There’s still time to get to Islington and check out this year’s Dolce Vita, the Italian Festival in London.You can spend all day wandering the stands and the demos and if you buy ‘a little book of indulgences’ you get ten tickets for ‘limited edition’ experiences such as a comparative wine tasting, an olive oil tasting and a goodie bag from Seeds of Italy. It costs £10 on top of the entrance ticket and is a good
I love Jose Pizzaro; although this may be the beer goggles talking. No, I think it’s a serious crush. The man is ‘keeping it real’ with his Tierra Brindisa; simplicity and quality and a changing menu. The train spotters have moved on, chasing the next new thing, now his restaurant has proper customers, regulars. As we leave I reflect our offices are just a Rioja fuelled stagger away, so we will regularly be back.
Last night we had a meal that is only available for three days more. Pino Lavarra, executive chef of the two Michelin starred Rossellini’s restaurant at Palazzo Sasso in Ravello on the Amalfi coast, is at Brunello at The Baglioni Hotel as part of a year long exchange of chefs.
They get a bit of a bad press do mushrooms. There are the naughty ones that make you see pretty colours, the ones that turn you into a berserk Viking bent on rape, and perhaps some light pillage if time allows, and then there are the ones that kill you stone dead.So consider the humble mushroom, virtually fat free, full of B vitamins, part of our 5 a day, filling, packed with antioxidants and minerals and sustainable when cultivated.
Do people laugh when you put food on the table? Are you ashamed of how your leeks look? Fear not for here coming at you like an embossed invitation to Abigail’s Party, is Food Presenting Secrets featuring all the Creative Styling Techniques you never knew you needed.
‘It’s like squeezing a baby’s bottom,’ says Gizzi Erskine talking about how a well-risen, knocked back piece of dough should feel. I’m thinking of something else entirely but as the majority of people at this demonstration are women I decide to keep that to myself.
Aubrey has a nice atmosphere for a hotel restaurant, cosy, intimate, leathery and old time. American tourists must love it. It seems a shame that it may only attract hotel guests because the food while not aiming to be an artistic statement is certainly what I like to eat on a regular basis.
I have never drunk so much ginger beer in one sitting in my life. Even the waiters at Benares are barely concealing their mirth as they crack open yet another bottle of Crabbies to pour into my glass. ‘Do you drink it yourself?’ I ask one of them ‘Oh no!’ he replies, horrified, then mindful of the fact his boss Atul Kochhar head chef at this award winning Indian restaurant is lending his name to the product, quickly explains his defiant rejection. ‘I am a Muslim!’
What does the name mean? The Pirate of Tapas? Does the chef look like Johnny Depp and have a cutlass clamped between his teeth? Are the prices High Seas’ robbery? Do staff say ‘Ahh harr matey!’ in Spanish when chef calls a ticket? Who knows, what is certain is that this second branch of the Mayfair original is a modern tapas restaurant all the way from its cool interior to its Bulli boy food. Tapas reconstructed in a way that marks it out from the patatas bravas brigade so prevalent in London.

Soy sauce delivers all the flavour of salt, but at up to half the quantity thanks to the umami effect. This is good news as in the West we all apparently eat too much salt. At the Westminster Kingsway Catering College we find out more, come close to being asphyxiated by a radio host, eat a fine student made meal and learn how to make the perfect gravy.
Boulud is a great chef, as London will discover later this year. Before he comes to the UK discover how he got where he is right now. A great read for the young chef in the title and a great read for food lovers, Letters to a Young Chef is a letter of love of cooking.
Such is my sheltered life I didn’t know about Profile’s status as an iconic Gay club/bar/diner. I just thought the waiters were a trifle camp, but that’s like noticing air stewards are a bit fey. Picking up on the ‘vibe’ we tried to look like two butch blokes confident in their sexuality who just happened to fancy a burger and had popped into the nearest place.
There’s always been, to my mind, something austere, some thing hair shirt, something a little well, Scottish, about porridge. It makes me think of boarding schools in the Glens and young scions of the aristocracy being herded into cold showers at 6am before being forced to eat a bowl of porridge made with water and salt.
"I'm not normally a winter sports person, to be honest. When I was growing up such a concept was foreign to our family. My father said 'Winter? Holiday?' in the much same way Peter Kay's father said 'Garlic? Bread?'" The lure of fine food and gentle, sensible fun in the snow finally gets Nick Harman on a plane to Austria.
Giancarlo Caldesi has been at the beer. ‘We’ve gone through boxes and boxes,’ he tells me as his wife Katie looks on approvingly. It’s all been in the aid of science though, using Birra Moretti beer as an ingredient of some dishes that we are about to eat.
A proper pizza is all about its base. Forget the telephone takeaways with their emphasis on ‘fill you up’ bottoms, which have more in common with old mattresses than they do with a real pizza. And as for gimmicks like stuffing the crust, what on earth is all that about?
It's a bit of a trek out to The Viet Grill - a tube to Liverpool Street, then a jerky bus ride up the Kingsland Road and into the badlands of Hackney. Apparently people do live out here though and when they tire of being artistic the Viet Grill is where they go to spend their dinner money.
Say cheese and say it loud. Great British Cheeses can be enjoyed by people watching their fat intake just as much as anyone else. The flavours are there, the traditional methods are still there. Nick Harman gets out his cheese knife in the company of Nigel White, Secretary of the British Cheese Board and samples a few cheesy delights.
This is a charming, authoritative read that makes you feel you know Arthur personally. With his lack of ego and warm friendly ways, Arthur makes you want to rush out and buy lots of cheese straightaway. And, of course, some wine to go with them.
There’s a trend to big up Sichuan food right now. It’s all about having the guts to eat tripe, as well as the testosterone taste buds to take on fearsome amounts of chilli and the mouth-numbing effects of the Sichuan pepper itself. What helps the trend is that some of the better Sichuan restaurants are cheap and cheerful places that appeal to the post-backpacking, job-in-New-Media, type of person. What’s missing though is somewhere a bit posher, and located a bit more centrally, somewhere that we older chaps can take the good lady wife. The Empress fits that bill nicely.