Food and Drink

Following the sell-out success of last year’s event at the Old Town Hall building in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, The Pop-Up Picture Company will return this summer. Like last year’s event, which teamed two-courses of comfort food from two Michelin-starred chef Tom Kerridge with classic movie screenings, Rick Stein has been announced as this summer’s guest chef. Each set in stunning locations, the Pop-Up Picture Company’s summer launch will take place in two different surroundings. Entitled Rick Stein’s Sunset Cinema, the event will...

By Maggie Majstrova, @foodstrova For weeks now, on my way to and from one of my client’s offices, I’ve been passing The Brookmill – its windows shuttered, its façade hidden by scaffolding. These are the unmistakable signs of refurbishment that fill me with equal measures of excitement and dread. How will it turn out? Will it be somewhere fabulous, or somewhere utterly horrendous? Before Christmas, The Brookmill finally re-opened, premiering the final result. It's a 19th Century Victorian corner pub,...

Independent Brixton-based roaster Volcano Coffee Works has released the UK's first 100 per cent bio-based compostable coffee pod which is fully compatible with your pod machine. Volcano Coffee Works has been supplying top restaurants and coffee outlets with ethically traded and sustainable coffee since the company launched seven years ago. And now you can enjoy their coffee at home in three expressions - Bold Morning Shot, Balanced All Day and Reserve Rich Sweet. Unlike most of the established and new coffee pods on...

A chilly vineyard has become Britain's most Northerly commercial WINE producer for the first time in history. The British wine boom has rarely seen vineyards pop up as far north as Watford as the French try to snap up land for the same desire across the South of England. But no other grape-grower has managed to achieve the longitude co-ordinates of breezy Malton in North Yorkshire. The effects of climate warming and hardier strains of vine have blown away the...

Britain is experiencing a beetroot boom, with supermarket sales of the root vegetable increasing by as much as a third year-on-year on the back of the ‘purple trend’ – people eating purple to consume more antioxidants and nutrients in a bid to stay healthy. Leading researchers Kantar cite the total market spend over the past 12 months on fresh beetroot - beetroot which is ready for eating, pickled in vinegar or infused with various flavours - was more than £34 million,...

A pub chain has banned STRAWS from its boozers after claiming they "suck". Oakman Inns are scrapping the use of 100,000 plastic straws every month to try and become more environmentally friendly. Instead, drinkers will be given an eco-friendly biodegradable alternative, which is yet to be developed. CEO Peter Borg-Neal, who founded the business in 2005, said: "It sounds ridiculous, but it is entirely accurate to say, that every plastic straw that was ever made, still exists today. "They pollute...

Strength: 5% ABV Brewed: Walthamstow, London Founded on the back of a hobby that turned into an obsession, Wild Card Brewery functions from its own site in Walthamstow, having opened at the beginning of 2014. Since launching, Wild Card has become renowned for producing no-nonsense, uncompromising beers with a four-strong core range inspired by playing cards. These include ‘King of Hearts’ blonde beer, ‘Ace of Spades’ London Porter, and ‘Jack of Clubs’ ruby ale and ‘Queen of Diamonds’ – an...

In addition to having become a pioneering figure in London’s ‘pop-up’ movement, Stevie Parle is a chef renowned for both his innovative take on ‘Modern-European’ food, as well as selecting a string of relatively obscure sites to open restaurants. The chef’s first permanent restaurant - Dock Kitchen, for instance, was opened in 2009 inside a converted Victorian Wharf building on the Grand Union Canal in Ladbroke Grove, renovated as part of an urban generation project. Five years later, Rotorino was...

Flicking through photographs of London’s skyline just before the turn of the millennium, it’s now impossible to overlook the colossal number of skyscrapers that have popped-up over the past seventeen years. A clear sign that London is a city dead-set on keeping up appearances with the likes of New York, Hong Kong and Shanghai. These buildings are structures of power, of wealth, of luxury – so it’s hardly surprising that so many high-end, high-rise restaurants have opened across the capital....