Lessons in wine: Why you should know your terroir July 29, 2015 If the clothes make the man, does the soil make the wine? This posit is often made by winemakers, wine lovers and wine snobs alike, all utilising the term “terroir”. But what does terroir mean and does it truly make a difference to wine? In the broadest terms, terroir describes the unique characteristics of a [...]
Restaurant review: Is £38 the dearest burger in London? Sackville’s serves up x-rated food porn July 29, 2015 This week I ate a burger that cost £38. It was at new truffle-themed restaurant Sackville’s in Mayfair, and while it wasn’t the most expensive burger I’ve ever eaten – that dubious honour goes to Miami’s Bâoli which charged me $95 (£60) – it’s the most expensive I’ve had in this great city of ours. [...]
Picnic in the park with a butler: An indulgent alternative to afternoon tea July 24, 2015 A summery lunchtime alternative The butler is a British institution both ridiculed and revered in equal measure. A complex figure, sitcoms have parodied the butler, but he is also powerful, and his omnipresence has been portrayed in period dramas and twee murder mysteries for decades. It is no wonder, then, that butler services prove a [...]
Restaurant review: Be prepared to shell out for Crab Tavern July 21, 2015 Crab Tavern is the tenth restaurant to open at the City’s newest dining destination, Broadgate Circle. It’s now overflowing with the kind of high-end, high-turnover gastro-chains that private equity guys go nuts for: opening branches in the City completes a perfect capitalist ouroboros in which we can literally get rich off of our own appetites. [...]
Lessons in wine: When is the ideal drinking window? July 21, 2015 Like any food product, wines have an ideal window of time in which they should be consumed. Unlike food, however, wines don’t come with a sell-by date. How, then, to determine when to pull the cork? Generally speaking, wines not intended for aging are priced at the low end of the spectrum, probably bottled under [...]
Mix it up: London cleans up at Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards July 21, 2015 The cocktail industry has come an awful long way in the last decade or so. Back in the day, I was tending bar part time in some of London’s best bars to pay my way through university. I was the last of dying breed: an amateur. Top bars and restaurants are now dominated by [...]
Working lunch in the City: Moroccan Sky Riad, Searcy’s, the Gherkin July 21, 2015 Our guide to the best places to eat during office hours in the City and Canary Wharf WHAT? A pop-up with emphasis on the “up”, Moroccan Sky Riad is the highest temporary restaurant in London, located at Searcy’s at the top of the Gherkin. A fine dining take on Moroccan cuisine, diners can look [...]
Restaurant review: Les Deux Salons is a reassuringly old-school restaurant July 14, 2015 You wait all year to review a French restaurant and then two come along at once. Last week Les Gourmets des Ternes, with its no-nonsense, unfaffy cooking, reminded me of a time before the gastronomic landscape was dominated by “sharing concepts” and pop-ups and street food and cocktails with bits of bacon in them. Les [...]
If you want to know your wine, learn your vintages July 14, 2015 Vintage wine is sometimes thought of in vague terms as either old wine or a particularly good drop. In actual fact, the vast majority of wines are from a specific vintage, which simply means that its grapes are primarily or all grown and harvested within a single year. The micro-climate of each wine-growing region will [...]
Mix it up: The perfect cocktail is a sublime balancing act July 14, 2015 The Cherrybrum Cocktail is probably the best rum and cola you’ll ever try Cocktails are a balance of five flavours: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. A good cocktail is made or lost on the balance between two of them: sweet and sour. The sweet in your cocktail will usually come from sugar syrup, [...]