Tag: Food

A taste of the divine

Articles & Essays, Food

We have taken our places. This evening’s performance, sold out months in advance, is about to begin. The programme, handwritten in a traditional script on a rolled parchment, tied with string, tells us to expect a prologue, two chapters and an epilogue, without interval. I’m nervous with anticipation but I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that it’s not because I am waiting for the curtain to rise on a Wagner opera or a Shakespeare play. I’m actually waiting for my dinner.

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Why have we fallen out of love with organic food?

Articles & Essays, Food

The question I wanted to chew over with the chief executive of the Soil Association, Helen Browning, is whether “organic” as we have known it has had its day. For all the good the movement has done in challenging the most egregious practices of modern industrial farming, take any key issue on food and farming today and you will find that it’s never simply a case of conventional bad, organics good, or even better.

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Why so many restaurants are missing a table 13

Articles & Essays, Food

I am sitting at a table that doesn’t exist. I wanted to eat out at a table 13, defying superstition ahead of tomorrow, the third Friday the 13th in this unusually inauspicious year. But it’s hard to find one. Only two of the UK’s 14 best restaurants have a table 13, most simply skipping from 12 to 14. Here at Le Gavroche, the closest I can come is to dine at table 12a, a kind of phantom table 13, the cursed spot that dare not speak its name…

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