Food and Drink

In a similar vein to Marco Pierre White, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey – Marcus Wareing has become a TV chef personality whose equal parts loved and loathed. Over the past three years, the chef has perhaps become best known as the second toughest judge on MasterChef: The Professionals, but he’s also the name behind three London restaurants. At one end of the spectrum, Marcus at The Berkeley in Knightsbridge is the chef’s two Michelin-starred mother ship, offering one of...

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been succumbed with an irrational fear of snails. It’s embarrassing. More common, less hilarious fears (spiders, snakes, rats, death) have never phased me, but something about those lettuce-munching bogies in crash helmets would always plague me with fear. As somebody who dedicates such a portion of my life to writing about restaurants, I appreciate that it’s crucial for me to eat just about everything. So much so that over the past...

So you’ve made the decision to invest in fine wine; you don’t like the abstract nature of the numbers in the stock market, and you’re partial to the grape itself, so it seemed like a natural decision. Well, a few words of caution before you go head-first into the wild world of wine for profit. You should not treat fine wine investment as a source of guaranteed profit. Of course, you want to make money from it, but it is,...

Just in time for the spring, Mr Fogg’s in Mayfair has teamed up with Old Forester – America’s first bottled bourbon – to create a bespoke cocktail, ‘Old Kentucky Spiced’. A heavily-themed bar that’s based around the adventures of Phileas J. Fogg, the protagonist of Jules Verne’s classic ‘Around The World in 80 Days’, the team at Mr Fogg’s have created the cocktail, which will be available for a limited time. The drink has a whisky base of Old Forester...

Following suit with designers such as Burberry, Hackett and watchmakers Larsson & Jennings, Ralph Lauren have opened a new food and drink-based venue within their flagship store on Regent Street. Ralph’s Coffee & Bar joins the likes of The Polo Club in New York, RL Restaurant in Chicago and Ralph’s in Paris, and thus marks the brand’s first space dedicated to food and drink in the UK. The intimate space has table seating enough for 24, plus 12 stools at...

Following the success of last year’s S.Pellegrino Young Chef competition, four of the UK and Ireland’s leading chefs have partnered with S.Pellegrino in a global search to find the world’s best young chef. Earlier this week, a launch breakfast at Café Murano witnessed the competition’s four chef judges and mentors gather to discuss the competition, along with last year's UK & Ireland winner George Kataras of M Threadneedle Street. The four chef judges include Angela Hartnett MBE, Alyn Williams, Phil Howard...

"Ramen," somebody recently probed as I gushed adoringly about the food of Japan (again), "that's just noodle soup, isn't it?" Like a besieged tom cat ready to challenge the neighbours' pit bull, my back arched instinctively and I cascaded into an explosive rant. Ramen is far more than just noodle soup. The exact origins or ramen are unclear. There’s a great deal of speculation that links ramen to China, gastronomically speaking, but its Japan that’s generally regarded the rightful home...

Brewed: St Austell, Cornwall Strength: 4.9% Originally founded in Cornwall by Walter Hicks in 1851, St Austell Brewery is still 100 per-cent family owned and renowned for brewing some of the South-West’s most popular beers. In addition to brewing their own beers from a brewery overlooking the bay of St Austell, their Small Batch Brewery builds on the success of a previous micro-brewery, allowing St Austell’s team of brewers to constantly experiment with new flavours and styles. Eureka, for instance, was...

Though so many of London’s Thai restaurants are unapologetically bad, the popularity of Thai food (as well as Vietnamese) is currently booming. So, considering London has one of the world’s most diverse restaurant scenes, it’s astonishing that Laotian food has taken so long to become established throughout the city. It’s undeniable that Lao cuisine has contributed significantly to Thai food becoming an international phenomenon, yet so few menus throughout Europe give the landlocked country between Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia any...