I had lunch twice with Jean-Herve Chiquet, one half of the fraternal owners of the champagne house of Jacquesson (founded in 1798), along with his fabulous champagnes in the space of 2 weeks. I know, it’s tough but someone has to do it. My first encounter with Jean-Herve, at the winery was rather disheveled, as somebody had...
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7am on a Saturday morning is not the usual start time for events I attend, 7pm is more like it, but since Billingsgate market is only open early mornings, I had no choice but to be up at the crack of dawn to get down to the market for the new series the “Andaz Liverpool Street Seafood Workshops” in conjunction with Head...
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Walking up Kingsland Road and then merging onto Stoke Newington Street, I was wondering if I would ever find the venue for Shacklewell Nights’ latest dinner. Past rows of closed shops with the metal shutters locked tightly, Turkish grocers and off-licences, I spied a hipster with a clipboard in the battered open doorway of...
read moreBistro du Vin is rapidly expanding their empire and have now branched out to Soho. So you may think, another Bistro du Vin but this one has something the other two don’t – a dedicated walk-in cheese locker in the main dining room. You can’t miss it, a brightly lit glass room at the end of the bar. Currently...
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Charles Dickens used to work in a bank at 1 Lombard St. That bank has since been turned into the restaurant 1 Lombard St and I was there the other night for the launch of their new Wine Society. The restaurant’s sommelier Matthew Mawtus is going to be conducting winetastings in the bank’s former vault featuring not only...
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I went to The Fish Place for dinner with a German (well, she grew up there) friend of mine, not long ago and since we were having some rather substantial fish dishes, I asked Artan, (the manager) who was serving us, to bring us an interesting wine. He brought a 2005 riesling from the Nahe, the Tesch Lohrer Berg Riesling spatlese...
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