Mix it up: That’s not a Papa Doble…. I’ll show you a Papa Doble August 20, 2013 DESPITE the growing popularity of cocktails, many Y-chromosome-carrying homo sapiens still consider mixed drinks too effeminate for public consumption. It wasn’t always thus. Just read the stories of Ernest Hemingway: “Papa”, in his life and in his deeply autobiographical writing, makes modern models of masculinity look like 17th century foppishness. But the good work of [...]
Review: Joe’s Southern Kitchen & Bar August 13, 2013 RESTAURANT 34 King Street, Covent Garden Tel: 020 7240 4008 FOOD Three Stars VALUE Three Stars ATMOSPHERE Three Stars Cost for two without drinks: £45 Restaurant critics are like Eskimos: we lead isolated lives and are prone to eating seal blubber. No, that’s not it. We’re like Eskimos because we both have 20 words for [...]
Mix it up: Wake up and smell the Kahlua: a remedy to the daily grind August 13, 2013 IN 17th century Britain, coffee houses sprung up across London. Idle gossip, radical ideas and business matters were traded freely between men of diverse wealth and class. Unsurprisingly, those with the most to lose were not keen on this outpouring of freedom. Charles II’s edict tried to rid the country of the “very evil and [...]
Review: Ametsa with Arzak Instruction August 6, 2013 The Halkin Hotel, Belgravia, SW1X 7DJ Tel: 020 7333 1234 FOOD Four stars VALUE Three stars ATMOSPHERE One star Cost per person for tasting menu and matched wine: £145 Ametsa With Arzak Instruction; there’s a restaurant that’s just begging to be hated. It’s the first fine-dining export from the Arzak family (the current iteration being [...]
Mix it up: More cocktail tools than you can shake a long bar spoon at August 6, 2013 @philip_salter ACCORDING to research, it takes the average person anywhere between 21 and 66 days to form a habit. Perhaps, but surely it depends on the habit in question. It would take me next to no time, for example, to pick up the habit of leaving my dirty clothes on the floor and watching Seinfeld [...]
Restaurant review: Baiwei July 30, 2013 8 Little Newport Street, WC2H 7JJ Tel: 020 7494 3605 FOOD Two stars VALUE Three stars ATMOSPHERE One star Cost per person without wine: £25 I find Chinatown incomprehensible. It’s an ever-shifting tangle of restaurants and takeaways and bars and brothels. It morphs and skews before your eyes. You can sit down in one restaurant, [...]
Mix it up: How I made the best margarita ever on my first attempt July 30, 2013 @philip_salter AMONG popular economists (if such a thing isn’t oxymoronic) there is a debate about how long it takes to learn a new skill. Nobody can agree. Malcolm Gladwell of Outliers fame suggests it will take you 10,000 hours to truly master something, while Josh Kaufman, author of The First 20 Hours, thinks you can [...]
La Casa Negra Shoreditch restaurant review: achingly hip Mexican food with added attitude July 17, 2013 Street food. That’s a thing. Street food! Isn’t it great? It reminds me of that time I was travelling in Guatemala, and some indigenous people were just, you know, making food in the street, and it was all, like, totally authentic. Except that never happened. I’ve forced down slimy noodles in Tokyo; binned inedible grey [...]
Review: Apero at the Ampersand February 26, 2013 Apero has fish is to die for, if you don’t mind the charmingly chaotic atmosphere, says Steve Dinneen APERO @ AMPERSAND; 10 Harrington Road, SW7 3ER; tel: 020 7589 5895 FOOD **** SERVICE *** Value **** Cost per person with wine: £50 A few years ago I was wandering through Kreuzberg, before it was completely [...]
How a former hedgie manager is challenging the Bordeaux status quo February 26, 2013 THE BOTTLE OPENER I’m delighted to say I spent last Monday evening drinking fine Claret with a revolutionary. Not that Arnaud Christiaens, a polished Belgian former hedge fund manager, is your usual rebel. But with his new venture Le Secret des Grands Chefs, he is setting out to turn the accepted order of things in [...]