Category Archives: Articles

Paris yesterday, cold and bright. Cream stone, pursed mouths, a brown ribbon of river. I’ve been here every year since my late teens, I grew up in a Swiss village a mile from the border, my dad still lives in … Continue reading →

So 2009 wheezes out the decade. As I write this, snow is falling outside, unsettlingly. This is a fearful time for restaurants: they’re hyping their Christmas menus with all the urgent gloom of a closing down sale. Those glorious, spending … Continue reading →

Something’s got my goat recently. Kid, curd and little beard. It began as a niggling irritant but has steadily descended into vein-bulging rage. It’s a word, a single word, sneering back at me on every menu I scan, on every … Continue reading →

Christmas looms, and that means we’re veering into office party season, that sloshed embittered wasteland of social interaction. Nigel, gazing into his Rioja, dolefully telling his bored neighbour how he wished he’d taken that job in Dubai in ’98. Anne … Continue reading →

I spend an inordinate amount of time on restaurant websites. It’s the occupational hazard of food blogging. People come to you and say, ‘I’m off to a nose flute recital in Neasden tonight. What’s the best coeliac Mongolian round there?’ … Continue reading →

Whenever I was in the States, and began to compare (as we all do) home and away, I used to think that what London needed wasn’t malls, multiplexes or Taco Bells, or the grating guff of I’m-Wanda-and-I’ll-be-your-waitress, or Creosote portions … Continue reading →