Archive For April 2017
From Delia Smith When a maître d’ in a smart restaurant, full of flourish and foreign inflections, is pushing the fresh ‘asparagoose’, there is only one question to be asked: is it English? Because English asparagus is without any doubt the best in the world. I once asked my friend Sudhir Dhanani, who isn’t…
Located near Covent Garden in the heart of London’s West End, Eneko at One Aldwych is one of this writer’s favourite eateries. It is a delightfully stylish restaurant and wine bar from the acclaimed Basque Chef Eneko Atxa. This basement space takes advantage of a 2-storey ceiling at one end which offers diners in that…
This is a book the size of several bricks. That’s not surprising as it introduces 365 leading British chefs’ main course recipes. Each recipe is presented with beautiful pictures on quality paper, and this considerable tome is encased in a gift sleeve. The ChariTable Bookings Signature Dish is a recipe book with 365 dishes –…
‘No, Mum, not a museum!’ Yes, many of us have heard that sad and somewhat panic-stricken refrain from youngsters who are dreading the prospect of another 3-hour amble around galleries hung with dark oil paintings or museums stuffed full of glass cases displaying old clothes. What the juvenile members of the group are expressing is…
Dutch artists have, for centuries, been admired for the realistic quality of their work. Seventeenth-century landscapes and scenes of ordinary life are all here. One might suppose that the paintings were done directly from life; but it seems that most of them were produced with the aid of previously-executed sketches. Drawings for Paintings: in the…
Both afternoon tea and The Criterion are icons. The first is quintessentially British; the second a long-standing London destination for fine food, and one which has been frequented by the great and the good for around a century and a half. Thomas Verity, a British architect, won a competition to build The Criterion; work began…
I live only a short bus ride, or an even shorter train ride, from Kingston. I am there very often for retail therapy at the Bentalls Centre, and a frequent visitor to the large Chinese, Japanese and Korean supermarket. I enjoy the historic daily fruit and vegetable market. But I have never thought of Kingston…
There is a new stylish hotel in Kingston and it’s a Hilton. But why Kingston Upon Thames? Well, it’s a good location for a decent hotel for business or pleasure, in an area which seems to have something of a lack of such accommodation. But why would you want to go to Kingston, anyway? Kingston…
From Delia Smith These delightful tartlets contain a combination of melted cheese, lightly sautéed asparagus tips and whole, lightly baked eggs. They are simple to prepare and just need popping into the oven 12-15 minutes before they are served. Vegetarians might like to know that a vegetarian parmesan-style cheese is available from www.bookhamcheese.co.uk …
It seemed unlikely. A pottery in a church in Eindhoven. But here it was and it is indeed a divine space in which to sympathetically develop well-designed products from natural clay. But not just any clay – this is Dutch clay at Atelier NL. Nadine Sterk and Lonny van Ryswyck studied at Eindhoven’s Design Academy,…