Food and Drink

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Call me sentimentalist, call me old fashioned – but like others, I’m sure, turkey (the bird) is something that I do not generally associate with the month of July. Generally reserved for Christmas time, often sentenced to hours withering at the bottom of a hot oven, turkey has gained a negative reputation for being dry and generally unexciting - unless you are a child and enjoy eating food that has been cut into the shape of...

Calcutta Street brings a Bengali home dining experience to London. The first permanent space from Shrimoyee Chakraborty, Calcutta Street follows a string of successful pop-ups. Here, the chef’s recipes have been passed from mother to daughter for generations and are generally family recipes, albeit made with some of the best British ingredients available. One particular menu highlight is Chakraborty’s fish paturi – a Bengali fish dish, featuring whole sea bass that’s wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. Ingredients Whole sea...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Named after one of their signature cocktails – Dirty Martini is a bar group with seven venues operating across London. However, during a recent visit to the Hanover Square outpost, the staff were oddly resolute in convincing me to order a different drink, adamant that I would abhor the dirty martini on offer here. Yet although I’d been warned to drink it at my peril, this only heightened my curiosity. How could I visit...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food With so many restaurants specialising in American-inspired barbecue having opened across the city within the past five years, Bodean's is facing an uphill battle to remain relevant. First launched in 2012, Bodean’s was, in fact, one of the first restaurants of this ilk to arrive in London, set up as the brainchild of restaurateur Andre Blais, obsessed with the food of Kansas City. The first restaurant was opened on Soho’s Poland Street, and now, some 14...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Tired of working in the City of London’s banking industry, Andy Moffat decided to change his career path and set up Redemption Brewing Company in 2010, following his ambition to open a brewery of his own. Operating from an industrial site in Tottenham, just a few streets from White Hart Lane, Redemption is actually one of the first craft breweries to set up in London, before the current craft beer scene took off proper,...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Although the food of China has been popular in the UK for many years, it is only more recently that the tired stereotype of Anglicised Chinese cuisine has began to positively evolve. For a very long time, alas, there has been an ignorant British belief that the globe’s most populous nation has little more to offer than chow mein, special fried rice, and sweet and sour pork that’s to be drowned in incandescent orange...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food  Since opening on Greenwich Peninsular last year, perched between North Greenwich tube station and The O2 Arena, Craft London has become incredibly popular. Although Stevie Parle’s food is the main draw, from the venue split over three floors – the top-floor bar is also impressive, offering stunning views of The O2 Arena, the Isle of Dogs, and the river. Another prominent nearby building, however, is the Tate and Lyle Sugar Refiners, pierces the skyline...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, TLE_Food With plenty of exciting restaurant openings constantly taking place across the Capital, here’s our pick of the best new restaurants arriving in London over the coming month. Bao – Fitzrovia One of last year’s hottest new openings, Soho’s Bao still demands queues around the block during peak lunch and dinner hours. Having began life as a still ridiculously popular street food stall in East London’s Netil Street Market, Bao arrived in Soho last summer with a tiny 32-cover permanent...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Russian cuisine is woefully underrepresented in London and, as a result, is generally under-appreciated amongst city dwellers. While the city’s restaurant scene is arguably one of the globe’s finest, embracing a vast melting pot of cultures - with so many restaurants now focusing on regionality, as well as nationality, we’re still not spoilt for choice when it comes to Russian food. Even London’s most prominent Russian restaurateurs rarely open ventures within the city that...