When, in response to the habitual social icebreaker “What do you do for a living?”, I tell people I write on wine and food I always get a variation on the same response – “A mucky job but someone has to do it, I suppose?” I can read their mind: here’s a man with his ...
Restaurant ReviewsRestaurant reviewers, as a breed, tend to fall into two categories. The first, let’s call it Type A, encompasses those who, in a previous life, have worked in the restaurant business. The second, Type B, those who haven’t. The Type B brigade can be further subdivided into (1) hard core righteous foodies lucky or brass-faced ...
Restaurant ReviewsAmong the plethora of foodie TV that dominates the viewing week there should, in my opinion, be a programme for celebrity meeters-and-greeters. Instead of some spittle-frothing, rabid-eyed chef fettling fiddle-faddle we’d never cook in a million years or an uppity broad teaching us how to make an egg sandwich we’d have the likes of Restaurant ...
Restaurant ReviewsWhen the wine list appears many restaurant customers, me included, feel like hiding in the loo until the “Who chooses?” moment has passed. As a wine writer, I’m frequently handed the carte and asked to select appropriate partners for the food guests have chosen, which can run the whole gamut, from rare venison to tofu. ...
Wine & DrinkI know Antonio Carluccio. I’ve dined with him, drunk with him, listened to him talking about food in language others reserve for describing beautiful women and marvelled at his infeasibly large repertoire of off-colour jokes. Antonio , many years ago, set out on a mission to introduce Londoners to proper Italian cucina, food that didn’t ...
Restaurant ReviewsThe only table we could have was was for 6.30. We hit Ranelagh at 6.15 and because trudging up-and-down in the prevailing deluge held no charm for us we went straight to the restaurant. The front door was locked. Through the rain coursing down the window we glimpsed the man himself. He appeared to be ...
Restaurant ReviewsNewspaper critics of all persuasions will be sleeping better in their beds following the judgement of the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland overturning the verdict in what I think of as ‘Badfellagate’, a case in Northern Ireland in which a restaurant proprietor sued a critic over an adverse review. Anthony Lester QC, an architect ...
FoodWHEN I was in full-time, gainful employment, a certain small restaurant in a railway tunnel was a lunchtime oasis. A place where a close-knit corps of magazine hacks celebrated significant birthdays, engagements, promotions, pregnancies, leavings for a better life, and “Thank Christ it’s Monday/Tuesday…” (fill in the day). After a communal savaging in a morning ...
Restaurant Reviews