Happy Belated New Year!  read more »

The day: 11 th December 2008, Dinner. The place: 12 Archer Street , London W1D 7BB (tel: 77342223) The venue: Ristorante Bocca di Lupo The food: (Multi)Regional Italian The drinks: Various Italian wines with a tiny smattering of others, many by the glass and the carafe, good range of prices and choices. We arent great fans of Soho . So having to wait for forty minutes perched on a bar stool, watching other people eat, after arriving, at our booked time, at this new Italian restaurant in a Soho dingy backwater put us in the worst of moods. New computer systemproblemswe hear the manager mumbling. Oh, we don't care, just give us the table. We are ready to be very criticalChef Jacob Kenedy (yes, it is spelled with one 'n')beware!  read more »

The day: 23 rd April 2008, Dinner. The place: Baglioni Hotel, 60 Hyde Park Gate, London , SW7 5BB The venue: Brunello Restaurant The food: Italian The drinks: Rather wide list, expensive. Warning: if you are of an aesthetically sensitive disposition and suffer of a weak heart, dont enter here. As soon as you pass the porter-opened door of this 5 star hotel, you enter a kitsch fantasy, with water games, flat arches serving no apparent purpose, middle-eastern style decorations, gilded table mats and the like. A sort of upscale (and in our opinion less successful and humorous) version of LMNT . All a little cheap looking, however , and a lack of tablecloths, which somehow surprises us. Also in view of the fact that judging from the wine list, where you are hard pressed to find anything at a reasonable price, this place must be patronised by people who, unlike us, are not cheap bastards. The chairs, armchairs in fact, are really comfortable, and the tables are spacious and with a decent margin from the neighbour. The menu is quite short and not particularly inspiring; nevertheless we have an open mind since, as you know, Italian cuisine can perform at its best even in the simplest of dishes, provided the ingredients are good and the skill is high. Let us check this out. For primi we note bla bla. The room manager asks us if we want the wine list. We say yes, but that will be the last time we see him: we simply disappeared from his radar, and we had to strive to catch the attention of the (only) other waiter to get some wine at the last minute. Distraction and inattention in the service will be a theme of the entire evening. In the meanwhile, the bread arrives.  read more »

 Songkran, the most vigorous of Thailand’s festivals, was the official Thai New Year until 1941. Formerly tied to the movement of the sun, modern Songkran takes place from 13-15th April. Songkran began as a ceremonial bathing of Buddha images as part of a new year’s spring cleaning ritual. However, it has degenerated over the years [...]

The day: 4 th July 2008, Dinner. The place: Corsega 286, 08008 Barcelona , Spain (tel: 93 2377588) The venue: Windsor The food: Modern Catalan Cuisine The drinks: Good list, very strong on Spanish. As you may know, Windsor is in Spain . It sits in the middle of Barcelona s elegant Eixample area. It advertises cuina catalana, and it is our second and completely casual choice for tonight, as on a friends strong recommendation (hello M) we wanted to try Alkimia, but it was booked up: next time We are lucky and with no booking we get in. The interior is striking: after crossing a vast lobby, you enter even more vast spaces, organised in several rooms and environments. There is high bourgeois elegance, with large mirrors, light colours, a veranda. Numerous sharply dressed room staff move around. The tables are comfortable and extremely well spaced (unfortunately not enough to prevent the booming voices of an American couple making us privy to their private lives).  read more »

You might want a digestivo after a layover at Aeronuova. Image courtesy OTG Management Yesterday's renderings of JetBlue’s new fantasy food court got us pretty excited, and that was before we saw the menus for Aeronuova, La Vie, and Loft. Mark Ladner's trattoria puts Sbarro to shame with antipasti like fried eggplant with basil bread crumbs, plus buttered gnudi and truffle pizza. We’ll be grabbing a Mediterranean pan bagnat from Nasr's La Vie before takeoff, and Loft will make banana pancakes, according to menus provided by airport food and beverage operator OTG Management. Scan the menus after the jump.  read more »

What started in October as phase one negotiations comes to fruition this weekend, as Michel Richard opens Citrus at Social , the restaurant that's taken over Jeffrey Chodorow's very pretty ghost town, Social . The official wording on this venture is that Richard is 'joining' Jeffrey Chodorow to open the restaurant, and that it'll have a seperate entrance and bar area. This is code for Social Hollywood, take two.  read more »

Oh, I am late getting on here this morning, but I had such a fascinating evening last night and I did not get to bed until gone midnight and then, it took me forever to fall asleep, so I wasn't exactly out of bed at the crack of dawn this morning!

As I have mentioned before, there is going to be a wedding up at the Big House this year as their oldest daughter is getting married. It's all go and decisions and very, very exciting. Last night the people who are going to be doing the catering for the big event, Stuarts - Party Design and Fine Food , came up to the Manor to do a tasting session. (Let's face it, I may be good, but I'm not quite up to catering for 300 plus people!! Although, in all honesty, I'd probably give it a good go if I had to!)  read more »

By JULIETTE ROSSANT How much influence does a restaurateur have on a restaurant's cuisine if he/she is not the executive chef?  read more »

 read more »