dinner at benares pop up at meza with Atul Kochhar

If the grazing menu at Benares is beyond the reach of your wallet, popping into the pop up at Meza is a fabulous way of experiencing Atul Kochhar’s sparkling skills without breaking through the overdraft limit. Joanna Biddolph worked hard to do it justice on your behalf. You’ve got until Saturday 28th May to see if you can eat as much as she did.

King Prawn

Mark Hix and frozen seafood are not words you would necessarily associate. I still have trouble now. But here he is, in the smart and sexy underground bar below his Soho haunt, dressing that most prawny of dishes, prawn cocktail, for Birds Eye’s emperor king prawn launch.

Café East

More like a canteen than a café, even today there are more tables full than empty, quite a feat when you consider it’s a Friday afternoon and, as I may have mentioned already, we’re in the middle of a leisure park. The dining room is bright, clean and ever so slightly clinical and runs a ticket system when it’s even busier.

Twelfth Grand Union arrives at Paddington

Not unlucky for Grand Union, the canal-biased burgeoning chain opened its twelfth venue on Friday 13th May in the heart of newly-regenerated Paddington Basin. The space, a stagger from Edgware Road tube station, is massive and was created from a retail unit as part of a £400,000 refit with a capacity of 400 people.

Sex In A Cone

The Icecreamists, although a playful brand is anything but, these people are serious about ice cream! Sex, drugs and rock and roll, if it isn’t in their ice cream, it’s in their ice cream cocktails. Merging the innocence of ice cream with an injection of alcoholic sin, The Icecreamists have created a contemporary way to enjoy ice cream. Priyanka Kara learns how to create some of their recipes and gets the scoop.

Gull’s egg menu at the Boisdale

The dishes on offer include delights such as scrambled gull’s eggs with Loch Duart smoked salmon and Leek Tarte Fine with a soft-boiled egg, but on our visit we were given a tasting selection of chef’s specialties that showcase both the remarkable versatility of these ingredients, as well as chef’s ability to rustle up a storm.