Food and Drink

Jack Peat meets Gavin Monery, Winemaker at urban winery London CRU Terroir is a hot topic in the wine world. Never has such an elusive concept caused such division amongst growers, experts and consumers of wine, but what’s the big deal? Well, in the parlance of Bill Shakespeare; nature or nurture, that is the question. Terroir comes from the French ‘terre’, or ‘land’, and is defined by the clever folk at Wikipedia as being a “set of special characteristics that the...

By Jack Peat, Editor of The London Economic  The food system is broken, NFESH President, Founder and CEO Enid Borden told me in a brief email exchange in response to my article on food waste. Highlighting the origins of food and the way in which our supermarket shelves are stocked I attempted to bring to light some of the big issues discussed in Omnivore’s Dilemma which is as harrowing a read as anything Stephen King or Dean Koontz could muster up but unfortunately housed in...

By Jack Peat, Editor of The London Economic London isn’t the birthplace of gin, but it’s the closest thing it has to a home. For London Dry is responsible for finding gin a bedfellow in the shape of tonic, a mix that has become internationally renowned and is, in part, responsible for the spirit’s global rise amongst peers such as whisky and vodka. But despite being a symbolic home, London Dry is rarely made in London these days. The East...

By Charlotte Hope, @charlottehope  If you managed to look at the cover picture on this article without salivating then you're probably one of only a few, but if a despondent glare started to creep across your face as you contemplate the time and effort that goes into making such a meal then you're certainly not alone. But as I was about to find out, cooking nice meats doesn't have to be a time and labour intensive endeavour. On a pleasant...

Chancery Lane, Friday 19th September 2014 Gaucho is renowned for being one of the capital's leading high-end Argentinian steak brands and it certainly lived up to its excellent reputation when TLE visited the Chancery Lane restaurant on Friday. In a convenient central location on the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street the smart, unfussy exterior gives way to the unmistakably ‘Gaucho’ interior of dark moody lighting, sumptuous décor and a five star hostess greeting. From the moment we arrived we knew...

By Jack Peat, Editor of The London Economic There was a time when food was a valued commodity and was treated as such. We would know the source of our food, understand seasonality and accept that everything has a shelf life, but the industrialisation of food means food waste is no longer the problem, food is. I hate to waste food, I've written many an article on frugal recipes and the method behind the madness, but I'm a product of...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor A recent survey of 2,042 UK residents by Red Tractor to mark the start of Red Tractor Week (15th Sept) has revealed some funny food knowledge blunders, including 23 per cent of Londoners who don't know how broccoli is grown and that the people of the capital are the least knowledgeable area about the provenance/origin of food. Not good news for the foodies of Britain's largest city. Below are the top ten findings from the...

By Carly Bryant We had already left it too late to eat, blood sugar levels were low and tensions were running high. Ill-advisedly we took the decision to walk the twenty minutes down the famous ‘Rye’ pub a site which just a few years ago would have been sneered at by London’s well-heeled, which is now one-in one-out on a Sunday lunch among the East Dulwich/Nunhead/Peckham set. With its large garden - complete with miniature (that’s the operative word) boule’s...

By Jonathan Hatchman Perhaps most renowned for his rapid take upon classic meals, prepared and presented with extreme simplicity, constricted to a budget of time and money: Jamie Oliver has become a household name over the past fifteen years, as well as one of the globe's most celebrated celebrity chefs. However, with his more recent penchant for managing to compress the preparation of four sustainable meals into the space of just sixty minutes, the food on offer at Oliver's home...