24 Feb 2012
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
17 Feb 2012
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
16 Feb 2012
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
15 Feb 2012
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)
14 Feb 2012
Tim Hayward and Russell Norman (Harden's)
Russell (I didn't call him trendy)
13 Feb 2012
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)
6 Feb 2012
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
27 Jan 2012
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)
20 Jan 2012
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
16 Jan 2012
Simon Says
Simon Hulstone on potentially deadly foraging, mind altering tea and suicidal mackerel...
For photos of Simon, see Visuals
6 Jan 2012
Top Table's Most Romantic Restaurants Feature
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
4 Jan 2012
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
19 Dec 2011
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)
16 Dec 2011
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
14 Dec 2011
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
13 Dec 2011
Harden's
THE latest newsletter features four Q&A's which I organised:
- Felicity Cloake
- Nuno Mendes
- Fred Sirieix
- Huw Gott
2 Dec 2011
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)
25 Nov 2011
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