Wine and Food

Myleene is a singer, presenter and businesswoman, and Jamie is a restauranteur with a number of restaurants to his name. Together they have created the home meal kit My Supper Hero, which aims to provide great food and champion sustainable packaging. On the podcast they talk about their earliest memories of food, the monotony of lockdown cooking and why roasted cauliflower is the best.

The Vintage Chef Olivia Potts

The rich pleasures of millionaire’s shortbread

The Vintage Chef Olivia Potts

The rich pleasures of millionaire’s shortbread

When I was at university, there was a cafe nearby that made the millionaire’s shortbread of dreams: slabs as big as your hand, with soft caramel that only just held its shape, and would yield when bitten into; a thick layer of chocolate, and a base that somehow defied physics by being impossible crumbly and yet offering the structural integrity required for the top two layers. My waistline and student bank balance suffered accordingly, but these treats saw me through finals and essays, hangovers and heartbreak, rain and shine.It’s not surprising that millionaire’s shortbread tends to be a hit with almost everyone: it combines three crowd-pleasers into pleasing layers in a portable square, perfect for parties and picnics (or the privacy of your student digs).

Another wasteland lost: Battersea Power Station reviewed

Tanya Gold

Another wasteland lost: Battersea Power Station reviewed

The rude fingers of Battersea are repointed, and barely rude at all. The power station by Giles Gilbert Scott and J. Theo Halliday is no longer a wasteland to contemplate as you sit on the Waterloo to Shepperton night train. It has become a small town with shopping centre, restaurants and a pier on the river, so a middle-aged woman can get on an Uber Boat by Thames Clippers and pretend to be Cardinal Wolsey without others knowing it. I have only ever known it as a ruin and so approaching it from its Underground stop feels subversive, but then all subversion ends. It is glossy, tinny: a dinosaur skeleton painted in glitter with glass apartments stacked on the head and satellite glass apartments all around for fellowship.

Roger Kimball

What to drink at Thanksgiving

Roger Kimball

What to drink at Thanksgiving

This is a tricky column. It’s still hot and humid where I am, which inclines me to tell you about some summer wines. But you won’t be reading this until just before Thanksgiving, which means something robust and cockle warming is in order. A fork in the road rises up before me. Which path should I take? Both! Why be an either-or sort of chap when both-and are available?Let’s start in Sicily, on the slopes of Mount Etna, one of the world’s most active volcanoes and, as it happens, a splendid igneous spot for growing grapes, especially Nerello and Grenache. I split a bottle of the 2019 SRC Etna Rosso Crasà with a couple of serious thinkers and we were all delighted. The small family-owned winery lies a thousand windswept meters above the Mediterranean in eastern Sicily.

James Jeffrey

The joys of combat food

James Jeffrey

The joys of combat food

Combat food seems to prove particularly divisive. It is the Marmite of culinary preparation:you either love it or loathe it. I’m firmly in the former camp. Combat food isn’t specifically military, though there is a link. It refers to simple, no-nonsense, hearty fare, whose ingredients – typically from tins – can easily be thrown into a pot and quickly mixed, cooked, then poured into a large bowl (combat food doesn’t tend to work with delicate plates).As I said, apparently divisive stuff. I once made the mistake of getting in touch with a then recent ex-girlfriend, thinking there was a chance of patching things up. Among a long and often impressively accurate list of my personal failings she sent back explaining why we would never meet again, she poured particular scorn on my terrible taste in food – especially my preference for combat food-type dishes.

Marianna Hunt

London’s best jazz bars

Marianna Hunt

London’s best jazz bars

When jazz music arrived on our shores in 1919, with the first British tour of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, it received a frosty welcome from many. Other performers tried to get the group kicked off theatre bills, and the tour ended abruptly – with the Original Dixielanders being chased to Southampton docks by a lord who had just found out the lead singer had been trying to seduce his daughter. Happily, in the subsequent 100 years or so, jazz has gone on to earn a firm place in our hearts and record collections. With the return of London Jazz Festival, which runs from today until 20 November, we hunted down the capital’s best jazz bars where you can dine and dance the night away. Louie London, Covent Garden Just around the corner from Ronnie Scott’s, by Leicester Square, Louie is the secret tourists wish they knew about.

The Vintage Chef Olivia Potts

The ultimate American comfort food: how to make meatloaf

The Vintage Chef Olivia Potts

The ultimate American comfort food: how to make meatloaf

Meatloaf has some obstacles to overcome: it has an unprepossessing appearance, and an uninspiring, slightly off-putting name, which it shares with the famous singer. And it wasn’t a compliment when it was given to him: the singer’s father took one look at his newborn son and said he looked like ‘nine pounds of ground chuck’, before persuading the hospital staff to put the name ‘Meat’ on his crib (which is real commitment to a joke). I can’t speak for baby Meat Loaf, but when it comes to the dish, the name is at least an extremely accurate description. Meatloaf is made up of ground meat (often beef, sometimes pork, occasionally veal, or a mixture thereof), cut with bread or other carbs, and bound together with egg.

Bruce Anderson

The wartime roots of Italian Pinot Noir

Bruce Anderson

The wartime roots of Italian Pinot Noir

Julie Bindel

I’ve found the only gastropub worth eating at

Julie Bindel

I’ve found the only gastropub worth eating at

The gastropub, an invention of the early 1990s, is a terrible idea. They burst on to the scene when breweries were made to sell off many of their pubs for a song to make way for competition, encouraging Marco Pierre White wannabes to snap them up and replace cheese sandwiches and pork scratchings with kidneys on toast and anything that could be put together in a kitchen the size of a shoebox. Many of them have food prepared off-premises but charge restaurant prices. There are no proper tablecloths, the glasses are made to survive if dropped on concrete floors and it all feels a bit like going round to your friend’s house for a substandard dinner party. The times I have reluctantly ended up in one, at the behest of friends with the bad taste to live in the countryside, I have found myself having to queue at the bar to be served drinks to accompany my meal, which put me in mind of Nando’s.

Ameer Kotecha

In defence of instant coffee

Ameer Kotecha

In defence of instant coffee

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Ten or 20 years ago no one would have thought twice about enjoying Nescafé or its equivalent. There is soothing ritual in spooning, pouring, stirring and sipping the mud-brown concoction in a mug. But nowadays, for a generation nourished on slow-roasted Colombian cashew-milk cortados, instant coffee seems as primitive as campfire cookery. I recently stayed at Brownsover Hall, a grand Gothic mansion house near Rugby: a place where you can sit for a whole weekend in a Georgian wingback chair, gazing out at Warwickshire. In a wood-panelled bedroom, with ceilings loftier than millennial expectations, by the mini kettle and the branded writing paper, was the familiar tray of Nescafé sachets, PG Tips and milk thimbles.

Joe Rogers

How to master mezcal

Joe Rogers

How to master mezcal

Long before there was tequila, before there was a state of Mexico, there was mezcal. The agave plant – which is roasted, fermented and distilled to produce this traditional spirit – has been a part of life in the region for millennia. When the first stills arrived there in the 16th century they were quickly set to work distilling the local fermented agave wine, and mezcal was born. Today, these intensely characterful spirits are being embraced by bartenders, natural wine types and foodies of every stripe across the world. This is partly due to the fact that mezcal offers a fascinating connection to the place it was made. A good bottle is the sum total of a single species of agave, grown in a single region, and shaped by the hand of a single master distiller.

Tanya Gold

Theme of despair: Drop’N Chicken at Chessington reviewed

Tanya Gold

Theme of despair: Drop’N Chicken at Chessington reviewed

Chessington World of Adventures sits in a bowl near the A3. I went in the 1970s when it was a zoo, home to some unhappy orangutans who lived in a cage which made me scream. Being a lonely sort of child, I hugged concrete dinosaurs in the rain. Now it is owned by Merlin Entertainments – a sort of National Trust for people who prefer rollercoasters to country houses – which is owned by a hedge fund that employs teenagers. We are here to feel fear because my son, who is nine, has never really felt it, which is a good thing: and Merlin Entertainments monetises this, offering fear for a price, with parking. I am Jewish, and queuing for fear isn’t my thing, but I like to consider myself a loving mother so here we are.

Alec Marsh

In defence of booze

Alec Marsh

In defence of booze

Once upon a time, well within living memory, a free-born Britisher could drink as much as he or she liked and smoke with a carefree abandon – all within working hours, and even without leaving their desk. You may remember elevenses – immortalised in those moments when M briefs Bond in the 007 films and the decanter comes out. That’s how people did a business meeting once, before Starbucks and 15 types of coffee. And then there was lunch. This could begin with a pint of beer or a steep gin and tonic, before some wine, and then perhaps a glass of port or brandy. Water? Kah! That’s for rinsing the glasses, not going in them. Nowadays, if you suggest having a glass of wine at a work lunch people will look at you like you’ve just offered their toddler a line of cocaine.

The Vintage Chef Olivia Potts

Hot, cold, sweet, salty, boozy, spiced: Bananas Foster has everything

The Vintage Chef Olivia Potts

Hot, cold, sweet, salty, boozy, spiced: Bananas Foster has everything

I’m a sucker for a challenge. I absolutely cannot resist a little competition. Throw down a gauntlet, and I am compelled to pick it up. That’s probably one of the reasons that I love bananas Foster so much: it owes its existence to a challenge. In the 1950s, New Orleans was a major port of entry for bananas shipped from Latin America. Owen Brennan, owner of the eponymous French-Creole restaurant Brennan’s, was no fool: his brother Joe’s produce firm, Brennan’s Processed Potato Company, was running a large surplus of bananas and he wanted to make the most of these readily available fruit. He challenged one of his chefs to come up with a banana dish that could be served at his restaurant. So the chef Paul Blangé (working with Owen’s sister Ella, who later took over the restaurant, and was largely responsible for its subsequent success) set about recreating a dish that the Brennans’ mother used to make in the family home.

Bruce Anderson

The Eton vs Winchester of the wine world

Bruce Anderson

The Eton vs Winchester of the wine world

Benjamin Benton

Why we should be tucking into tongue and turnip

Benjamin Benton

Why we should be tucking into tongue and turnip

Table Talk

With Capri Cafaro

23 min listen

Table Talk

With Capri Cafaro

23 min listen

Capri Cafaro was a member of the Ohio Senate for 10 years before becoming a political commentator. She can often be found on American television news channels and also hosts her own food podcast, Eat Your Heartland Out. On the podcast she talks to Lara and Olivia about memories of cooking Italian-American classics with her Grandma, how she got into politics and why she doesn't have a sweet tooth.

The Vintage Chef Olivia Potts

The comfort and joy of a treacle tart

The Vintage Chef Olivia Potts

The comfort and joy of a treacle tart

‘Come along, kiddie-winkies! Come and get your treacle tart,’ the Child Catcher trills in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, to lure children away. The youngsters are particularly taken with the idea of treacle tart, and it’s not difficult to imagine why: unapologetically sweet and sticky, it’s irresistible to small, greedy hands. It’s easy to dismiss treacle tart as a nursery food. But that, of course, is part of its charm. It’s the Platonic ideal of a childhood treat, and a byword for comfort. In Harry Potter, the love potion Amortentia smells of whatever someone loves most in the world; to Harry, it smells of broomsticks, Ginny Weasley’s hair and treacle tart, the first dessert he ever ate at Hogwarts. Anyone making a treacle tart goes in with their eyes open.

Tanya Gold

Echoes of John Lewis: Piazza at Royal Opera House reviewed

Tanya Gold

Echoes of John Lewis: Piazza at Royal Opera House reviewed

The Piazza is not a piazza – a realisation which is always irritating – but a restaurant in the eaves of the Royal Opera House, now restyled and open to those without tickets to the opera or ballet. If it were honest, Piazza would name itself Attic or Eaves, but the Garden, as idiotscall it, has long been a slave to delusions of the most boring kind. (It is no longer a garden in the wreckage of Inigo Jones’s square. I wish it were.) I would be happy to dine in a restaurant called Eaves – my favourite hotel is a hole in a wall by the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem and my favourite restaurant was a man with a fish in Jamaica – but, in London, even attics are not what they ought to be. I once spent a week backstage at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, watching ballet dancers not eat, and in the eaves I found a piano graveyard, a tutu graveyard and, further on, a musical-score graveyard.

Sarah Rainey

Has the Aga had its day?

Sarah Rainey

Has the Aga had its day?

Roger Kimball

Roger Scruton’s philosophy of wine

Roger Kimball

Roger Scruton’s philosophy of wine

The philosopher Roger Scruton died in January 2020 just a few weeks shy of his 76th birthday. He left behind a large circle of admirers and a correspondingly large shelf of books in a variety of genres – novels, opera libretti, volumes of occasional journalism, cultural and architectural criticism, and various philosophical works, popular as well as technical. He wrote and wrote about music, hunting to hounds and politics. He also wrote about the subject that brings us together: wine. Roger was a gifted teacher, always on the lookout for opportunities to educate the ignorant, enlighten the benighted and expand the horizons of those cramped by bigotry and parti pris. His missionary work extended to the pages of the New Statesman, in whose pages his wine columns appeared.

Peter and Timothy Jacobson

Old Fashioned values: a cocktail recipe to live by

Peter and Timothy Jacobson

Old Fashioned values: a cocktail recipe to live by

Take your time. Measure twice. Finish what you start. How will you have time to do it again if you don’t take time to do it right the first time? Work hard at work, then come home. Loosen your tie and relax. Make a highball or mix a cocktail for your wife and yourself. Share the end of the day. We are brothers and we write here of a drink and the man who taught it to us, our father. Teaching us how to make it, he also taught us something of how to live. He was a chemical engineer, and so the formula was important. The drink was the Old Fashioned (or Old Fashion; it doesn’t matter), and this is how he made it. You will need: half a teaspoon of sugar, four to six drops of Angostura bitters, half a shot of tap water, the juice of about one-third of an orange (hand-squeezed), and one or two store-brand red maraschino cherries with a short teaspoon of cherry juice.

Philip Patrick

Hard to swallow: the unjustified hype around Japanese food

Philip Patrick

Hard to swallow: the unjustified hype around Japanese food

Tokyo After 23 years in Japan, having tried everything from yatai (street food) to deep-fried globe fish in a kaiseki (traditional) restaurant, I have come to the conclusion that Japanese food is overrated. It is rarely less than perfectly presented, and it can be superb – but it can also be bland and homogenous. Part of the problem is that much of what delights the Japanese about their food is unrelated to its actual taste. If British food, in the bad old days at least, was simply fuel, Japanese food has always been, to some extent, art. A high-end Japanese meal is the equivalent of a Wagnerian gesamtkunstwerk, with the colours, the choice of bowls, utensils, tablecloth, room, and tinkling water from a nearby stream, if available, part of the all-encompassing sensory experience.