Food and Drink

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food One of Russia’s most celebrated Chefs, Alexei Zimin is generally credited with having changed the way that Russians eat. As well as editing Russia’s most prominent food magazine – Eda, the chef opened the wildly successful Ragout restaurant in 2010, before opening a cooking school of the same name, having trained at London’s Le Cordon Bleu, and within the kitchens of restaurants from chefs that include Raymond Blanc and Michel Guérard. In addition, Zimin...

Photo: Bella West By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food It’s a humid Friday afternoon and I’m scanning through the menu of Dumplings’ Legend while awaiting the arrival of Jay Rayner, author, columnist, jazz pianist and, of course, one of the UK’s most celebrated restaurant critics. Located upon Gerrard Street, the epicentre of London’s ‘Chinatown’, this is a peculiar choice of restaurant to meet for lunch. Not only is the menu framed and proudly displayed on a board outside, various restaurant...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Set up in 2007, Bavarian craft bier brand And Union is the produce of a father, a son and his business partner, with a focus on rationality and simplicity - the basic principles of modernism – at the helm. Working with brew-masters from four small, family-run Bavarian regional breweries, all of And Union’s craft beers are brewed in a traditional manner, using just barley, yeast, hops, and water. And as a result, the brewing...

By Jimmy Pierson, spokesperson for The Vegan Society Only 37 per cent of all vegans are male. This comes as little surprise, but why so few? How many men are not going plant-based because of perceived pressure to live up to society’s exaggerated version of masculinity, and at what cost? The perception that ‘real men’ eat meat, that it’s macho and manly, has lingered for a long time. But sadly, this is not just an outdated notion, it’s one that...

  By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food While there are few vaster pleasures than great pizza, there are even fewer things worse than really, offensively terrible pizza: and with a plague of bad ‘pizzerias’ constantly opening across the city, the former is becoming increasingly difficult to unearth, persistently subjecting us to the latter on far too many occasions. Soggy, shop-bought dough bases wetter than a mid-June weekend, heavily-sweetened tomato sauce, and cheese that resembles the plastic used to manufacture paddling...

An impressive dish from chef Michael Reid.

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Jack Daniel is a name synonymous with Tennessee whisky, having garnered an incredible reputation since initiating in 1866. A reputation that’s unsurprising given the quality of the whisky that’s produced by one of America’s longest running distilleries. While Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 is undoubtedly the brand’s most famous expression, there is something truly special about the more recent addition of Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Select. Originally reserved for the Master Distiller, Jack Daniel’s...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Summer is here, apparently, and to tie-in with Father’s Day this weekend, Novikov – one of Mayfair’s most popular restaurant establishments, perched upon the corner of Mayfair Place and the ultra-flashy Berkeley Street - will host the Mayfair Summer Market this weekend (Saturday June 18th and Sunday June 19th). Following the success of Novikov’s Christmas Market, this event will also see Mayfair Place closed to traffic as the road becomes a pedestrianised area once...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Strength: 5.6% Brewed: Finchampstead, Berkshire Set up in Berkshire in 2012, Siren is heavily inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, in so far as crafting beers named after various characters. Since initiating, however, the brewery has become widely renowned for a desire to strive and create the absolute best beers within the brew team’s capabilities – thus using the finest ingredients, putting hours into the brewing process and constantly tweaking the recipes for each batch of beer before its made...