The Table of Delights
Eating out is often theatrical – and now one theatre company is turning their stage into a restaurant, with the audience as diners.
ReadCategory: Food
The vegan carnivore?
The chef Richard McGeown has faced bigger culinary challenges in his distinguished career than frying a meat patty in a little sunflower oil and butter. But this time the eyes and cameras of hundreds of journalists in the room were fixed on the 5oz (140g) pink disc sizzling in his pan, one that had been five years and €250,000 in the making. This was the world’s first proper portion of cultured meat, a beef burger created by Mark Post, professor of physiology, and his team at Maastricht University in the Netherlands…
ReadWhy are allotments becoming less popular?
Allotments are a wonderful British institution that should be protected and extended. Demand may have fallen but it is still very high. But let’s not kid ourselves they reduce food miles or increase food security. The case for allotments is spiritual and psychological, not economic or environmental.
ReadWe want it all. And we want it now.
Seventy-five years ago, the tinkling of a spoon in a cup signalled the dawn of a new cultural epoch. After seven years of research at a laboratory in Switzerland, the scientist Max Morgenthaler had perfected the technique of spray-drying liquid coffee into a soluble powder. And so on 1 April 1938, the world’s first instant coffee, Nescafé, was launched and from then on instantaneity came to permeate almost every aspect of our lives…
ReadOn traditional foodstuffs and techniques
When no corner of the world has been left unexplored, and imports come with the stigma of food miles, native rare breeds and heritage fruit and vegetables have become the new exotica. But, as broadcaster and greengrocer Charlie Hicks puts it, since “there’s often a very good reason they stopped growing them in the first place” is there anything more to this new-found love of the old than nostalgia, novelty and scarcity value?
Read