Food and Drink

Launched at the just under a year ago, The Ned heralded the introduction of Soho House’s first suit-friendly venue. Housed within London’s former Midland Bank – a Grade-I listed building designed by Sir Edwin ‘Ned’ Lutyens in 1924 – The Ned is a 252-room hotel and members’ club in the heart of the Square Mile; fusing Shoreditch cool with Mayfair stateliness. With eight restaurants, an Instagram-friendly lap pool on the roof and a private, members only vault room, The Ned’s...

Set up last year, Pan is a wild food supper club created by expert game chef Dougy Robertson, having previously worked as Head Chef at Sussex-based foraging focussed cookery school Hunter Gather Cook. Named after the Greek god of the wild and nature, Pan has a profound focus on seasonal food, celebrating the wild food and cooking techniques from the British Isles. Bringing a taste of spring to London’s riverside next month, Pan will host a series of supper clubs,...

Celebrated since the 12th Century, St. David’s Day (or Dydd Gŵyl Dewi) commemorates Saint David, the Patron Saint of Wales. Falling on 1st March, the day is typically celebrated by wearing daffodils and leeks, and by eating traditional Welsh food. On the day, various parades also take place through Welsh cities such as Cardiff, Swansea and Aberystwyth. Based in the Snowdonia mountains, Keith Squires is an author and leading chef – currently working at the Dru Yoga Centre. Filled with...

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....