How To Be A Better Foodie

I’ll tell you How to be a Better Foodie. Get a better job, one that allows you to afford all this stuff, yet which doesn’t stop you from shopping for it whenever you feel like it. Freelance food writer would be a good one. Hah sorry Sudi, just my little joke, you know me. And I do know Sudi and she knows her stuff to a frightening degree.

Le Bouchon Breton Restaurant

It’s located on the first floor! I tell you this because otherwise, like me, you’ll probably walk around in ever more frustrated circles trying to find the bloody place. For some reason the revamped Spitalfields market sees no reason to include Le Bouchon Breton on any of their signage, at least not as far as I could see through a thickening red mist.

6 Maldon Rock Oysters and Muscadet for under £10

Oysters are pretty amazing creatures. The average female spats out 300,000 babies at a time and she can also change sexes on a whim if she gets tired of tending her eggs. No wonder oysters are such a sexy dish. So what better way to drag yourself out of the winter doldrums and start getting ready for spring than with a few oysters on the half shell. And Bentley’s, on the border of Soho and Mayfair, wants to make sure you can have a few invigorating oysters whenever your heart desires. Richard Corrigan is offering half a dozen Maldon Rock oysters and a glass of matched Muscadet for under £10 in order to help you beat the January blues. This offer is available at any time, any day in both the Oyster Bar as well as the more formal Grill restaurant upstairs.

Fish and Grill Restaurant

They’re going to rename my home town of South Croydon to ‘Malcolm John’s South Croydon ‘I reckon, his empire is spreading so fast. His French restaurant ‘Malcolm John’s Cassoulet’ has already won hearts and stomachs in the area and now he’s opened another place, ‘Malcolm John’s Fish and Grill” about 400 yards away. Quite possibly he has a secret tunnel linking the two so that he can get back and forth, plus a helicopter to travel to his Vacherin in Chiswick..

Be enlightened at master class with wine guru

Joe Wadsack, the former Wine Communicator of the Year, will be at Richard Phillips at Chapel Down on Friday 30 January to give budding food and wine connoisseurs the opportunity to enhance their understanding of wine making by explaining the entire process, from tank to table and grape to glass.

Make Valentine’s Day a date to remember

Figuring out where to take your sweetie on Valentine’s Day is a tough decision to make in a historic city filled with the best cuisine from every corner of the world. To help you make this romantic evening one to remember for many years, Foodepedia has put together an offering of the city’s most romantic menus offered by some of London’s finest, well-known chefs.

Chris Staines has a clear out

Colonic Irrigation, Detox this and Detox that, AAAAAAGH, leave me alone…If I read one more article about how fat I am and how I must wrap myself in suspicious smelling sea kelp and consume nothing but wheatgrass and bottled polar ice cap for the next month to get over my so-called over-indulgent festive season, I think I might just lose it

Fairhills will make lives better in 2009

Fairhills, a progressive Fairtrade wine brand, is using Fairtrade Fortnight 2009 as a way to urge its customers to think about ‘what’s in a glass’. This year, Fairhills is investing over £220,000 in Fairtrade projects across South Africa, Argentina and Chile. In one glass of Fairhills wine, drinkers can not only enjoy fruity reds and whites, but they can also be assured that 5p from every glass will go toward helping people in South Africa, Argentina – and now Chile, which has just this month been awarded Fairtrade accreditation.

The Scandinavian Cookbook -Trina Hahnemann

‘A good cookery book should always be covered in food stains,’ laughs Trina Hahnemahn when I tell her about the sorry state of my copy of her excellent The Scandinavian Cookbook. It’s a book so packed with recipes that leap off the page and demand to be cooked that I’ve had a hard time keeping my sticky hands off of it.

Vegetarian Chefs of the Future Contest

The °Cordon Vert School is on the look out for the new vegetarian chefs of the future and is offering them the chance to show their potential by taking part in an exciting culinary competition. The Vegetarian Chefs of the Future Contest is open to all chefs, vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike. It will culminate in the finalists’ live cook off with two winners being named Vegetarian Chefs of the Future 2009.