BRUMMELL BLOG: Heston Blumenthal

THE modernist chef’s latest restaurant, Dinner, recently came ninth in The World’s 50 Best Restaurant awards – this year’s highest new entry. He talks about centrifuges, pizza and Willy Wonka... 

Read at Brummell

Seeking Vintage

WRITER Douglas Blyde selects his favourite 10 Vintage Seekers finds - including a super-sleek sports car and an anonymous, armoured cocktail owl... 

Read at Vintage Seekers

Behind the scenes in Istria, Croatia at the Piquentum Winery

A FIVE-bolt lock pins the rust-coloured door to the hillside. Trees sprout above, just in leaf, their roots wrapping around, but unable to enter. Beneath, Dimitri Brečević's winery unravels, church-like in its proportions, verdegris mottling concrete walls and blood of Christ soundlessly maturing. Mightily built, this cavern was conceived as a water tank in 1928, converted for war shelter in the early 90s, and, just months ago, recognised as actually here by cartographers and authorities... 

Read at Harper's

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Talking Toques - Ollie Dabbous

FORMERLY of Texture, Ollie Dabbous co-founded Goodge Street’s eponymous restaurant and cocktail bar with mixologist, Oskar Kinberg after the duo met while working at Piccadily’s Cuckoo Club. 

Read at Harden's

Fenfare

ALTHOUGH home to an ancient university (1209) and high-tech hub known as “Silicon Fen”, Cambridge only recently became known for its quality eating opportunities. Recently, aided by their families, two food writers swapped pens for knives, becoming restaurateurs within one month of eachother... 

Read at Harper's (p. 24)

Stars Under Stars at Jumeirah

PLEASURE knows many boundaries. Dubai, a food desert, where water, ingredients and workforce are shipped in, and septic tanks pumped far out, has something of the pyramids about it. 

Read at The Arbuturian

More photos at Visuals

Kenya Cowboy

GEOFFREY Kent is the founder of Abercrombie & Kent, the bespoke experience-led holiday company, which turns 50 this year. He talks to Douglas Blyde about motorbikes, bonobo monkeys and inventing the elephant hair bracelet… 

Read at Brummell

Catering For Star Quality

BEHIND the scenes at many a film premiere and celebrity wedding, you will find Bertie de Rougemont and his discreet team at Cellar Society. Douglas Blyde meets him...

Read at Harper's (pp. 26-28)

Trapan from Istria

TRAPAN's sharply designed winery, complete with Super Mario-style tubes plumbed into the ceiling of the tasting room (one plugged with a clock), felt too clean and too new to spit in. Besides, Bruno Trapan's well-made wines were hard not to swallow, particularly the completely delicious, un-macerated, oak-free Malvasia...

Read at Harpers

Langkawi: Where Eagles Dare

LANGKAWI is prone to sudden and arresting tantrums; riveting downpours and urgent winds alarm palms, ripple private plunge pools and foam the Andaman’s emerald waves on the cusp of the rainy season... 

Read at The Arbuturian

RIP Caspar Auchterlonie

Vertu Select

I’M nearly unbearably aware that a great many of my commissions don’t appear on this blog. I’ve been busy excitedly penning a broad spectrum of articles for the lustrous Vertu, whose Select magazine is available in English, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Arabic, Italian, German, French and Japanese, exclusively to owners of these British-finished, top end mobiles. 

Thus far, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing, frankly, dozens of truly remarkable chef talents around the globe, a leading restaurant designer, tour operator of five decades experience, renowned bartender, intrepid distillers and winemakers, leading concierge, food spectacle firm, and even a jet broker. 

Sadly my clockwork BlackBerry’s never going to receive my published work, but if any of my normal readers (whoever you are) buy one of these watch-like, bespoke technology pieces, or encounter them in a showroom, do look out for my byline...

Covenant in California

DOUGLAS Blyde meets Jeff Morgan of boutique, Robert Parker appraised Californian label, Covenant, over lunch at Medlar restaurant, Chelsea...

Read at Harper's (p. 43)

Haute Stuff

 Photo: Paul Winch-Furness

BEN Spalding is the creative force behind Roganic, the two-year pop-up restaurant of L'Enclume chef, Simon Rogan. At just 24 he is already a culinary virtuoso whose masterful cooking has won him much acclaim from critics and fellow chefs, not to mention 47th place in The Times’ list of 100 People to Watch in 2012...

Read at Brummell

Quenching a Natural Thirst

DOUGLAS Blyde reports on Soif, the third naturally-inclined wine brasserie after Terroirs and Brawn from Eric Narioo, MD of Les Caves de Pyrene, and Ed Wilson and Oli Barker.

Read at Harper's (pp. 44-45)

Talking Toques - Maureen Mills

WE catch up with doyenne of restaurant Press Relations, Maureen Mills, to learn more about restaurant PR and her thoughts on Harden's 2013 Restaurant Survey...

Read at Harden's

Whisky Coast

COLCHESTER’S Mersea Island spans five miles by two of tidal marsh. There’s a fledgling vineyard, pub, seven B&B bedrooms and a bitumen-spread shack called, no-nonsense, the Company Shed. It’s beloved by both locals, and restaurant critics jaded by Michelin’s frippery. Under fluorescent strips, tanks of crustaceans rowdily gurgle, tended by seventh generation snowy-bearded oyster-man, Richard Haward. His family have been excavating craggy bivalves from local silt and salt since 1792. Haward’s cause today is the rebuilding of stocks of delicate tasting, and delicate of life, native oysters. I venture on a sharp, low sunlit morning to taste Talisker Scotch distilled beside the shore of Scotland’s Isle of Skye beside this shore, with a menu by guest chef, Valentine Warner.

Read at Eat Me magazine
More photos at Visuals

Thomasin of Angelus

“Fillet is the French caviar,” crisply alliterates Thierry Thomasin, the author of Angelus restaurant. Brightened by big, chopped caper berries, and refined and updated with a diamond topping of foie gras, the hand-cut, rosy tartare indeed benefits from an agile, roe-like feel. Thomasin’s house blend Blanc de Pinot Noir Champagne, ‘Angelium’, brings more intriguing texture to the dish: tiny, tactile, snowy bubbles encapsulating, understatedly, the flavours of soft, pink fleshy fruits. Sitting on mature Claret-coloured Chesterfield banquettes in the cosy, couth dining room, a France-England entente (‘Britisserie’, if you like), I struggle to recall a lovelier mouthful. That is until I try what Ash has ordered: Thomasin’s signature foie gras crème brûlée, adorned with poppy seeds...

Read at The Arbuturian

Michael Caines

CHEF Michael Caines MBE is best known for his work as head chef of two Michelin-starred Gidleigh Park Hotel in Dartmoor. Here he talks about his passion for F1 and cooking for the AT&T Williams team…

Read at Brummell magazine

George V’s Stellar Cellar

THERE are no flowers in the cellar. Fragrant splays and bouquets line the hotel’s other avenues. And rose petals, young Burgundy in colour, are artfully scattered on the linen of tables 46ft above, where menu covers feature depictions of bamboo. One concierge once loaded a customer’s suite with 6,000 roses to court an heiress. They demanded 10,000, but the maximum available from Paris’s flower market of 6,000 still worked, nonetheless...

Read at glass magazine

The Marquis at Alkham

THIS nonchalant village pub turned bright white-walled gourmet restaurant with designer bedrooms originally took the title, ‘Marquis of Granby’. Granby was general, politico and gastronome, John Manners, eldest son of the 3rd Duke of Rutland and a benevolent much-loved for establishing ageing members of his regiment as publicans. On Manners’ death in 1770, his barrister friend, Levett Blackborne eulogised: “You are no stranger to the spirit of procrastination. The noblest mind that ever existed...” 

Read at Harper's Wine and Spirit magazine (p. 20)

Tim Hayward and Russell Norman (Harden's)

Tim
Russell (I didn't call him trendy)

Hind's Head

“I DON’T approve of Facebook” says the bald gent in the racing green jumper at the next table, before devouring rich devils on horseback (£1.80). Meanwhile a younger customer lays down his iPhone before removing trainers to ease long, jeaned legs under a bare wooden table. I sit amid rugged beams and blood-red walls at The Hind’s Head...

Read at Harpers (p.20)

The Cocoon of Camélia

MY companion no longer hears my prattle. All her force of focus is on the warm whip just departed from her teaspoon. Her large eyes have pursed to mascara line. She softly emits a low, rhythmic resonance, akin to purring. She is with a more expert seducer now. He is Thierry Marx, executive chef who devised this leavened truffled custard ‘cappuccino’. It is enduring and depthful and compelling, of the earth, ugly-beautiful in an almost pheromone-steeped sense, and very nearly overwhelming. Not so much just another dish on the Michelin-wound, fine dining conveyer belt, but an unexpected inter-course inferring intimacy, intensely savoured on Chinese New Year. The day also coincides with my birthday, and to behold such pleasure on one’s guest’s face makes a memorable gift.

Read at The Arbuturian

More from Harden's

Dining by Design:

Brunswick House Cafe (read)

oOo

Talking Toques:

Neil and Ed Martin (pictured, read)

 oOo

Book Feature:

Richard Johnson (read)

Mike Robinson's Cookery School

MOUNTAINEER, boulderer, hunter, restaurateur (The Pot Kiln, Berkshire), and co-owner of the Harwood Arms, Fulham, Mike Robinson also runs game workshops at his cookery school.

Read at Harden's

Simon Says

Simon Hulstone on potentially deadly foraging, mind altering tea and suicidal mackerel...

Click photos above to read (Eat Me magazine) 
For photos of Simon, see Visuals

Top Table's Most Romantic Restaurants Feature

500 Restaurant, 782 Holloway Road, London, N19 3JH:

I’ve often found the home to be a more romantic dining environment then even the softest lit, most smoothly served restaurant. However, for unexpected culinary fortune, I’d recommend the humble looking ‘500’ in Archway. For a marginal supplement to already reasonable prices, their own imported truffles - white abundantly shaved over buttery pappardelle; black over venison leg or veal escalope, makes a heady impression.

For: Top Table

Plates of Potential and Potential Plates

Restaurant writer, Douglas Blyde asked London’s leading food-focussed personalities what 2012 might hold for diners.

Read at Story PR's blog

Restaurant Review: CUT

HAVING been written-off as “good for nothing” by his coalminer father, Wolfgang Puck left school and home aged 14. On being subsequently fired three-weeks into his apprenticeship at the kitchens of Romantik Hotel Poste in hometown, Villach, Austria, hopeless Puck considered suicide, going so far as to reach the river’s edge. Fortunately, the hotel’s owner discovered sympathy and saved his life, relocating him among female cooks in the Poste’s sister property. Under improved conditions, once outcast Puck become a culinary protégé, gaining the highest catering school qualifications which the owner had seen...

Read at Harper's Wine & Spirit magazine (p. 23)

Majestic Mirazur

GAULT-MILLAU’s first non-French Chef of the Year, Mauro Colagreco talks to Douglas Blyde about realising his restaurant vision…

Read at Brummell magazine

For Whom The Bell Tolls

AN EXCURSION “brimming with surprises” is how our individually dapper host bills it. “Meet at 17:10 at platform six, Charing Cross, bring an overnight bag, and sport gastro coach-house chic” are his instructions, e-mailed in an invitation etched over the image of a stiff, stuffed squirrel bolted to a rocking chair. Its limbs are crossed in a pose at once casual and pensive. Bar one, who accidentally ventures to King’s Cross, our Quink spill of positive RSVPs – food journalists and food bloggers, and food journalists who PRs obstinately refer to as food bloggers – shoe-horn themselves into rush-hour rolling-stock. Bathed in fluorescent light, and frequently kneed by a bolshy congo of corridor haunting commuters buckled into wan suits, we’re plied with blotting paper dry fizzy English red...

Read at The Prodigal Guide

Harden's

THE latest newsletter features four Q&A's which I organised:

• Felicity Cloake
• Nuno Mendes
• Fred Sirieix
• Huw Gott

Realising Roganic

Image: Paul Winch-Furness

 BEN Spalding sips green tea amid numerous jars and tubs of herbs, spices and flowers, their exotic names boldly scrawled in marker pen. We’re in the kitchens under Roganic, first London venture from Simon Rogan, mind behind esteemed Cumbria restaurant, L’Enclume. Tattoos crawl Spalding’s arms. They include the line ‘keep your feet on the earth but your head in the sky’ as well as jigsaw pieces and music notes reflecting an interest in techno music. “I had no interest in food at school” he says. “My dad was an alcoholic and died when I was 16. I got caught-up in a bad crowd.” Fortunately eldest brother Andrew set him straight, enrolling him at catering college. “At night I’d work at a restaurant run by an Alain Ducasse-trained chef which is how I caught the cooking bug.”

Read at Harpers Wine & Spirit (pp. 24-26)

Talking Toques - Mark Sargeant

Photo: Leluu

WE catch up with Gordon Ramsay’s former right-hand man at Rocksalt - his new restaurant in Folkestone...

Read at Harden's
Read my longer feature on Mark Sargeant at Fork magazine

Sir Frank Williams

THE founder and manager of the AT&T Williams Formula One team faces the Spear's inquisition...

Read

Morgenster wines at The Square

GIULIO Bertrand and Henry Kotzé came to London restaurant, The Square to introduce the Morgenster range of wines to journalists. The 300 year-old vine and olive estate is based in Somerset West, Stellenbosch. Owner, Giulio Bertrand, who was formerly in the textile business, and originally purchased the 200ha site as a retirement domicile, but found the idea of a 200ha garden impractical, admires the wines of leading Saint-Emilion Château, Cheval Blanc. So too does his winemaker, Henry Kotzé, who sows Cabernet Franc alongside Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and a little Petit Verdot (on Tableberg sandstone). Pierre Lurton is consultant.

Read at Harpers Wine and Spirit magazine

Tapas Dance

NACHO Manzano, the two-Michelin-starred Asturian chef behind London’s Ibérica Food & Culture restaurants talks kilometer- zero cuisine, and the importance of unfussy fare...

Read at Brummell

Ginstitute Launches

WITH the aim of conveying the long history of Londoners’ allegiance to dry gin, the second smallest museum in the capital recently opened in Notting Hill...

Read at Foodepedia

Juliette Joffe, Giraffe Restaurants

BEFORE establishing Giraffe, Juliette Joffe was the mind behind the Café Flo chain. She founded Giraffe 14 years-ago this summer with husband, Russel and business partner, Andrew Jacobs who she first encountered as a waiter at Flo. Giraffe employs 1,200 staff across 43 restaurants in England, including five franchises.

Read at Livebookings

The Room at The Elephant

“I ate beans on toast and spaghetti hoops until I was 15” says Simon Hulstone, the once “fussy eater” who went on to become the only British chef to win gold at France’s World Chef Championships. Fortunately work related travels with father, Roger, group executive chef for hoteliers, Hilton and Forte saw his disinterest in food disappear. “I started to like chefs’ banter,” he recalls...

Read at Harper's Wine & Spirit (p. 23)

¿Quéviar?

WE’RE used to free-range eggs, so why not organic caviar? Douglas Blyde dons his waders for some Spanish roe...

Read at Spear’s

Test Dining THIRTY SIX by Nigel Mendham

IN tandem with general manager, Debrah Dhugga, chef Nigel Mendham has brought the restaurant at much-loved five-star, Duke’s of St. James up to the standard of its attendant bar. It’s long been a favourite on account of its balanced but - if you’re not watchful - unbalancing martinis.

Read at Hot Dinners

A Tail To Remember

PLEURAT Shabani, the creator of Konik’s Tail vodka, tells Douglas Blyde how he brought rare premium vodka from Poland’s primeval forests to London’s best bars…

Read at Brummell

Brummell Blog: Wolfgang Puck

THE celebrated Austrian-born American chef has just opened his first British venture The Cut at the 5-star hotel, 45 Park Lane. Here he talks about cruelty, inspiration, benevolence and rock and roll…

Read at Brummell

Q&A with Justin Thomas

OUR reporter Douglas Blyde talks to Justin Thomas – the man behind Belgravia’s ever-buzzing Thomas Cubitt, on the importance of the dining environment...
Read at Harden's

Talking Toques - Simon Hopkinson

“I think you can afford to go a touch thinner, Tom” says Hopkinson, lifting coppa-style sliced beef sourced from Trealy Farm, Monmouthshire. “We’ve also been discussing sausages” he adds, observing the full English at the centre of attention.

Read at Harden's

Leluu & Blyde

‘I think it would be great fun to share Douglas' enthusiasm for cooking - he is brilliant and inventive - at my supper club. A creatively delicious British menu, eg. minted pea and Manzanilla soup, Konik’s Tail Bloody Mary lolly with soy, tile of flighted animals, and roast figs with violet sugar...’

More details: http://www.leluu.com/

Another Course of The Kitchen

Arnold Wesker's dine-amic, The Kitchen (currently served up at the National Theatre) is being live streamed in cinemas on Thursday. To find out more visit: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/ntlive. It features my former colleague of hospitality, Marek Oravec (Hans, pictured).

Names Can’t Be Bulldozed

HONOURING the avoidably lost is one of Great Britain’s not-so-great traditions. It irks me to see identikit dormitory estates steal first land then titles of dismantled noble estates and useful post offices adjusted into twee Old Post Offices not worth a posit on a postcard.

Read at The Prodigal Guide