Food and Drink

After what feels like years of waiting, I’ve found a number of genuinely brilliant restaurants close to my home. So when I’m (often) asked for restaurant recommendations, I constantly find myself waxing lyrical about these local treasures. With that comes a price, nonetheless: the only thing worse than an accusation of being biased is the whinging replies of: “Greenwich, oh that’s much too far.” “Zone 2? No way, I’ll need to bring my passport!” Or even worse, “Sorry, darling. We...

The perfect London pub was described in a 1946 piece by George Orwell for the Evening Standard. Orwell named one pub, The Moon Under the Water, as the quintessential boozer. There was one catch, it didn’t exist. Since pubs in the capital continue to close at an alarming rate, it is unlikely that any pub come close to Orwell’s ideal today. This is especially the case in The City, where Lloyds, one of the most historic financial institutions in the...

With the upcoming General Election in the UK, the French Presidential Election, constant threats of nuclear war and terrorism; the hummus shortage that’s been sending the nation into a frenzy does seem somewhat trivial. News of a UK ‘hummus crisis’, nonetheless, still managed to find its way onto the front pages of yesterday’s newspapers. Reports have suggested that a number of UK supermarkets such as Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Tesco have suffered a “crisis”, in which stocks of hummus...

Strength: 5.8% Brewed: Kentish Town, London Currently celebrating their 10th anniversary, Camden Town Brewery was founded in the basement of The Horseshoe pub in Hampstead by Jasper Cuppaidge. The current brewery is located in Kentish Town, though a brand new facility will open this summer, a little further north-east in Enfield. Quite an achievement, the new Enfield brewery is set to be the largest brewery to be built in London in over 30 years. With a core range of seven...

The World’s greatest food photo was unwrapped at a packed awards reception at the Mall Galleries in London last night. Bangladesh-based Shoeb Faruquee was declared overall winner of Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year 2017 and was presented with a cheque for £5,000 by Andy Macdonald, who heads up Pink Lady in the UK, headline sponsor of the awards. Shoeb had won the Food for Celebration category, which is sponsored by Champagne Taittinger earlier in the evening, and then went on to...

Switch on E4 on any given Monday night and ten minutes of Made in Chelsea will give you a rough idea of the veritable number of establishments this part of South West London has to offer. Glamorous clubs, private members bars and palace-like cafes serving high teas from shiny trinkets are accommodation enough to host an hour’s worth of bitching and whining. But far from being an isolated neighbourhood for the privileged few Chelsea is now awash with quirky cafes,...

Since opening in 2015, Flat Three has become renowned for a number of mind-blowing Japanese, Scandinavian and Korean-inspired dishes. The restaurant’s fermented cauliflower kombu broth, for instance, is delicious – available paired with poached sea bass. With patience, the recipe for that particular broth is fairly simple to recreate at home – with the cauliflower kimchi requiring at least two weeks’ inactive preparation. Trust us, the final result is worth the wait. Ingredients You will need a sterilised jar with...

As we approach the middle of 2017, the list of objects attainable with change from just one polymer fiver is slimmer than ever. A bottle of supermarket brand Prosecco, or a day’s bus pass might return a mere handful of shrapnel. That same note will be enough to pay for an average of just 4.27 litres of petrol. If you’re very lucky, that same plastic portrait of Sir Winton Churchill might even stretch to cover a pint of Continental lager...

Although London is, arguably, the rightful home of British gin – the Scottish-produced spirit is booming at present. The main reason for this, perhaps, is due to the amount of distilleries that have cropped up in recent years, crafting quick-to-produce gin during the three-year wait for whisky to mature. First released in 1999, the most popular of these Scottish gins, surely, is Hendrick’s Gin – distilled in Girvan, Ayrshire and produced by William Grant & Sons. The company also distil...