RIPPER KIPPER

When Some people are happy to eat kippers for lunch, and others at supper, but for me, kippers are for breakfast. Which Craster kippers have their devotees. I’ve heard kippers from Loch Fyne highly spoken of.There is a great tradition of kippers from Mallaig and Stornaway, and there are a number of dedicated one-man band, […]

ROMAN CARNIVAL

My daughter, Lois, and I spent a very happy few days with my brother, Johnny, and his wife, Emma, in Rome a weekend or so ago. Rome (and Italy in general) may be going through a rough patch at the moment, but there’s not other city or country I would rather visit, particularly when I […]

NO VEGETATING

It can hardly escaped anyone’s notice that it’s been a busy day or two on the vegan and vegetarian front . Today is World Vegan Day, for a start. Waitrose have produced a report noting the irresistible rise of non-meat eating. William Sitwell, the editor of Waitrose Food Illustrated for 20 years lost his […]

THE DEFINITIVE EGG & BACON SARNIE

And while we’re on the subject of sandwiches, I’d like to put forward my version of the greatest of all sandwiches, the egg and bacon sarnie. No other sandwich satisfies so many of our baser gastronomic instincts. No other sandwich is such a monument of sophistication and such a paradigm of simplicity. It’s general […]

SCHONNEMANN’S CELESTIAL SANDWICHES

The waiter poured a shot of aquavit in one smooth, easy move. He twisted the bottle just as the liquid reached the lip of the glass. The surface of the clear firewater bulged slightly above the top, but held. A fluke, it had to be. I asked him to do it again. He did. It […]

NOMA REDUX

19/20 In a ferment – René Redzepi and his team mark out new territory with the old élan. Top, top grub. Top, top service. Top, top price. Topping all round. ‘That was so good,’ I said to the young lady who came to clear away the dishes that had until recently contained a ragout of […]

US & THEM

Last weekend Bee Wilson wrote a characteristically intelligent and lucid piece in the Guardian extolling the virtues of another characteristically intelligent and lucid writer, Nigella Lawson. In particular, she praised the merits of How To Eat – ‘For those of us who love How To Eat above all other food books, what it offered was […]