Hibiscus

Greedy Diva, let us be up front about this, was a guest of the American Express company for her visit to double Michelin-starred Hibiscus in conjunction with Top Treats promotion, a collaboration between Amex and toptable.  Just so you know.

Hibiscus

True to her name, she opted for the eight course tasting menu and put herself in chef Claude Bosi’s capable hands.  And the parade of delights began, starting with an amuse bouche of wild mushroom veloute served in an eggshell on sweet coconut custard that she says shouldn’t have worked, ‘but somehow did’. Then the starter proper of tartare of Scottish langoustine surrounded by tiny dots of tart passion fruit with wattle seed and sea herbs – ‘terrific’.   And so it went through the many courses of inventive French cuisine that have won Bosi his renown.  Only the sweet courses inspired no ‘fireworks’ for her, but she still felt the restaurant completely deserved its starry rating, for both food and service.

Pig Feast

Cook Your Dream is Sarka Babicka, a food blogger and accomplished food photographer living in London who is Czech by birth. She recently posted a long and very illustrated description of (deep breath) a traditional pig slaughtering feast at a small family farm in a village near Prague.

As you read her blogpost, you can see that she’s trying to justify what she sees as the scary photos she’s posted.  The farmer is a ‘very nice man who truly likes his animals’ who seems to be a sort of boutique pig farmer, raising fewer than two dozen animals a year in excellent conditions.

And we suppose the photos would be upsetting to a vegetarian or child or someone of a delicate nature, but we really think that she doesn’t need to justify or apologise. First of all, it’s a fool’s errand, because no matter what you do someone is not going to love it.  Second, if we eat meat, then it’s no good pretending that magic is involved in the process that starts with a live animal and ends with steaks and sausages.

Besides, it’s fascinating.  Pigs are complex organisms and at the pig feast, no part is wasted.  The strength and skill of the man with the knife and axe are plain in many of the photographs – how did ‘butcher’ ever come to mean ‘bodge’?   Turning the pig into food was a broadly communal activity involving both hard work and pride.  And the pictures make clear that the chopping and cooking that we do in the comfort of our kitchens are only the final steps in a procedure that begins in the slaughterers’ yard.

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Best of the Blogs

Friday, November 26th, 2010

2D Food

We’re posting a bit late in the day because we just discovered foodgawker and there went an hour.  Foodgawker is a site where food bloggers – or anyone really – can post their loveliest food photographs and it is addictive, we can tell you.  Right now we’ve got another window open to the ‘most gawked at last 7 days’ page, in particular ogling number 83030, ‘The best dinner rolls you can imagine,’ from the Circle B Kitchen blog.  It’s an American site so we’re also really enjoying the banner ad at the top of the page for easy three-ingredient cookie recipes – one of the ingredients being ‘cookie dough’.  Look, if we’ve got cookie dough, we’ve already got cookies.

Barbecoa

Rocket and Squash was an earlier visitor to Jamie Oliver’s new restaurant Barbecoa* in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral with one of the best views in the City.  It’s had amazing press – we mean Barbecoa, not St Paul’s, though to be fair, St Paul’s has had some amazing press too – and so many people rang for reservations on day one that the system crashed.  So what did R&S think?  Well, the starters generally looked good and tasted decent, but weren’t ‘awesome’.  Good barbecued lamb leg steak, perfectly cooked rump steaks, fine desserts.  Overall, as good as expected but not what R&S had hoped for.

To which we say, hmmm.  Barbecoa is in its earliest days and Jamie Oliver has a pretty superb record at creating restaurants that stand the test of time.  Fifteen in London and Fifteen in Newquay are both top diner rated and have been for a years.  We’re keen to hear if you toptable diners have visited Barbecoa and what you think.

Fish Food

The Catty Life has inside info on The Fish Place and, oddly enough, Cheese & Biscuits was there the same night.  And they both had more than reasonable experiences of this newly opened fine dining restaurant with views of the Thames.  But both were worried that the remote location near the Battersea heliport would make survival difficult at best.  C&B thought the best of the cooking was near-Michelin quality while Catty was more mixed though she thought the best of the cooking was excellent.  Both agreed that teabags have no place in restaurants of this calibre, let along Sainsbury’s teabags.  Overall, very positive but, as with Barbecoa, it’s early days for The Fish Place and there’s time to make adjustments.

Three-Star Long-Runner

Andy Hayler, the chap who has repeatedly dined at all the three-star Michelin restaurants in a year, has been as busy as usual dining out across London.  He had a ‘very pleasant’ meal at Lamberts in Balham who recently had a chef transplant.  His visit to Chancery near Chancery Lane in the City was ‘thoroughly enjoyable’, but we knew he’d enjoy it because toptable diners rate it an excellent 8.  New restaurant North Road* didn’t please nearly as much, but form was restored with a superb meal at Le Gavroche, which is toptable diners’ absolute number one restaurant, so once again, we were there first.  The Bombay Brasserie is still going strong after more than twenty-five years and Andy found it on good form after its recent refurbishment.  He gave Dinings in Marylebone two visits, the second better than the first and ends his most recent blogpost with two chef interviews.

Gosh.  We’re getting tired just imagining his dining schedule and we’re more than a little envious that his life revolves so thoroughly around the two divine disciplines of dining well and writing well.  Rock on, Andy Hayler, we salute you.

*What the Stars Are About

Dos Hermanos also visited both Barbecoa and North Road recently and were more pronounced in their opinions of both.  Barbecoa didn’t fare well, we’re sorry to report, but North Road got a long, detailed and overall positive review from the pair, quite the opposite from Andy Hayler’s.  Verdict on North Road: ‘I’ll be returning.’

DH also made a very happy visit to Wright Brothers in Soho to mightily indulge in their celebration of Native Oyster Season. And that was something to celebrate, the only sour note being the cold razor clams, not nearly disliked enough to keep DH from going back the next evening with friends for more of the same.

WTC

And finally, precisely one million miles from the UK, a drum roll please for White Trash Cooking with Stacie and Doug which emanates from Cleveland, Ohio.  They don’t actually live in a trailer park, but they do embrace ‘the way of the can’ in their pursuit of WTC or White Trash Cooking.

There’s no exact equivalent for ‘white trash’ in the UK, though if you understand the concept of the redneck, you probably won’t be far off.  White trash is a group of people who are a) white, b) lower class shall we say (though Stacie and Doug are graphic designers which kind of means they’re slumming it) and c) have a high likelihood of living in a trailer and d) are without ambition to better themselves. That last category can manifest itself in many ways, ranging from accepting their obesity (S & D probably aren’t obese), their massive and complete untidiness (no idea about S & D on this one), the fact that the cars in the front yard will never move again but they’re not in anyone’s way so what’s the big deal, and the fact that food manufacturers have created lots of easy food so why bother with fresh.    Aerosol cheese would be a WTC ingredient, for instance.

White trash cooking is often based around white things, like bread, rice, pasta and potatoes, chopped meats, processed cheese and canned goods.  And there’s a proviso:

‘Here’s the dirty secret about WTC, it’s not very healthy.  So what do you do?  Drink beer or wine with your meal to help thin down the blood that the fats and salt are trying to thicken.  Problem solved.’

If you’re going to actually cook any of the recipes, you need to know that in American recipes a cup is eight fluid ounces, a tsp is a teaspoon (5mls), a tbsp is a tablespoon (15mls) and temperatures are in Fahrenheit.  Keep an eye on your cholesterol and happy cooking.

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Best of the Blogs

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Best of the Blogs

Jay Rayner of The Observer is the foundation for the Coogan character on the brilliant BBC2 comedy The Trip starring Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden and he’s finding it a bit weird to see something of himself on telly as well as much of his admittedly peculiar profession, as he says in his Word of Mouth column last Tuesday.  We have a lot of time for Jay Rayner’s restaurant reviews – not perfect but thoughtful – and for his humble self-awareness that a man who writes about what he had for tea for a living has, in his words, ‘a really silly way for a grown man to make a living’.  Good column and thoughtful comments from readers too.

As long as we’re trawling around the Word of Mouth column, we happened on the brilliant Oliver Thring discussing avocados, a fruit that is fully one third fat. The name avocado comes from the Aztec word ‘ahuacatl’ and that means ‘testicle’.  Try not to think about that next time you’re mushing up some guacamole, which is Aztec for ‘vasectomy’.  No, we made that last bit up.  We particularly like the comment by James Ramsden:

I once explored the avocado/banana similarities by making a banana guacamole with lime juice and chilli. It was minging.

Well, doh, James, though top marks for food experimentation.  Evidently we missed the moment last year when M & S and Sainsbury’s went head-to-head over who precisely was first to introduce the avocado to the supermarket shelves, though the Daily Mail covered the avocado battle in depth.  Good piece from Thring, as usual, and we recommend it.

Bon Vivant has been to Zucca in Bermondsey Street in London and not for the first time.  He remembers being quite blown away by Zucca when it first opened last year and still finds it an excellent spot for rustic Italian food with a modern twist in a relaxed, contemporary setting.  He particularly liked it that he got out for about £30 including wine.  Zucca has been called ‘The River Café for a fraction of the price’ and while there’s no actual river out the window, there’s something in that.

If you managed to miss MasterChefLive last week and would like to torture yourself with what you missed, Mrs Duck’s Foodie Quacks is the place to go because she went and had a fine old time.  And just for future reference, if you didn’t go because none of your friends was free that day, Mrs Duck recommends going solo so you can really explore and not be distracted.  She also gives links to some of her favourite food companies from the Producers’ Village.

On a more international note, Meemalee of Meemalee’s Kitchen blog got to Freemason’s Hall in London to hear the great Rene Redzepi speak on the occasion of the launch of his English Language book Noma – Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine.   As all true foodies know, Redzepi was the winner of MasterChef Professionals 2009 and his restaurant, Noma, (in Denmark) was named Best Restaurant in the World in the San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants this year ahead of The Fat Duck and El Bulli.   He uses masses of foraged food, and employs only produce from Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Finland.  He chatted generously about the creative processes that drive the kitchens at Noma to achieve their innovative dishes and great success.  He also read out a letter of complaint that arrived the day after the S. Pelligrino award – very down-to-earth and we like him.

And finally for this week, Gin and Crumpets has let the sow out of the bag on the world’s finest, naughtiest comfort food (drum roll if you please) Pork Crackling and Peanut Brittle. Otherwise known as Pig Candy. It’s a recipe from Jennifer McLagan’s Fat cookbook (full title: Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient with Recipes).  The picture looks, well, edible, and she walks you through her own little variations to make it amazing.  Not for kosher friends, of course, or dieters or coronary patients, but when you get that urge to really indulge, it sounds as if Pig Candy can’t be beat.  Oh, and you have the second pleasure of smashing it up when it sets.  This may be the perfect food.

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