Floripa London Restaurant

Floripa is more of a revamp than a complete about-turn – there’s the same huge indoor area with a long bar and ample space for dancing and a stage, but Floripa is shouting louder about its food: there is a snug for diners in the far corner as well as tables on the paved area outside.

Cuisine Et Chanson

Brassiere Joel is a French restaurant inside the Park Plaza Hotel on Westminster Bridge. Opening this month is a new event, Cuisine et Chansons, which aims to take foodies on a sort of culinary tour de France, offering people a taste of the lesser known, more regional delicacies of France.

Tibits at Home

Tibits recipes have a clarity of flavour that might not be suitable for novice vegetarians who are still smothering everything with cheese and surviving largely on bread.

Eating steak with a spoon at The White Oak in Cookham

Do you like your steak dry-aged, wet-aged, from cows that roam the Scottish Highlands or run free on pampas grass in Argentina – and how can you tell the difference? Joanna Biddolph visits The White Oak in Cookham for a steak masterclass with chef-patron Clive Dixon and master butcher Peter Allen – and unexpectedly bites off more than she can chew. 

Green Saffron AAA Vintage Basmati at Carom

‘When this rice is done, the grains should be standing on end, begging you to eat them, almost dancing around the pan’, declares Arun Kapil, himself doing a fair spot of the latter as he jigs about eulogising about Green Saffron’s AAA Vintage Basmati rice. He and Carom’s head chef, Balaji Balachander  have got a biriyani on the bubble, to demonstrate why this particular grain strain is just so superior.

Olives from Spain with Omar Allibhoy

This particular evening was hosted by Olives from Spain, who had roped in Omar to demonstrate a variety of marinades for their olives, before the very nice chap from the cookery school talked us through a couple of more of Omar’s recipes, also featuring quantities of olives.