-
1 week ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Olivia Potts
Text size Small Medium Large Line Spacing Compact Normal Spacious Comments In 1999, a relatively unknown American chef wrote an essay in the New Yorker uncovering the secrets of restaurants. ‘Don’t Eat Before Reading This’ lifted the lid on both the underworld of professional kitchens and the mentality of chefs. In it, the writer meticulously took down ordering fish on a Monday (old), eating steak well done (for ‘philistines’), brunch as a concept (despised) and vegetarians in general...
-
1 week ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Olivia Potts
There’s a well-known clip from daytime TV show This Morning where celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo is cooking a classic Italian pasta dish.
-
2 weeks ago | 
spectator.com.au | Olivia Potts
‘You wouldn’t steal a car…’ began the early noughties anti-piracy video. ‘You wouldn’t steal a television… You wouldn’t steal a handbag.’ No, but it seems from reports from restaurants, you might slip some silverware into a handbag if you’re out for dinner. In February, Gordon Ramsay revealed that nearly 500 cat figurines had been stolen in one week from his latest restaurant, Lucky Cat.
-
2 weeks ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Olivia Potts
Text size Small Medium Large Line Spacing Compact Normal Spacious Comments ‘You wouldn’t steal a car…’ began the early noughties anti-piracy video. ‘You wouldn’t steal a television… You wouldn’t steal a handbag.’ No, but it seems from reports from restaurants, you might slip some silverware into a handbag if you’re out for dinner. In February, Gordon Ramsay revealed that nearly 500 cat figurines had been stolen in one week from his latest restaurant, Lucky Cat. The maneki-neko cat models –...
-
3 weeks ago | 
spectator.com.au | Olivia Potts
The Italians have a phrase: ‘brutti ma buoni’. It means ‘ugly but beautiful’, and it’s the name they give to their nubbly hazelnut meringue biscuits, which – as the name suggests – taste lovely but aren’t lookers. The phrase came to me the other day when I lifted the lid on my pan of golden syrup dumplings.
-
3 weeks ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Olivia Potts
The Italians have a phrase: ‘brutti ma buoni’. It means ‘ugly but beautiful’, and it’s the name they give to their nubbly hazelnut meringue biscuits, which – as the name suggests – taste lovely but aren’t lookers. The phrase came to me the other day when I lifted the lid on my pan of golden syrup dumplings. Because they’re ugly little buggers. They look a little like soggy apple fritters, or even chicken nuggets – am I selling them to you yet?
-
4 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Charles Lipson |Olivia Potts |Freddy Gray |Ben Domenech
Congress has been mulling the future of publicly-funded television and radio. Here’s a spoiler alert: that funding is toast. There is no way a Republican-controlled House and Senate will keep pouring money into networks they believe hate them. They know that hatred is warmly reciprocated. The debate about partisan bias at PBS and NPR is important – the bias itself is obvious – but that’s not the most important point.
-
4 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Olivia Potts |Freddy Gray |Teresa Mull |Jane Stannus
Picture the scene. The year is 2004. The setting, a British field or maybe a beach. There is a small open fire burning with a single cast-iron pan perched on it. A male TV chef – dressed in a striped shirt, open at the neck, chinos, possibly red, leather shoes – is standing over it, reverently holding a fish. “This is a beautiful piece of fish,” he says, “and we’re not going to do anything fancy here.
-
1 month ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Olivia Potts
Text size Small Medium Large Line Spacing Compact Normal Spacious Comments Picture the scene. The year is 2004. The setting, a British field or maybe a beach. There is a small open fire burning with a single cast-iron pan perched on it. A male TV chef – dressed in a striped shirt, open at the neck, chinos, possibly red, leather shoes – is standing over it, reverently holding a fish. ‘This is a beautiful piece of fish,’ he says, ‘and we’re not going to do anything fancy here. It doesn’t need...
-
1 month ago | 
spectator.com.au | Olivia Potts
Breaking Bread: How Baking Shaped Our World Aurum, pp.272, 18.99 ‘Bread is simple. Or is it?’ That is the question David Wright poses about a keystone food that spans the globe and the whole of history. Breaking Bread examines the science behind the ur-loaf, the development of the Chorleywood method, the economics of selling the stuff, the role that it has played in religion and politics – and what its future might look like.
