There has been substantial publicity around the bankruptcy of Patisserie Valerie. The chairman Luke Johnson is an experienced business man with a high profile and had invested a substantial amount of his own money in the company; retail and catering outlets are generally seen as fairly transparent and straightforward activities. So there is a fair …
Working with food
Salcombe Dairy
I have a weakness for small well run factories. Perhaps it’s because I’m orderly by nature that I get excited about wholesale production organised into cartons and pallets stacked up and ready to be dispatched into the messy world of retail. A few weeks ago while on holiday in Devon I arranged to visit the …
Grain Store Kings Cross
The January before last, the restaurant critic AA Gill declared 2012 to be the year of the vegetable. In the event, this prediction did not materialise as it was instead the rise of Mark Hix’s Tramshed serving only two types of meat: steak and chicken, Meat Liquor, Meat Wagon, and as many other name permutations …
Balthazar Bakery
The most eagerly awaited opening in the restaurant world this Spring was the second branch in London of Balthazar, Keith McNally’s highly successful New York restaurant. Arguably the doyen of the New York restaurant scene, McNally has opened 12 individual restaurants over the last 25 years, all in out-of-the-way places. Although, such is the self-generated …
Food for a working foodie
We all know that preparing food is time-consuming, and even the foodiest among us foodies occasionally just long to be cooked for. At the end of a long day of trying to translate what a chef has in his head into an inspiringly described menu, or 3 hours of concentrated tasting of (albeit exquisite) teas, …
Speciality Fine Food Fair 2012
The Speciality Fine Food Fair at Olympia heralds the beginning of the Autumn food trade fair season, on the first weekend of September every year. It is too early for this year’s olive oil harvest, but is timed completely right for showing beautifully packaged jams, chutneys, teas and chocolates, ready for Christmas trade. This is …
Italian Spring Cooking with Silvana de Soissons at the Vegetarian Cookery School, Bath
It was a perfect excuse for a bit of mother-and-daughter bonding. I had met Silvana de Soissons, a charismatic Italian foodie chef a few weeks ago at Thyme at Southrop, at the launch of her Foodie Bugle lecture series. Her warmth and energy had made that a special day, and so what could be more …
Italian Spring Cooking with Silvana de Soissons at the Vegetarian Cookery School, BathRead More
Foodie Bugle at Thyme at Southrop
This title may seem a mouthful and baffling to some, but to those of us who were there last Friday it makes more than sense. The Foodie Bugle is an online platform set up last March by the energetic and colourful Silvana de Soissons. Silvana has foodieness hardwired into her genes, having been raised in …
Dafna’s Cheesecake Factory
You can find cupcakes with complex flavour combinations in abundance at farmers’ markets, and as elaborate showpieces in shop windows in sophisticated cafés, with prices to match, but what about the good old fashioned homemade cake shop? Anne Lev is one of a dying breed. She has manned her business, Dafna’s Cheese Cake Factory, for …