And you might well follow your nose to my mum’s house where you’ll sometimes find a Stinking Bishop in the corner of her garden. She’ll let it into the house when we are eating but otherwise the smelly and runny cheese from Gloucestershire isn’t welcome near the house. I actually looked for the Neal’s yard dairy in Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden. Of course there are only healthy restaurants and shops that sell beads there. It was only on the way […]
Eat streets
Where to eat on Melbourne’s and Australia’s famous eat streets.
Fishy Essex agro at The Company Shed
If you want good cheap fish then you need to head to the coast in England. My mum living in Saffron Walden in north Essex, it is a short hours drive to the Island of Mersea in the muddy estuary of the River Colne, near Colchester. Australians don’t appreciate properly this kind of muddy coastline preferring golden sands. But this is coast with sole and bloody amazing native oysters. Perhaps my health is returning or I draw the strength from […]
Finally a decent flat white (and a young model)
My old office used to look out over Berwick St, with its wonderful but little known fruit and veg market. “3 figs 1 pound” the sign reads. And they used to at least have some wonderfully arranged displays. The “models” are still up a staircase next to the fish and chip shop where we lusted over the girl with a fine layer of chip fat over her skin and the giant hoop earrings. Once the “models” used to be French, […]
Legal unpasteurized cheese in Mayfair
Ihaven’t had a chance to visit Neal’s yard Diary yet. But I was passing Paxton and Whitfield on Jermyn St the superb purveyor of all manner of cheese (and some pretty good pork pies which today I missed). If you know where to look London is studded with these sorts of places in the form of butchers and also fishmongers. Today I buy a slither of cheddar, unpasteurized of course. What i immediately notice is how more refined the texture […]
Jamon on the bone in Soho
I‘m spending two hours a day in the Apple lecture theatre accessing the fast broadband network as we are still wind-up internet at home. It’s a stones throw from my old work stamping ground of Soho, the tiny streets bordered by Regent and Wardour Streets. My big food find is Fernandez and Wells on Beak St with whole jamons (hams) hanging in the window. But Beak St is too close to Carnaby St for my liking and I stroll around […]
Simple dover sole at home
Together with turbot, seabass and diver caught scallops, dover sole has been at the top of my culinary hit list. As a young journalist it was the thing to order in the private clubs of the industrial midlands and London clubland. At the time they cost over ten quid – the equivalent of the $50 main course. They would be cooked to order and then skinned and boned at the table. We asked the fishmonger to skin our seven quids […]
A decent pint of Adnams and smoked haddock at the Eight Bells
Down to the Eight Bells in Saffron Walden for more culinary hits. This time ti’s two pints of Adnams Bitter, one of those almost flat English beers that I didn’t realise I missed so much. It’s (obviously) bitter, nearly flat and about 4.4% alcohol. It reminds me that so man of our craft beers are a bit too mucked about. For lunch I have my second smoked haddock dish of the holiday – a smoked haddock and mussel chowder. I’m […]
Hits all the way at Midsummer House (until the bizarre chocolate box arrives)
Just note that the spelling is Midsummer and not Midsomer. And the only nettles were crisp fried on the plate rather than in the cast. We are at Midsummer House on Midsummer Common in Cambridge, the single Michelin starred restaurant in East Anglia – or so I’m told. Despite being on the cam, in that perverse English way the main restaurant is in a conservatory overlooking a walled garden where we can see the staff tooing and froing to the […]
First night at the opera and supper at the Wolseley
Act 1 After a five year gap our protagonists meet in the offices of a discreet hedge fund just off Berkeley Sq. We catch at taxi to the basement bar Cafe des Amis just behind the Royal Opera House enjoying a couple of Kir Royales. A woman screams as a mouse runs under her feet. Our heroes exit stage let. Act 2 In the foyer of The Royal Opera House. What looks to be Australian Strewth columnist DD McNicoll disappointingly […]