THREE OTHER ‘BEST OF BRITISH’ RESTAURANTS January 11, 2010 ALBERMARLE Formerly the venerable Grill at Brown’s, the restaurant of this august Mayfair hotel was revitalised in 2008 with a smart makeover and a menu based around the best UK produce from head chef Lee Streeton. I particularly recommend the delicious fish soup, decanted from saucepan to bowl at your table. Brown’s Hotel, 33 Albemarle [...]
Cooking up an idyllic holiday January 10, 2010 THERE’S no getting away from the fact that it takes a long time to get to the Cook Islands. Located between Samoa, Fiji and Tahiti, they are as remote as it gets. The flight from London is over 20 hours. However, they are a perfect stop-over to stretch your legs on the way to Australasia [...]
Stars and spas in California’s flashy south January 10, 2010 THE Southern California sunshine danced on the ocean off Newport Beach as we stepped aboard the boat where we would be eating our lunch. We opened the champagne, tucked into the picnic, and took it in turns at the helm to guide the boat, silent as a whisper around the bay. This was a brilliant [...]
TRAVEL NOTES January 10, 2010 Winter offer at Cap Maison, St Lucia To celebrate its first birthday anniversary, this clifftop paradise is offering a winter package to entice you to sunnier climes, with a free night and free meals at the hotel’s gourmet restaurants. Suites have professional-grade kitchens, outdoor showers, roof-top terraces and private pools. Five nights for the price [...]
Forget Microsoft, it’s all about Google vs Apple January 7, 2010 IN recent decades, the technology sector has been defined by a clash of titans. In the 1980s Microsoft took on Apple and ended up wiping the floor with it, a feat it repeated with IBM in the 1990s. But Bill Gates couldn’t make it a hat trick; when the firm tried to thwart Google in [...]
Love triumphs on the road to hell January 7, 2010 Film THE ROAD Cert: 18 IT’S hard to imagine a less happy future than the one conjured up by this adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. In last month’s disaster flick 2012, we had the ultimate Hollywood apocalypse, in all its vapid, digitally-created stupidity. Now we have the serious, literary version of the end [...]
SIX OF THE BEST January 7, 2010 THEATRE – Red Alfred Molina stars as expressionist painter Mark Rothko in John Logan’s two-hander at the Donmar Warehouse. FILM – Tokyo Story Japan’s Yasujiro Ozu is thought by some to be cinema’s greatest director, and his masterpiece is showing at the BFI and Curzon Mayfair MUSICAL – Blood Brothers Former Sporty Spice Melanie Chisholm [...]
ALSO OUT THIS WEEKEND January 7, 2010 FILM SEX AND DRUGS AND ROCK & ROLL Andy Serkis puts in a sterling performance in this biopic of Blockhead-in-chief Ian Dury. DAYBREAKERS Willem Dafoe and Ethan Hawke – no, come back – battle world-dominating vampires with crossbows. Okay, don’t. IT MIGHT GET LOUD Documentary on the electric guitar, with axe-wielders Jimmy Page, the Edge [...]
John Irving’s complicated, hostile America hits the mark once again January 7, 2010 LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER BY JOHN IRVING Bloomsbury, £12.99 **** ANOTHER epic north American novel set amid the woods and snow from the author of The Cider House Rules, this book begins in a sawmill settlement in New Hampshire in 1954 but roves throughout Boston, Vermont, Maine and Toronto. The story – in typical [...]
OUT OF OFFICE January 7, 2010 JUST OPENED: THE CARETAKER Jonathan Pryce stars in this hotly anticipated rendering of Harold Pinter’s sixth play.?It’s the late Pinter at his best, in a spare, super-tense story revolving around a mentally-challenged man called Aston; a tramp called Davies, whom Aston brings home to his attic room and Aston’s responsible younger brother Mick. Not to [...]