Food and Drink

To protect the innocent, the guilty and myself, nothing I tell you will be entirely true.  Here is what I remember about cooking for the Leading Sportsman one New Year’s Eve. One of the nicest people I’ve had the pleasure to cook for, the LS was tall, relaxed, confident, and utterly charming to everyone he met. His French Girlfriend, a former athlete turned model, was quite tall. This New Year's Eve the LS had primed me to cook an extra-special early...

Working as a chef in the hot and fast environment of a kitchen can be both physically and mentally draining, but one of the most exhaustive experiences as a sous chef is working tirelessly on perfecting a dish only for the head chef to take the credit. A top dish is days in the making, and considering an average working week in a top end restaurant for a chef is 65 hours, we spend hours on end creating a dish,...

Since its Christmas, here is a Christmas story. To protect the innocent, the guilty and myself, nothing I tell you will be quite true. My qualification for being your secret chef is spending two decades as a private chef for High Net Worth (HNW) and Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) clients all over Europe and on super yachts. What I have become experienced at is keeping secrets. Here is what I remember about Christmas in Dublin for a Swiss family....

Our relationship with the humble sprout is a complex one. Regardless of your stance on the deliciously juicy/repulsively pungent veggies, there's something about sprouts so quintessentially Christmas it would be a travesty not to see a couple on your dinner plate when Christmas Dinner rolls around. Sprouts take a lot of flack, then, but this sweet video showing the journey of a jolly sprout from field to fork aims to change all that. As Asda gets ready to sell 1.1million...

The first beer in the world to be specially brewed to have with a kebab has been launched by London restaurateur and British Kebab Awards founder Ibrahim Dogus. Bira London was officially launched in central London last night as part of the festive build up to Christmas. Its secret recipe was created to suit barbecue flavours and liberal use of spices. It has been described by those who have tasted it as a dry, very smooth lager with a crisp taste, a strong...

When opening a new restaurant in an area that’s surrounded with competition, balance between the space’s food and ambience is of immeasurable importance. Instead of contrasting with harsh discordance, each of these elements are (generally speaking) best when purposely designed to intricately work in harmony with one another, but without being too overworked. Chef Shaun Rankin’s Ormer in the basement of Flemings’ Hotel in Mayfair, for instance, is a prime example of a new restaurant to strike that balance with...

Although Japanese whisky has origins as far back as the 1920s, it’s only within recent years that the Japanese spirit has become such a global phenomenon. As a result, stocks from Suntory Distilleries such as Yamazaki and Hibiki are depleting in a struggle to keep up with demand, and their produce is now unbelievably rare and in turn expensive. In 1923, Suntory founder Shinjiro Torii began work on building Japan’s first whisky distillery in Yamazaki, on the outskirts of Kyoto....

Strength: 4.5% ABV Brewed: Ellon, Scotland Tired of a market dominated by industrially brewed lagers and ales, the team behind BrewDog set up the world’s first crowd-funded brewery in 2007. Now one of the UK’s most prominent breweries, operating from a site in Ellon, just north of Aberdeen, a community of over 35000 investors own shares in the business, with shares still available. And what’s more, the brewery that’s made for the people, by the people is still constantly striving to encourage...

Let’s face it, 2016 has been less than brilliant. Something to be thankful for, however, is the overwhelming number of remarkable restaurants to have opened in London over the past twelve months. We’ve compiled a selection of some of our favourites. Eneko at One Aldwych The first London restaurant from three Michelin-starred Eneko Atxa, Eneko at One Aldwych is an intentionally different entity to Azurmendi in Bilbao. Of course, the chef’s culinary expertise is delivered here, yet the ambience is...