Food and Drink

I’ve never felt cool enough for Shoreditch. Even when I used to wear questionably tight jeans, spent all of my money on vinyl records and devoted some of my late teenage years to writing about emerging Indie bands for the NME, I never quite managed to fit in. In 2018 though, now that much of Shoreditch has gone from up-and-coming to up-and-gone - with everyone having migrated to further reaches of Hackney or Peckham - I imagined things may have...

The Smoking Goat in Shoreditch has been crowned champion at the eighth Scotch Egg Challenge at The Canonbury in Islington. In a fiercely contested competition between 23 chefs, Robert Juer and Meedu Saad came out on top for their Thai spiced fermented crab with Tamworth pork egg. The illustrious panel of judges placed Trevor Hunt of the Drapers Arms, last year’s winning venue, in second place with his ‘Hamey’ egg made with ham hock. Third place split the judges and...

Brandy is making a triumphant comeback, and it’s about time. Released at the end of last year, research into festive online searches, from the University of Warwick, suggested brandy is the UK’s favourite Christmas spirit, beating gin, rum, vodka and whisky. Though Christmas is well and truly over, brandy still seems the perfect spirit for supping and enjoying through long, cold winter evenings. The latest expression from the world’s oldest Cognac house, Martell VS Single Distillery is crafted with passion...

A ceiling fixer has made £400 from selling £10 KFC bargain buckets online - for £100 each. He posted an ad on Facebook selling ‘rare’ ten-piece bargain buckets for £100 from the chicken takeaway chain, which had to close more than half of its stores nationwide due to a problem with their supplier. The man managed to flog each chicken portion for a whopping £10 each - a 1000 per cent mark-up. The 30-year-old said he drove from his home...

Modern Indian food is in vogue. While Mayfair has reached saturation point, with a ratio of almost one Indian fine dining restaurant per local resident, surrounding areas such as Soho and Marylebone are thriving with more casual restaurants celebrating Indian and South Asian cooking (Kricket, Hoppers, Tamarind Kitchen). Bridging the gap between the two, a second branch of Hankies opened within the Montcalm Hotel near Marble Arch earlier this year, taking over Nirvana Kitchen’s former site. While Hankies’ original London...

Through the opulent lobby and down a spiral staircase - behind a seedy bar with low lighting and a floor-to-ceiling palette of red – The Curry Room is hidden beneath the The Rubens at The Palace hotel. Following a multi-million-pound refurbishment, the hotel now boasts upgraded rooms and guest areas, plus a complete dining overhaul. Alongside the aforementioned Cavalry Bar, The English Grill offers fine dining, while The Curry Room is the hotel’s latest restaurant opening, launched earlier this year....

I should come clean. Although I’m a particular fan of the cuisine - no stranger to jerk chicken and plantain chips are one of my favourite snacks - I am by no means a connoisseur of Caribbean food. This can, perhaps, be attributed to  spending the past 16 years  living on what’s arguably the wrong side of London in terms of  access to any exceptional Caribbean food hotspots.   And so, as we make the short walk from Finsbury Park...

Inspired by the new talent of Tokyo’s vibrant food scene, Tokyo-based photographer Andrea Fazzari will release Tokyo New Wave next month. This luxe collection is filled with portraits, recipes and profiles on 31 chefs shaping the future of eating out in Tokyo. Here, the predominant focus is a generation of young chefs redefining what it means to be a chef in Tokyo: well-travelled, embracing social media open to the world and its influences, but still distinctly Japanese in style, tradition...

The London Viva! Vegan Festival comes to Shoreditch in March, with a stellar line up of talks, cookery demonstrations, delicious vegan food on offer. With over 70 stalls spread across Shoreditch’s spectacular town hall, this festival promises to be an exciting family day out. Organised by Bristol-based vegan charity, Viva!, this is the second annual event in London and it is expected to attract over 3,000 attendees. Entry to the event is £5 and throughout the day free advice and...