Where the Champagne flows and the meat pie comes with foie gras April 3, 2012 LE BALCON 8 PALL MALL, SW1Y 5NG FOOD **** SERVICE **** ATMOSPHERE *** Cost per person without wine: £XX The Balcon is not somewhere you’ll have necessarily heard about. It’s not a buzz-generator. This, I suspect, is for two reasons: one, its location in the gentleman’s club hinterland of Pall Mall (which is to say: [...]
FOOD & DRINK NEWS April 3, 2012 Wine website launches Lot 18, a groovy members’ only wine website stocking everything from Château Pontet-Canet Pauillac 1995 to Francis Ford Coppola’s Inglenook Rubicon Estate Blancaneaux 2009, has recently launched in the UK. If you fancy access to wines that are a little harder to find, at good prices for a limited period, it’s probably [...]
Alfa’s TCT transmission impresses April 3, 2012 IN these cash-strapped times, it’s lamentable that the choice of which car to buy can come to a simple toss-up between fuel economy versus fun. It’s a question that many car buyers struggle with. More powerful engines usually use more fuel, which is one reason why squeezing every last drop of fuel economy out of [...]
CAR TALK April 3, 2012 Citroen’s award-winning DS5 Citroen’s award-winning DS5 goes on sale this week, with prices starting at just £22,400 for the top-of-the-range DSport Hybrid4 version. The five-door DS5 features four different engine options, and the DS5 Hybrid4 delivers just 99g/km making it Congestion Charge-exempt. Saving fuel will repay dividends Rather than freaking out in the queue at [...]
Have a cracking Easter with our guide to London’s best April 3, 2012 EASTER AT HAMPTON COURT PALACE 6-9 APRIL, ALL DAY Hampton Court Palace is one of the most scenic sites near London at any time of the year but over the Easter weekend a host of eggstras will be laid on. King Henry VIII, a famous past resident of the stately home, will be milling around [...]
Having trouble getting to sleep? Join the club April 2, 2012 Neil Gaiman’s genre-defining graphic opus The Sandman tells the tale of the eponymous lord of dreams. After breaking free from decades of imprisonment he metes out on his captor the worst punishment he can think of – eternal waking. His victim is cursed to forever wake from a nightmare, only to find he is still [...]
EPISODE 51 – A BELLINI AFTER TEN YEARS April 2, 2012 It’s 5.58pm on 3 April. Precisely ten years ago Emma and I stood on this very spot, in similar spring early evening sunshine. And I asked her to marry me. Last night, Maria discreetly packed a suitcase for Emma and this morning a cab took us to the airport. Emma had no idea of our [...]
Get fit… and make a difference too April 2, 2012 FIT IN THE CITY Picture the scene: it’s 6.30pm on a Wednesday evening at the Reebok Sports Club and instead of being full of weary looking execs wishing they were in the pub, the reception is buzzing with an eager group of runners about to head out to a local community garden to enjoy a [...]
Honeymooning for one in the Maldives April 1, 2012 GOING on holiday alone is one thing. Going on holiday alone to the world’s foremost couples’ destination is rather another. I wasn’t off to backpack around the villages of the Himalayas or go down and out in Bangkok and Hanoi, bumping into new people and places every five minutes. No: I set off on a [...]
Hotel for all seasons at idyllic South Sands in Salcombe April 1, 2012 Twenty minutes’ walk from Salcombe, the year-old South Sands hotel sits on its own beach: a perfectly secluded spot and just what posh old Salcombe needs. There’s a New England charm to the hotel – white-picket chic but unstuffy and airy – alongside a friendly laid-back feel from the Antipodean staff, who are unassumingly and [...]