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
Courvoisier’s Café du Pique-Nique: an early taste of summer!
This event will see The Future Gallery transformed into a vast indoor picnic area. While dismal London weather prevails outside, visitors can kick back, remove their shoes and enjoy their own summery picnic.
A man for all seasonal food. We talk and eat with Jose Pizaro of Tierra Brindisa Soho
I love Jose Pizaro; 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.
Creating the cupcake – we taste a few cookery courses to see which is the icing on the top
Apparently name-dropping the ‘cupcake revolution’ is the fashion equivalent of extolling the maxi-dress: very 2008 darling. But the cupcake trend is still on a [parchment baking] roll – except that in 2008 we were buying ’em, now we’re making ’em. Enter the cupcake class – tutorials for the disenfranchised office-worker, wondering if they too could clear four grand a month* just by knocking up a few of Nigella’s best and selling them at £2 a pop to London’s glitterati. Of course it would seem I’m suggesting that such an entreprenual venture might be as simple as it is appealing. Believe me, it’s not
I’ve got a lovely bunch of Carrots
Before I went to Sicily, I thought of tomatoes, peppers, aubergine, artichokes and mushrooms as Italian vegetables. Carrots were the wrong color for my red, white and green Italian palette. But, since my daily trips to the market, I have changed my mind.
Gail’s Hot Cross Buns – apparently delicious
You leave the office for half an hour and when you come back you’re told there’s been a delivery of Gail’s Hot Cross buns in your absence. You ask where they are and everyone stares resolutely at their screens while discreetly brushing crumbs off their keyboard. Is this a sackable offence? It should be.
Food Foundations
Douglas Blyde ventured to Leith’s School of Food and Wine, Hammersmith, to meet acting Managing Director, Jenny Stringer.
Seasonal Spanish Food – Jose Pizarro
A professional chef, and the man behind the successful Brindisa tapas kitchens, Jose Pizaro knows his stuff. As Spain continues to culinarily crush all before it, thanks to the El Bulli factor, Jose still has his heart set on the simple honesty of tapas type meals.
Brunello at The Baglioni Hotel blows us away
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.
London’s oldest french restaurant starts saturday lunch service for the first time in 50 years
Mon Plaisir is London’s oldest French restaurant at over half a century, a rare entity in London’s fast-changing restaurant scene. In 1942 Charles de Gaulle dined at Mon Plaisir, and for generations this family-run institution has been serving authentic French cuisine and now, after 50 years, they will be open for lunch service on a Saturday.