Hop and Spice

It’s not often you get to eat dinner in the same spot you once had your tyres changed. As Balham has gentrified, the old shops have gradually disappeared to be replaced by bars and cafes all catering to the monied young overspill from Clapham. There’s even a Waitrose now, a poor replacement in my view for the old open air market now a shadow of its former self.

Lonely Planet’s Street Food Festival

A clear blue sky, shirt sleeves and a well-poured pint of Dorset Nectar are hardly conducive to the Great Indoors. But that indeed is where I find myself, struggling to be heard by my mate over the thumping Afrobeat constrained and concentrated by the bare brick interior of Village Underground in Shoreditch.

Inaugural Macaron Day at Pierre Hermes London

Macarons? Really? You sure? Been there, done that, had the sugar rush. Yet, judging by the chattering classes clamouring for the candy-coloured confections, it seems the appetite for the whimsical, bijou mouthfuls remains unsated. And, when they’re so deceptively insubstantial, how could it be?

Easter at Harrod’s

Hand made in either milk or white chocolate and exploding with nuts or freeze-dried berries, these beauties are like the Ferarri of Easter fun. If you’re looking to impress someone this year, or just sick of keeping the purse strings tight, this is the perfect way to go all out for Easter this year.

Easter range at Carluccio’s

The gargantuan glass jar of mini eggs is emptying worryingly rapidly. Conveniently situated in the prime real estate just to the left of my keyboard, as an estate agent would have it, the tiny foil-wrapped ovoids are tantalisingly close- and the perfect reward for finishing an article. A paragraph. A line. Oh, let’s be frank: a word.

No Place Like Home. Rowley Leigh

Slightly cheaply printed, and with the odd typo creeping in, this is not a book for the coffee table. Instead, petit, precise and packed with sensible classics it’s a book the true home chef can turn to again and again for reliable recipes that will always hit the spot.